Finally, Donald Trump’s taxes have been released to the Legislative Branch and New York’s attorney general. Enshrouded within the previous president’s tax documents, the attorney general’s office found a remarkable tidbit, a silent foreign creditor. With only weeks left for the Dems to maintain control of the House, the ex-president, at long last, ran out of stalls to keep his tax records secret.
Attorney General of New York Letitia James received her copies of the documents. Buried within them was a $19.8 million owner of Trump’s debt. The creditor was line-itemed as “L/P Daewoo, according to The Forbes Magazine.” That referred to a wide-ranging organization in South Korea with questionable ties to North Korea. Daewoo traded Trump partial payment for “some of his licensing fees” for monies to build a skyscraper near the United Nations home office in New York City.
The former head of the Office of Government Ethics Don Fox said there was no way of knowing whether any POTUS had a loan unless the president in question disclosed it:
‘If someone does not disclose a loan, OGE has no way to know. The system is kind of predicated upon people actually following a law because they want to follow the law.’
Fox added:
‘The system is kind of predicated upon people actually following a law because they want to follow the law.’
Chair of the Oversight Committee Carolyn Maloney released a statement that read that the committee intended to continue plowing through the ex-president’s taxes looking for any “conflicts of interest:”
‘My committee is continuing to analyze information we are receiving from Mazars. We are committed to uncovering the full scope of former President Trump’s conflicts of interest so the American people can understand how these conflicts may have influenced key decisions by the Trump Administration—and whether reforms are needed to prevent these serious conflicts in the future.’
Trump paid off much of the Daewoo debt after he was president for a little over five months. Daewoo had strong links to North Korea. Between 2011 to 2016 inclusive the amount owed did not move off of the original $19.8 million amount. But within those five presidential months, the loan amount dropped down to $4.3 million. Shortly thereafter, Trump wiped out those remaining million dollars of debt:
‘Daewoo was bought out of its position on July 5, 2017.’
The Economic Times out of India wrote about Daewoo’s questionable ethics:
‘Four former executives of Daewoo Motors who were accused of fraud by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) in a 19-year-old case have been acquitted by a court in Delhi.’
The Trump loan of tens of millions of dollars was canceled out. Trump’s previous CFO (Chief Financial Officer) Allen Weisselberg spoke to The New York Times back in 2016 about the “personally guaranteed” debt:
‘[A]ll debt connected to companies in which Trump held a 100% stake on the documents. That was not true.’
So did Trump commit a crime or just make use of a convenient loophole? Certainly, the mutual transaction would have created concerns over “conflicts of interest:”
‘There’s little doubt that if the world had known about the debt while Trump was president, it would have sparked conflicts-of-interest concerns, perhaps heightened by Daewoo’s historical ties to North Korea. (In the mid-1990s, the firm was the only South Korean company permitted to operate a business inside the country.) Most people as rich as Trump would not be heavily influenced by a $20 million loan.’
Trump and Daewoo have been business friends since at least 1997. That was when the builder agreed to partner with the future president to build the black skyscraper, the Trump World Tower. Then Daewoo put Trump’s name on six South Korean buildings between 1999 and 2007.
Christie writes Gloria Christie Reports & Three White Lions Substack newsletters and a Three White Lions podcast available on Apple, Spotify, etc. She is a political journalist for the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery (in progress). Find her here on Facebook. Or at Three White Lions her book on Amazon Kindle Vella and the Gloria Christie Three White Lions podcast on Apple, Spotify, etc.
