Is It Really Surprising To Anyone That Trump And Family Engaged In Outright Fraud For Decades?

After today's blockbuster investigative report on Trump's life of crime by the not-so-failing NY Times, CNBC reported that the New York state tax department is investigating the shocking revelations that are being read around the world.

The Pulitzer-bait report from David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner has been described as "exhaustive" and "thorough." Imagine what Mueller's office is going to have! They wrote that Señor Trumpanzee "has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s" and that he "participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents." Surprised? Shocked? Still wondering how Hillary could have lost to this buffoon? He "won" the election "proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his racist KKK father "provided almost no financial help." The Times investigation, "based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records," reveals that Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day."

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.

The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.

...The Times’ findings raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his income tax returns, breaking with decades of practice by past presidents. According to tax experts, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution for helping his parents evade taxes, because the acts happened too long ago and are past the statute of limitations. There is no time limit, however, on civil fines for tax fraud.

What emerges from this body of evidence is a financial biography of the 45th president fundamentally at odds with the story Mr. Trump has sold in his books, his TV shows and his political life. In Mr. Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who broke free of his father’s “tiny” outer-borough operation and parlayed a single $1 million loan from his father (“I had to pay him back with interest!”) into a $10 billion empire that would slap the Trump name on hotels, high-rises, casinos, airlines and golf courses the world over. In Mr. Trump’s version, it was always his guts and gumption that overcame setbacks. Fred Trump was simply a cheerleader.

“I built what I built myself,” Mr. Trump has said, a narrative that was long amplified by often-credulous coverage from news organizations, including The Times.

...Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel this wealth to his children. He made Donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant. He gave him loan after loan, many never repaid. He provided money for his car, money for his employees, money to buy stocks, money for his first Manhattan offices and money to renovate those offices. He gave him three trust funds. He gave him shares in multiple partnerships. He gave him $10,000 Christmas checks. He gave him laundry revenue from his buildings.

Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children. When he was in his 80s and beginning to slide into dementia, evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair, with Donald Trump playing a crucial role, interviews and newly obtained documents show.

The line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is often murky, and it is constantly being stretched by inventive tax lawyers. There is no shortage of clever tax avoidance tricks that have been blessed by either the courts or the I.R.S. itself. The richest Americans almost never pay anything close to full freight. But tax experts briefed on The Times’s findings said the Trumps appeared to have done more than exploit legal loopholes. They said the conduct described here represented a pattern of deception and obfuscation, particularly about the value of Fred Trump’s real estate, that repeatedly prevented the I.R.S. from taxing large transfers of wealth to his children.

“The theme I see here through all of this is valuations: They play around with valuations in extreme ways,” said Lee-Ford Tritt, a University of Florida law professor and a leading expert in gift and estate tax law. “There are dramatic fluctuations depending on their purpose.”

The manipulation of values to evade taxes was central to one of the most important financial events in Donald Trump’s life. In an episode never before revealed, Mr. Trump and his siblings gained ownership of most of their father’s empire on Nov. 22, 1997, a year and a half before Fred Trump’s death. Critical to the complex transaction was the value put on the real estate. The lower its value, the lower the gift taxes. The Trumps dodged hundreds of millions in gift taxes by submitting tax returns that grossly undervalued the properties, claiming they were worth just $41.4 million.

The same set of buildings would be sold off over the next decade for more than 16 times that amount.



The most overt fraud was All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992. All County’s ostensible purpose was to be the purchasing agent for Fred Trump’s buildings, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. It did no such thing, records and interviews show. Instead All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners-- Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.

Our three intrepid reporters, Russ, Susanne and David, also penned a less mind-boggling and complex 11 Takeaways From The Times’ Investigation Into Trump’s Wealth... a kind of Cliff's Notes version.

1- The Trumps’ tax maneuvers show a pattern of deception, tax experts say.

The line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is often murky, and there is no shortage of clever tax-avoidance tricks that have been blessed by either the courts or the Internal Revenue Service itself; the wealthiest Americans rarely pay anything close to full freight. The Trumps’ tax maneuvers met with little resistance from the I.R.S., The Times found.

But tax experts briefed on The Times’ findings said the Trumps appeared to have done more than exploit legal loopholes. They said the conduct described here represented a pattern of deception and obfuscation that repeatedly prevented the I.R.S. from taxing large transfers of wealth to Fred Trump’s children.




2- Donald Trump began reaping wealth from his father’s real estate empire as a toddler.

In Donald Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who broke free from his father’s “tiny” Brooklyn and Queens real estate operation and built a $10 billion empire that would slap the Trump name on hotels, high-rises, casinos and golf courses the world over.

But The Times’ investigation makes clear that in every era of Mr. Trump’s life, his finances were deeply entwined with, and dependent on, his father’s wealth. By age 3, he was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. In his 40s and 50s, he was receiving more than $5 million a year.

There was a clear pattern to this largess: When his son began expensive new projects, Fred Trump increased his help. In the late 1970s, when Donald Trump crossed the river into the glittering precincts of Manhattan-- converting the old Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Terminal into a Grand Hyatt-- his father opened a spigot of loans. When he made his first forays into Atlantic City casinos a few years later, his father devised a plan to sharply increase the flow of aid.

3- That ‘small loan’ of $1 million was actually at least $60.7 million-- much of it never repaid.

In Mr. Trump’s books and TV shows and on the campaign trail, a central trope of his self-mythology has been that, as he began building his own empire, the only financial help he got from his father was a $1 million loan. Not only that: “I had to pay him back with interest.”

In fact, The Times found, Fred Trump lent his son at least $60.7 million, or $140 million in today’s dollars. Much of it was never repaid, records show.

4- Fred Trump wove a safety net that rescued his son from one bad bet after another.

As the 1980s ended, Donald Trump’s big bets began to go bust-- Trump Shuttle, the Plaza Hotel, the Atlantic City casinos. But as he careened from one financial disaster to another, family partnerships and companies dramatically increased their payouts.

Between 1989 and 1992, four of the entities that Fred Trump created paid his son today’s equivalent of $8.3 million. And when Donald Trump pleaded with bankers for an emergency line of credit, he used as collateral the stake his father had given him in a group of apartment buildings.

Tax records also reveal that at the peak of Mr. Trump’s financial distress, in 1990, his father extracted an extraordinary sum-- nearly $50 million-- from his empire. While The Times could find no evidence that Fred Trump made any significant debt payments, charitable donations or personal expenditures, there are indications that he wanted plenty of cash on hand to bail out his son if need be.

That was what happened at Trump’s Castle casino, where an $18.4 million bond payment was due in December 1990. Fred Trump dispatched a trusted bookkeeper to Atlantic City with checks to buy $3.5 million in casino chips without placing a bet. With this ruse-- an illegal loan under New Jersey gaming laws, resulting in a $65,000 civil penalty-- Donald Trump narrowly avoided defaulting on his bonds.

5-The Trumps turned an $11 million loan debt into a legally questionable tax write-off.

By 1987, Donald Trump’s loan debt to his father had grown to at least $11 million. Had Fred Trump simply forgiven the debt, his son would have owed millions in income taxes. They found another solution-- one that appears to constitute both an unreported multimillion-dollar gift and an illegal tax write-off.

That December, records show, Fred Trump spent $15.5 million to buy a 7.5 percent stake in Trump Palace, his son’s condo tower rising on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Four years later, tax returns and financial statements show, Fred Trump sold that stake for just $10,000. The buyer, other documents indicate, was his son.

According to tax experts, with Trump Palace condos selling briskly, selling shares worth $15.5 million to your son for a mere sliver of that would constitute a multimillion-dollar gift under I.R.S. rules. But Fred Trump’s tax returns show no such gift to Donald Trump. What they do reveal is that he used the transaction to declare an enormous tax write-off. That appears to violate federal tax law that prohibits deducting any loss from the sale or exchange of property between family members.

In all, Fred Trump dodged roughly $8 million in gift taxes and $5 million in income taxes on the transaction.

6- Father and son set out to create the myth of a self-made billionaire.

All told, The Times documented 295 distinct streams of revenue Fred Trump created over five decades to channel wealth to his son.

But the partnership between Donald Trump and his father was about more than the pursuit, and the preservation, of riches. They were also confederates in a more ambitious project: creating the myth of Donald J. Trump, Self-Made Billionaire. If Fred Trump was the silent partner, helping finance the accouterments of wealth, it was Donald Trump who spun them into a seductive narrative.

Emblematic of this dynamic is Trump Tower, the talisman of privilege that established Donald Trump as a player in New York. Fred Trump’s money helped build it. His son recognized and exploited its iconic power as the primary stage for both “The Apprentice” and his presidential campaign.

7- Donald Trump tried to change his ailing father’s will, setting off a family reckoning.

In December 1990, Donald Trump sent his father a document that left him both angered and alarmed. It was a codicil seeking to make a variety of changes to Fred Trump’s will. Among them: strengthening provisions that made Donald Trump sole executor of his estate. But amid Mr. Trump’s financial shambles-- it was the month of the $3.5 million Trump’s Castle rescue-- Fred Trump feared that the document potentially put his life’s work at risk, that his son might use the empire as collateral to save his own failing businesses, according to depositions given years later during a family dispute.

Fred Trump rebuffed the maneuver, refusing to sign the codicil. But the episode prompted a family reckoning: Fred Trump was aging and ailing. Without speedy intervention, he could die leaving a vast estate-- not just his real estate empire, but also tens of millions of dollars in cash-- vulnerable to the 55 percent inheritance tax.

So with Donald Trump playing a central role, the family formulated a plan that included unorthodox tax strategies that experts told The Times were legally dubious and, in some cases, appeared to be fraudulent.

8- The Trumps created a company that siphoned cash from the empire.

The first major component was creating a company called All County Building Supply & Maintenance. On paper, All County was Fred Trump’s purchasing agent, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. But All County was, in fact, a company only on paper, records and interviews show-- a vehicle to siphon cash from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions in markups, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners-- Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin.

Lee-Ford Tritt, a leading expert in gift and estate tax law at the University in Florida, said the Trumps’ use of All County was “highly suspicious” and could constitute criminal tax fraud. “It certainly looks like a disguised gift,” he said.

All County also had an insidious downside for Fred Trump’s tenants. He used the padded invoices to justify higher rent increases in rent-regulated buildings, records show. Mr. Harder, the president’s lawyer, disputed The Times’ reporting: “Should The Times state or imply that President Trump participated in fraud, tax evasion or any other crime, it will be exposing itself to substantial liability and damages for defamation.”

9- The Trump parents dodged hundreds of millions in gift taxes by grossly undervaluing the assets they would pass on.

With the cash flowing out of Fred Trump’s empire, the Trumps began transferring ownership of the lion’s share of the empire itself to Donald Trump and his siblings. The vehicle they created to do that was a special kind of trust called a grantor-retained annuity trust, or GRAT.



The purpose of a GRAT is to pass wealth across generations without paying the 55 percent estate tax. The Trump parents did have to pay gift taxes based on one crucial number: the market value of Fred Trump’s empire. But The Times found evidence that they dodged hundreds of millions of dollars in gift taxes by submitting tax returns that grossly undervalued the assets placed in two GRATs, one for each parent.

Fred Trump’s 1995 gift tax return claimed that the 25 apartment complexes and other properties in the trusts were worth just $41.4 million. The implausibility of this claim would be made plain in 2004, when banks valued that same real estate at nearly $900 million.

“They play around with valuations in extreme ways,” said Mr. Tritt, the tax law expert, who was briefed on The Times’s findings. “There are dramatic fluctuations depending on their purpose.”

Mr. Harder, the president’s lawyer, said: “All estate matters were handled by licensed attorneys, licensed C.P.A.’s and licensed real estate appraisers who followed all laws and rules strictly.”

10- After Fred Trump’s death, his empire’s most valuable asset was an I.O.U. from Donald Trump.

When Fred Trump died in June 1999 at the age of 93, the vast bulk of his empire was nowhere to be found in his estate-- testament to the success of the tax strategies devised by the Trumps in the early 1990s. The single largest item included in his estate tax return was a $10.3 million I.O.U. from Donald Trump, money his son appears to have borrowed the year before he died. As for the remnants of empire left in Fred Trump’s estate, the tax return cited appraisals that once again grossly understated their market values.

As their father’s executors, Donald, Maryanne and Robert Trump were legally responsible for the accuracy of his estate tax return. They were obligated not only to give the I.R.S. a complete accounting of the value of his estate’s assets, but also to disclose all the taxable gifts he had made during his lifetime. If they knew anything was wrong and failed to reveal it, tax experts said, they could be in violation of tax law.

Mr. Harder, the president’s lawyer, defended the tax returns filed by the Trumps. “The returns and tax positions that The Times now attacks were examined in real time by the relevant taxing authorities,” he said. “These matters have now been closed for more than a decade.”

11- Donald Trump got a windfall when the empire was sold. But he may have left money on the table.

In 2003, once again in financial trouble, Donald Trump began engineering the sale of the empire Fred Trump had hoped would never leave the family. The sale, completed in 2004, brought him his biggest payday ever from his father: His cut was $177.3 million, or $236.2 million in today’s dollars. But as it turned out, banks at the time valued the empire at hundreds of millions more than the sale price. Donald Trump, master dealmaker, had sold low.

Is Trump doing the same kinds of shenanigans to funnel money to Fuck-Up, Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany and Barron? Or the grandchildren? Don't bet against it-- and don't bet that it won't be uncovered. At least wait to see next year when the Democrats are in charge of the House and they subpoena his tax returns. Hey... who knows, maybe he'll resign rather than show them.

Be Honest-- Would You Stay At A Trump-Branded Hotel? What If It Was Raining And You Had No Umbrella?

I travel a lot-- always have. When I was a kid I would crash wherever I could. I hitch-hiked out to San Francisco for what the media later dubbed "the Summer of Love" and wound up sleeping on a step on a staircase in an old Haight-Ashbury Victorian. Years later I spent several years living in a VW camper can as I drove from London to India. Still later I wound up as president of a large company and stayed in the major luxury class hotels like the Plaza Athénée in Paris, the Principe Di Savoia in Milan, the New Otani in Tokyo, the Prk Tower in Buenos Aires, Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton's everywhere... But never, under any circumstances, a Trump-branded hotel. Trump hotels-- like the one I wrote about in Baku last June when I visited Azerbaijan-- always have a reputation for being glitzy and third rate. These days, when I travel, I tend to rent apartments or houses and use them as a base to explore. The idea of walking into a Trump property-- even for a dinner-- has always been inconceivable, long before he decided to jump into politics. His properties are as phony and superficial as he is.

This week, Benjamin Freed, writing for the Washingtonian, was just the latest to laugh at all the tasteless Arabs rushing to hold their gawdy, ostentatious events at Trump's new hotel in DC. A match made in heaven. Freed's review is brutal-- and not in a good way. "Before the Trump International Hotel opened," wrote Freed, "Donald Trump liked to brag that the business he and his family built inside the Old Post Office would be 'one of the great hotels of the world.'" It's worth mentioning that part of the deal when you pay Trumpanzee to use his name to brand your hotel is that he will publicly state that when the hotel opens, no matter how much of a pile of crap it is, Trump will put out a press release calling it "one of the great hotels of the world." Every hotel he's ever been associated with gets that worthless accolade for their worthless promo packet, often backed up by the same worthless pronouncements from Ivanka and one of the sons (who Trump himself referred to on camera as "retards.") Freed continued: "But according to a year-end list of new luxury hotels from a travel group that specializes in high-end accommodations, it’s one of the world’s worst. The Trump hotel rated as the world’s third-lousiest new hotel, according to the membership-only United Kingdom operation LTI-Luxury Travel Intelligence. Maybe not quite as bad as Trump Grille in NY's Trump Towers, but still really gross.

“The building itself is undoubtedly impressive, but once inside we start to ask questions,” LTI’s review begins, acknowledging the Old Post Office as a marvel of late-19th-century Romanesque Revival architecture and design. But from there, the review is brutal.

“LTI finds the décor a little garish and more quantity over quality,” it continues. Few who have been inside the hotel might argue differently. In Trumpian fashion, the hotel is a pageant of too-muchness, from the gold-colored bathroom fixtures to a $29 bowl of hummus to the crystal spoonfuls of sickly-sweet Hungarian wine that go for as much as $140.

It goes on.

“Service is poor on occasions and lacks confidence,” LTI founder Michael Crompton writes. “The whole experience seems a little forced, and therefore this place is not for the true discerning luxury traveller.”

no comment

For supporters of the president-elect or his hotel, Crompton’s suggestion that his DC hotel is not truly luxurious might be the most cutting. Throughout his business career, Trump has resembled a spoiled outer-borough brat robing himself in glitz and luxury to get in the good graces of rich Manhattan swells, and his political rise could very well be a response to DC establishment types laughing him out of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

Only two hotels-- anywhere in the world-- fared worse in LTI’s rankings: a Four Seasons on Oahu, Hawaii, and the Palazzo Versace in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

While LTI’s review does not make explicit mention of Trump’s election or the brewing mess over the Trump Organization’s lease from the General Services Administration for the Old Post Office, it does acknowledge that it is unlikely to have much impact on the hotel. “But no doubt the tourist hordes will keep the place eternally busy,” Crompton writes.

UPDATE, 5:48 PM: In an email to Washingtonian, Crompton piles on to his publication’s initial criticism, writing that the Trump hotel’s gaudiness—and that of the larger Trump brand-- runs counter to recent hotel-industry trends. “For quite a while there has been a move towards an understated elegance in new luxury properties,” he writes. “We had similar feelings towards Trump Turnberry (one of Trump’s golf courses in Scotland).”

You think there's any chance at all his presidency will be any different? I don't.

As Well As A Kakistocracy, Is The U.S. Now Officially A Kleptocracy As Well? (And NY's Shadiest Address)

The whole notion of Trump and "ethics" just doesn't mix. In his word, ethical concerns are for suckers and ethical codes are part of the hated and derided political correctness he and his supporters so detest. On some level, though, the NY Times and "polite society" are sitll looking at him through a prism of normalcy. Over the weekend, there was a lot of discussion of Trump's obvious conflicts of interest. Eric Lipton took a stab at it in a report about how Trump took time out of vetting potential cabinet appointees to meet with some Indian business partners. Trumpanzee, he wrote "met in the last week in his office at Trump Tower with three Indian business partners who are building a Trump-branded luxury apartment complex south of Mumbai, raising new questions about how he will separate his business dealings from the work of the government once he is in the White House... One of the businessmen, Sagar Chordia, posted photographs on Facebook on Wednesday showing that he also met with Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump. Mr. Trump’s children are helping to run his businesses as they play a part in the presidential transition."

The three Indian executives-- Sagar Chordia, Atul Chordia, and Kalpesh Mehta-- have been quoted in Indian newspapers, including the Economic Times, as saying they have discussed expanding their partnership with the Trump Organization now that Mr. Trump is president-elect.

Sagar Chordia did not respond to a request for a telephone interview. But in a series of text messages with the New York Times early Sunday, he confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Trump and members of his family had taken place, and that an article written about it in the Indian newspaper, which reported that one of his partners said they had discussed the desire to expand the deals with the Trump family, was accurate.

Washington ethics lawyers said that a meeting with Indian real estate partners, regardless of what was discussed, raised conflict of interest questions for Mr. Trump, who could be perceived as using the presidency to advance his business interests.

“There may be people for whom this looks O.K.,” said Robert L. Walker, the former chief counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee, who advises corporations and members of Congress on government ethics issues. “But for a large part of the American public, it is not going to be O.K. His role as president-elect should dictate that someone else handles business matters.”

In an account of the meeting that appeared in the Economic Times, Mr. Trump was quoted as praising the United States’ relationship with India and its prime minister, Narendra Modi.

The Economic Times reported that the meeting occurred on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization would not confirm the day of the meeting.

Internationally, many properties that bear Mr. Trump’s name are the result of marketing deals-- like the one in India-- in which he is paid by someone for the use of his name but does not actually own the underlying property. He has such marketing agreements in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, the Philippines and Turkey, according to a list published by his company.

Atul Chordia and Sagar Chordia are well-known figures in real estate in Pune, a city of about three million people in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Their father, Ishwardas Chordia, was born into a family of sugar traders, but as a young man forged a close friendship with Sharad Pawar, who became an important politician in Maharashtra and now sits in the upper house of India’s Parliament.

Beginning in the 1990s, Chordia businesses built luxury hotels, corporate parks and residential projects in upscale neighborhoods in Pune.

The third executive at the meeting, Mr. Mehta, is the managing partner of a real-estate firm named Tribeca, which is also a part of the Trump projects in India, which go by names including Trump Towers Pune and Trump Towers Mumbai.

Dave Besseling, a former deputy editor at GQ India, hosted an event at Sagar Chordia’s hotel during the 2016 presidential campaign and said Mr. Chordia expressed “elation” about Mr. Trump’s candidacy and the opportunities it would bring.

The same week, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka-- an executive at the Trump Organization hotel chain-- attended a meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The move drew criticism from former State Department officials, given that Ms. Trump does not have security clearance and is helping run the family business enterprises.

Separately, the Washington Post reported on Saturday that the recently opened Trump International Hotel in Washington invited representatives from local embassies to the hotel after the election to encourage them to use it when leaders from their countries visited Washington.

Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a liberal government watchdog group in Washington, said the meeting at Trump Tower was inappropriate even if there had not been conversation about business. “Donald Trump’s children and son-in-law have been deeply involved in the transition and selecting who will be part of his administration,” Mr. Bookbinder said. “At the same time they are deeply involved in the business. There does not seem to be any sign of a meaningful separation of Trump government operations and his business operations.”

Ms. Butler, the spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said the family was moving to try to formally separate Mr. Trump from his family’s business ventures.

“Mr. Trump is not going to have dealings in the day-to-day business of that organization,” she said.

Another spokeswoman for the Trump Organization added in a written statement that “the structure that is ultimately selected will comply with all applicable rules and regulations.”

Asked if such a separation had already taken place in the aftermath of the election, she said she did not know.

And, by the way, the Philippine's new trade envoy to the U.S., Jose Antonio, is Trump's Manila business partner, whose company is currently building a 57-story Trump Tower there. DWT Warning: if a Mammadov shows up in DC from Azerbaijan, it's probably time to just send your bank account and youngest daughter to Trump and give up-- or join a guerrilla group.

As you may know, I travel a lot-- and mostly to relatively off-the-beaten path kinds of places. This past summer I was in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, and I reported about the gangster family Trump is in business there for the Trump Tower Baku that opened and closed in 3 days and that the Trump partners then tried to burn down for the insurance money. In September we looked at the shady Trump-Baku situation again-- here at DWT. Wherever I go, Trump has a reputation for being in business with powerful and dangerous gangsters. I don't know anything about Kalpesh Mehta and Atul and Sagar Chordia, but I wouldn't hesitate to wager that they have reputations as crooked operators back in India. Trump only deals with crooked operators.

Last summer, Bloomberg did a report about what kind of characters inhabit Trump's buildings here in New York. Short version: the Secret Service must be going insane. Since Trump "took over 40 Wall St. in 1995, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people connected to 12 alleged scams tied to the building. Nine other firms have faced serious regulatory claims. Authorities prevailed in most but not all of the cases. Many were brought against principals, executives and other employees, not the firms themselves. Some are still pending. In his 2008 book Trump Never Give Up Señor Trumpanzee wrote that tenants at 40 Wall St. are "many of the top-notch businesses in the world." That's typical hyped up Trump lie. But Aaron Burr had an office on the site-- when Trump's ancestors were still slopping pigs back in Germany. Maybe that's why he's so obsessed with Hamilton. Today, the garish building itself, which was once owned, surreptitiously, by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, still has a bad reputation and "offers a cheap way to grab a Wall Street address," rents being about $20 cheaper than the area’s average. It's been foreclosed on numerous times and once a U.S. Army plane crashed into it. Trump bought the rights to lease it for a million dollars a year at a garage sale. Here are some of the worst of Trump's crooked tenants:

• Viceroy Capital Funding

Viceroy, which arranges loans to small businesses, was accused in a lawsuit brought by a borrower of charging a 299 percent annualized interest rate. The case was settled out of court. Jonathan Braun, who runs the business according to a person with knowledge of the matter, is awaiting sentencing for running a marijuana-smuggling ring from his parents’ Staten Island house. His lawyer, John Meringolo, confirmed Braun works in cash advance but wouldn’t comment on Viceroy... 28th floor.

•DirectView Holdings

CEO Roger Ralston was sentenced to five months in a halfway house in 2001 for bribing government employees to buy video-conferencing equipment. His security-camera company, which wasn’t charged with wrongdoing, now aspires to penny-stock status: Shares trade for about four-hundredths of a cent. “I worked so hard to bring the company public and did most of it myself,” Ralston said... 62nd floor.

•Wolf Hedge

Mark Malik, 34, pretended to have died from a heart attack when investors tried to withdraw money from his fake hedge fund, according to the SEC. He’s currently serving 5-15 years for swindling investors out of more than $800,000. He didn’t respond to a letter sent to him at New York’s Mid-State Correctional Facility... 28th floor.

•EJS Capital Management

Brokers cold-called investors, pitching a currency-trading strategy, then spent almost all the money they sent in, according to a December civil court ruling. One of the operators, Alex Ekdeshman, 43, is serving a seven-year sentence after pleading guilty to another foreign-exchange fraud last year. He didn’t respond to a letter... 28th floor.

•Barclay Metals

The CFTC barred Sean Stropp from the commodities industry for five years in 2013 for this alleged precious-metals scam, which used a 40 Wall St. address. New York prosecutors also charged him that year with fraud. He was convicted and served almost two years in prison. Stropp didn’t respond to e-mails... 28th floor.

•Rosabianca & Associates

Real estate lawyer Luigi Rosabianca catered to foreign clients who sometimes paid with suitcases full of cash, he told New York magazine in 2014. “Real estate is a wonderful way to cleanse money,” he said. A year later, he was disbarred and charged with stealing $4.4 million from six clients. Rosabianca pleaded guilty to grand larceny and will be sentenced this month to four to 12 years, according to his lawyer, Robert Schalk... 30th floor.

•Spyker Consulting

Spyker principal Luis Ferreira was on supervised release from prison for a telemarketing scam when the firm leased space in the building around 2009. He was arrested in 2010 for violating his parole with the new scheme. He fled rather than return to jail, and is now on the FBI’s white-collar most-wanted list... 30th floor.

•Essex & York

The heads of this brokerage firm and six employees were accused in 2006 of running a $13 million pump-and-dump scheme. They allegedly cold-called investors and convinced them to invest in a temp agency, then sold their own shares when the stock rose. Seven pleaded guilty and one died before his case was resolved... 33rd floor.

•First Merger Capital

The heads of this defunct brokerage took a $350,000 payment from a Chinese kitchen-appliance company and pushed its stock to investors, according to regulators. One of the co-heads filed an appeal this year after the SEC sided with Finra against the two men. Their partner Ronen Zakai, 45, spent most of last year in prison after being convicted of stealing the $705,000 he raised to invest in the Facebook IPO. Zakai didn’t respond to a Facebook message... 34th floor.

•Evergreen International Spot Trading

The firm’s currency-trading scam came to light when customers asked about their money after the Sept. 11 attacks. Prosecutors called one of the four executives convicted of cheating investors “the Michael Jordan of investment fraud” and said another faked his suicide after wiring money to Azerbaijan... 37th floor.

•Direct Access Partners

This bond-trading firm went bust after a bribery scheme surfaced in 2013. Prosecutors said executives conspired to make payments to a Venezuelan state bank official. Former CEO Benito Chinea is serving a four-year prison sentence, and four other employees also pleaded guilty to criminal charges... 42nd floor.

•The David Firm

Earl David, a lawyer, was sentenced to prison in 2013 after using phony employment claims in what officials called one of the largest immigration frauds in U.S. history...60th floor.

•Stilas International Law

Matthew Bennett Greene was banned from practicing law in Virginia in 2009 after two clients claimed they paid for services he didn’t deliver. In 2013, Connecticut’s banking commissioner fined him for violating securities law related to investments in a B movie that promised investors 1,000 percent returns... 28th floor.

•Aegis Capital

The brokerage was fined $950,000 by Finra last year for helping a financier unload billions of unregistered shares of penny stocks... 46th floor.

•John Carris Investments

George Carris, who owned the firm, was expelled last year by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for selling shares of his brokerage without disclosing it was short of capital and for manipulating a penny stock. Regulators also alleged he spent company money on tattoos, liquor and motorcycles... 17th floor.

•Banc de Binary

This Cyprus-based firm operated an unlicensed binary-options brokerage in the U.S., soliciting investors with YouTube videos and spam e-mails to bet on whether stocks would rise or fall, according to the SEC, which sued in 2013. The firm and affiliates agreed to pay $11 million this year to settle regulators’ claims without admitting or denying the allegations... 28th floor.

•Your Trading Room

This currency-trading firm advertised that it taught secrets that “will change your life.” An Australian court ordered it liquidated in 2012 after a report that it was run by someone who had been banned by the country’s securities regulator... 28th floor.

•New York Global Group

Benjamin Wey helped Chinese companies raise tens of millions of dollars in the U.S. before he was arrested last year and accused of securities fraud. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called him a “master of manipulation.” Wey has pleaded not guilty. He said in a court filing last month that his business was legitimate and the case against him is based on an illegal FBI search of 40 Wall St...38th floor.

This is a perfect collection of the type of characters Trump is in business everyone he lands. This is his world-- and thanks to just over 100,000 voters (or votes) in Macomb County Michigan, Duval County, Florida, Union County, North Carolina, York County, Pennsylvania, Brown and Outagamie counties, Wisconsin and Montgomery County, Ohio, it's now all of our world's. Bloomberg:

A hedge-fund manager on the 28th floor who pretended to be dead when investors asked for their money reported to prison in January. A few weeks later, an investment adviser on the 17th floor was accused of running a Ponzi-like scheme. Thirteen floors up, a lawyer pleaded guilty this month to stealing millions of dollars from clients.

It was all happening at 40 Wall St., across from the New York Stock Exchange, behind golden capital letters proclaiming that this is THE TRUMP BUILDING.

“Iconic and wonderful,” Donald J. Trump said at a South Carolina town hall event last year, praising the 86-year-old Art Deco tower as one of his great possessions. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also told fans in Maine that critics who mock his failed companies should focus instead on the Manhattan skyscraper. “They don’t want to talk about 40 Wall Street,” he said.

But the 72-story building has housed frauds, thieves, boiler rooms and penny-stock schemers since Trump took it over in 1995 in what may be the best deal of his career. No single property in his portfolio is more valuable than 40 Wall St., according to a Bloomberg valuation of his assets last year. And no U.S. address has been home to more of the unregistered brokerages that investors complain about, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current public alert list.

...“They want that Wall Street address,” Donald Trump Jr., who’s in charge of leasing for the Trump Organization, which manages the building, told Commercial Property Executive in 2010. “We’re basically catty-corner from the stock market.”

Eleven new tenants were cited in that interview. Since then, the heads of four of them have been charged with fraud.

The billionaire’s son said in an e-mail that prices for 40 Wall St. beat the market for comparable downtown buildings, without specifying which ones he’s talking about. “40 Wall’s average annual rent continues to achieve a record of immense success with 97 percent occupancy, a vacancy rate virtually unheard of in downtown Manhattan,” he added. He and his father didn’t respond to other questions.