Millions Of Trump Financial Records Turned Over In Criminal Investigation

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After a recent U.S. Supreme Court order in their favor, Manhattan prosecutors in the office of District Attorney Cy Vance have officially obtained millions of pages of ex-President Donald Trump’s financial records, including his tax returns. Trump fought to block a subpoena from Vance’s office for Mazars USA, his longtime accounting firm, and the case came before the Supreme Court twice, but Trump failed both times. Vance was after the documents as part of a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the Trump Organization involving potential tax and insurance fraud, among other issues.

Trump once promised to eventually publicly release his tax returns, but he never followed through on this pledge. He was the first major party presidential nominee in decades who refused to release his tax returns, which provide a potentially critical window for assessing potential financial conflicts of interests and other possible issues on the part of a would be commander-in-chief. In Trump’s case, he never even financially disconnected himself from his global business while in office as president, meaning that when political interests hoped to gain favor with the then-president, they could patronize one of his businesses and literally financially support him.

At Trump’s D.C. hotel, CNN recently observed “mostly lifeless” surroundings by about 7 P.M. on a Friday evening. In February, a hotel staffer told the outlet that the hotel wasn’t “doing so bad” until “about a month ago” — which, of course, roughly corresponds with Trump’s exit from office, suggesting that once Trump left the White House, business at his nearby hotel plummeted. The change underscores the depth of politically oriented spending that once unfolded at the hotel and provided an avenue to financially support the then-president. On the Saturday morning following that recent CNN observation, the outlet says that a man walked into the mostly empty hotel lounge and asked, “Where is everyone?”

In Manhattan, Vance’s team has been investigating issues like the possibility that the Trump Organization fraudulently adjusted its valuations of its assets in order to secure financial benefits like tax breaks. In one example, the business claimed an abnormally highly valued conservation easement on a property in Westchester County, which provided them a tax benefit. The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James is also investigating that particular issue, although her investigation is a civil probe.