A recent letter to the court from Trump business monitor Barbara Jones reveals an initial failure by the Trump team to provide this former federal judge with the tax records for a remarkable six different business entities that were meant to be under her supervision. While she did not point to any evidently intentional malfeasance in the initial failures, it’s a remarkably wide-reaching gap in the Trump Organization’s reporting compliance.
The context for all of these developments is the fraud lawsuit from New York state Attorney General Letitia James accusing Donald Trump, multiple family members of his, and others of a years-long pattern of fraud hinging on misrepresentations regarding the value of various assets. An expert witness who previously testified for the state as this case moves through trial pinned some Trump family’s savings because of what were alleged to be improperly low loan terms at $168 million over some years.
Amid her concurrent monitoring of the Trump Organization’s ongoing business practices, Jones previously pointed to evident omissions in critical business filings, though she now indicates that problem has been rectified. As for the tax documents problem, Jones explained: “During this reporting period, relevant tax returns for six Trust entities were not promptly disclosed to the Monitor pursuant to the terms of the Materiality Threshold. Upon my request, Defendants provided the tax returns and acknowledged that their exclusion was an oversight.” She appears to be saying these circumstances unfolded in the time since an August report.
The same document says elsewhere that several large transactions involving bank accounts under her purview were not properly reported as required, a list including $29 million in transfers made to cover tax obligations incurred by Trump. The basic terms of her oversight involved her receiving details on all transactions sending more than $5 million out of covered Trump trust accounts. It’s unclear there’s any clear indication there’d be a legitimate basis for the Trump team to have actively thought these were excluded.
