Trump's Flagship Property Exposed As A Massive Fraud - Ring of Fire

[TexasTowelie]

New York Attorney General Letitia James has exposed a lot about the Trump Organization's properties, but no property has suffered as much reputational damage as Trump's beloved Trump Tower in New York City. And now reporters at Forbes have dug even deeper into the evidence and revealed that the entire property - including the stated value and even the square footage - might be a complete fabrication. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

============

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

One of New York Attorney General Leticia James Big jobs right now with the investigation IMP pending lawsuit against Trump and his kids is proving that they've basically just been living a life of fraud by devaluing, undervaluing, overvaluing, all of their properties. And thanks to a report from Forbes, she doesn't have to work that hard to do it because Forbes has gotten ahold of some of the information that Leticia James has, has compared it with public records. And they've also determined, as they put it, that uh, Trump and his kids have basically been living a life of fraud. Specifically with regards to Trump Tower in New York City, Donald Trump's flagship property, according to the Forbes investigation, going all the way back to 19 83, 40 years ago when Trump bought the building. Ever since that day, Forbes has determined that he has been lying about the value of the building, which most recently he said was worth, uh, 881 million.

Forbes looked at the real numbers and found out that he's probably overvalued that by about $400 million. So the question of course, is how did he do it? Well, according to the Forbes investigation, he did it by simply lying about how much space is in the actual building. He would tell banks and lenders and, uh, you know, property appraisers, oh, this is actually this many square feet instead of this many. So he would lie to them saying that there was more space than there actually was. So really all you had to do was do the math. You could have looked at the dimensions of the outside of the building, which is publicly available information. Then done the math of the square footage that he says is on each floor and realized that, wait a minute, that would mean these rooms, these retail spaces, are actually somehow jutting outside of the building and for 40 years, not one bank, not one appraiser, not one tax official thought. Wait a minute, let me do this math real quick. It's not even like we're talking about that complicated of math, right? We're we're talking about area and perimeter kids, literally learn those kinds of things in like fifth and sixth grade. I know that my daughter's in sixth grade, I've been helping her with area and perimeter earlier this year, so that's not very difficult math to do. But for 40 years, nobody thought to do the math to

Realize that the ins inside was somehow bigger than the outside. That's what absolutely blows my mind. Now, I'm sure Leticia James and her office have done the math and the folks at Forbes, I don't know if they actually did the math, but they did find out the actual square footage of the building compared to the size reported by Trump and realized, wait a minute, these two numbers are not equal. You know, they did the little greater than less than equal to which we learned in elementary school. So basically we're talking about like sixth grade math, and below is all you needed to determine that Donald Trump and his kids were living life as complete and total frauds. But that's what happened. You lie about how much space is in the building. That way you get more money from the banks. Simple as that bank fraud. A hundred percent. If you ask me, but I'm not a prosecutor, I'm not gonna be sitting on that jury. So it's not for me to decide, but get somebody in there who can explain math, maybe even a sixth grade math teacher, and I think you're gonna be able to convince that jury that, yeah, Trump's been lying about this for 40 years.

[louis-t]

1. Buildings are measured on the outside for sq ft.

You could probably figure out how to calculate it from a satellite map.

[LymphocyteLover]

15. Really? It's not floor space?

[Hekate]

20. Interior "floor space" can be variable depending on thickness of walls (utilities pipes, etc), but

…what you absolutely cannot have is an interior floor space that is larger that the outside wall measurement, because that defies the laws of physics.

[ret5hd]

26. Dr Who begs to disagree!

[louis-t]

23. I've been in Real Estate 30 years.

That is how we measure buildings. It's how assessors measure buildings. It's how appraisers measure buildings.

[LymphocyteLover]

27. OK... so it's outside measurements for the floor area then multiplied times # floors?

[louis-t]

28. Correct.

By the way, bungalows or cape cod style consider the second floor a half story so you add half the first floor square footage.

[Justice matters.]

2. A crime syndicate since decades.

And that criminal family keeps on inciting threats on the lives of honest people...

[Warpy]

7. As l;ong as TFG paid the vig, the banksters were in on the fraud

It's like the people floating the fancy lifestyles on their credit cards, as long as they keep paying the minimum, the card just keeps upping the total they can borrow. The banksters didn't care how much debt he had outstanding or how big his lies were as long as his payments were on time. It's like that for a lot of billionaires out there, it's all hidden debt and if the loans ever get called, it's all over, we find out they were just a bunch of punks living on hot air, dummy corporations, and borrowed money.

[Justice matters.]

8. I get that, but 'nobody in charge' of law enforcement ever brought any charges of

bank frauds for decades, so since it's so easy... the Trump Crime Syndicate kept criming.

[Warpy]

11. Someone has to complain in order to bring in the law

He and his larcenous brood were happy, the banks were getting a positive cash flow, nobody complained. It's only the suckers whose money the bank loaned out who could get hurt, right? Who cares about them? Their checks weren't bouncing, so all was right with the world, even if the balance sheet looked funky if anyone cared to look closely, which they didn't.

[Justice matters.]

14. I get that too, but what about the 'alleged' tax frauds?

When there are no effective deterent to commit tax frauds, the criminals see it as green light to keep screwing the system, because it's so easy and nobody will be held accountable, except the fall guy in prison with a slap on the wrist.

[Warpy]

22. Why do you think the first thing that corrupt bastard McCarthy did was defund the IRS?

Democrats had increased their funding just to look into tax fraud committed by so called billionaires. McCarthy knew that would kill off all the golden eggs being laid on the GOP by these crooks to keep the scams going.

[republianmushroom]

3. He has been a fraud all his life.

[Blue Owl]

4. Flagshit property

Dump Tower is a gaudy trash heap that will forever be a pox upon NYC until it is demolished

[brush]

9. And it was built before ceiling fire extinguishers were required...

so it a fire breaks out on a high floor...quite a few people could perish.

Anyone who thinks of buying there needs to do due diligence, then walk the other way.

I'm sure neither trump's company or other RE agents disclose the lack exstinguishers to perspective buyers. The disclosure is buried in the reams of paper one signs off on when buying real estate.

[LymphocyteLover]

17. didn't that happen while Dump was in office? At least one man died because of that

[brush]

19. I remember something did happen but don't know the details.

[multigraincracker]

5. What was the sq ft used by

him for property tax?

[brush]

10. Much lower than it is of course, and higher for appraisals...

for bank loans on the property. Back and forth,, back and forth for his benefit. And he's been doing it for decades.

NY AG Tish James is the one who finally said, "Hey, wait a minute. Something's not adding up here."

[multigraincracker]

16. Does that math add up

to time in the county jail? Or just a few buys to pay a ticket?

[riversedge]

6. Trump tower is a fraud; Trump is a Fraud. simple as that.

[Permanut]

12. Sounds like TFG has discovered the secret of Dr. Who's police call box..

The Tardis.

which is infinitely large on the inside.

[Wounded Bear]

13. Anybody who is surprised has not been paying attention...

[Aussie105]

18. Meh! Numbers are fluid.

You just move them about a bit. And profit.

[NNadir]

21. I read the Forbes article. It was pretty damning. N/T.

[NCjack]

24. Measure them all, the long, the short, and the tall.

[LiberalFighter]

25. I'm surprised he didn't claim there were more than 58 stories.

[Stuart G]

29. K & R for exposure.

[Rhiannon12866]

30. "A complete fabrication??" Not TFG! LOL!