President Donald Trump committed "instances of outright fraud" with tax schemes that pumped up the fortune he received from his parents, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
According to the Times, which cited confidential tax returns and financial records, Trump received today's equivalent of $413 million from the real estate holdings of his father, Fred Trump, who died in 1999.
New York state tax officials are investigating the allegations in the Times report, according to CNBC.
"The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation," a spokesman from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance said in an email, the news outlet reported.
Trump has previously claimed he built his fortune after getting only a small loan from his father.
The Times reported Trump and his siblings in part "set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents."
The report noted tax experts say Trump would be unlikely to face criminal charges related to the conduct since much of it allegedly took place in the 1990s.
In a statement to the Times, Trump lawyer Charles Harder denied any allegations of fraud and tax evasion and said "the facts upon which the Times bases its allegations are extremely inaccurate."
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, backing up Trump's own claims about his wealth, said he took a $1 million loan from his father and paid it back.
The White House released a statement Tuesday night:
"Fred Trump has been gone for nearly twenty years and it’s sad to witness this misleading attack against the Trump family by the failing New York Times. Many decades ago the IRS reviewed and signed off on these transactions. The New York Times’ and other media outlets‘ credibility with the American people is at an all time low because they are consumed with attacking the president and his family 24/7 instead of reporting the news. The truth is the market is at an all-time high, unemployment is at a fifty year low, taxes for families and businesses have been cut, wages are up, farmers and workers are empowered from better trade deals, and America’s military is stronger than ever, yet the New York Times can rarely find anything positive about the President and his tremendous record of success to report. Perhaps another apology from the New York Times, like the one they had to issue after they got the 2016 election so embarrassingly wrong, is in order."
In one of the most eye-popping assertions, the Times reported by the time Trump was 3, he was "earning $200,000 a year in today's dollars from his father's empire."
"He was a millionaire by age 8," the Times team of reporters, David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, wrote. "By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s."
Tax experts told the Times its findings appear to represent "a pattern of deception and obfuscation, particularly about the value of Fred Trump's real estate, that repeatedly prevented the IRS from taxing large transfers of wealth to his children."
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