With new questions about a purported loan connected to a Trump property in Chicago, legal experts told the news outlet The Messenger there’s seemingly an opening for a criminal investigation.
The potential probe would add to the substantial civil case already faced by Trump over claims from New York state Attorney General Letitia James of a sweeping, years-long pattern of fraud hinging on misrepresenting the value of a range of assets. (The judge’s decision following trial was imminent this week.) The new questions on that claimed loan connect to James’ case, as former judge Barbara Jones — named as an independent monitor with oversight powers covering Trump business operations — claimed she understood the loan to not actually exist at all.
In “recent discussions with the Trump Organization, it indicated that it has determined that this loan never existed,” the monitor wrote. The Trump team disputes this.
Compounding concerns implicate other transactions, since the purported loan involved Trump and a company evidently within his portfolio, meaning the idea became that he owed one of his own companies money. But separately, there were loan arrangements involving another party in which a portion of the debt was cancelled — and a worry/suspicion is that the cancelled portion was misrepresented as having been purchased by the Trump entity, allowing the now former president to evade subsequent tax obligations if the tens of millions in debt was cancelled without subsequent action. The cancellation would have on its own simply established the sum as income.
The Messenger’s report included remarks from Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and ex-federal prosecutors Mitchell Epner and Renato Mariotti. All three were reportedly suspicious. Citing excuses from the Trump team, Epner said: “It looks like there needs to be an explanation as to why it is not tax evasion and this letter does not provide that explanation.”
Trump, meanwhile, is keeping up his antagonism of figures involved in or connected to legal proceedings against him. A Trump lawyer accused Jones, the monitor, of “deliberate mischaracterization” for claiming the Trump team had indicated the loan did not exist.
