The Numbers Don't Match

Trump, Inc.

WNYC Studios

Don, Trump, News, Business, Jared, Ivanka, Jr, Politics, Business News, Government, Eric

4.6 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is serving prison time for understating his income to the IRS, and for overstating his income to banks. Trump's former executive vice president and special counsel, Michael Cohen, is also serving prison time, for, among other things, making false statements to a bank. And Donald Trump? A lot of people want to see his taxes: At least two congressional committees. The Manhattan District Attorney. Trump doesn’t want ANYONE to see them. He’s gone to court three times to make sure they stay secret. The court fight is ongoing. Trump's tax documents remain walled off. Heather Vogell of ProPublica found some anyway. She compared them to financial documents Trump filed with his lender — and discovered that certain key numbers don't match. Heather spoke with over a dozen experts in accounting, law, and real estate. Not a single one of them could explain the discrepancies away.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let's go back. February 2019. Trump's former executive vice president and
0:05.4	special counsel Michael Cohen is testifying before Congress about some
0:09.4	business documents. Mr. Trump is a cheat. Documents that Trump prepared for a
0:14.7	bank when he wanted to get alone. As previously stated, I am giving to the
0:19.9	committee today three years of Mr. Trump's personal financial statements from
0:25.9	2011, 2012 and 2013. The documents claimed that over this period, Trump's
0:32.4	net worth soared from 4.6 billion to 8.6 billion. It was my experience that Mr.
0:41.3	Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes such as trying to
0:46.9	be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes and deflated his assets to
0:53.4	reduce his real estate taxes. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked
0:59.1	Cohen about this practice of sometimes overvaluing assets, sometimes
1:04.7	undervaluing them. To your knowledge was the president interested in reducing his
1:09.0	local real estate bills, tax bills? Yes. And how did he do that? What you do is you
1:14.8	deflate the value of the asset and then you put in a request to the tax
1:19.8	department for a deduction. Deflate, inflate. It's the Trump way. We have documents
1:29.8	showing that from the Trump organization's own tax filings. It might even have
1:37.6	broken the law.
1:49.8	Hello and welcome to Trump Inc. A podcast from WNYC and ProPublica, an open
2:03.5	investigation into the business of Trump. I'm Andrea Bernstein. Our story today is
2:11.0	about two buildings. The first, the Trump International Hotel in Tower on the
2:16.3	southwest corner of Central Park. The opening sequence to the apprentice
2:20.6	flashes to a picture of this building. My name is Donald Trump and I'm the
	...

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