Financial Fraud and Manipulation
Securities violations, tax fraud, bank fraud, and financial manipulation.
23 entries
Tier 5, Interpretive and Normative AssessmentThe 2025 Tariff Regime: Economists Called It the Largest Tax Increase in Decades as Markets Crashed and Consumer Costs Surged2025
Beginning in his second term in January 2025, President Donald Trump imposed a series of tariffs on imported goods that economists across the political spectrum described as the largest effective tax increase on American consumers in decades. The tariff actions escalated rapidly and culminated in what the administration called…
Tier 2, Formally Charged or InvestigatedTrump Media and Truth Social: SEC Fraud Charges Against SPAC, Insider Trading Convictions, and the Digital World Acquisition Corp Merger2021–2026
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), the parent company of the social media platform Truth Social, went public through a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The merger and surrounding transactions generated SEC fraud charges against the SPAC, criminal insider trading…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismThe $2 Billion Kushner-Saudi Investment: Saudi Arabia Funded Jared Kushner's Firm After He Shaped Favorable Middle East Policy2021–2024
Six months after leaving his role as a senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, launched a private equity firm called Affinity Partners and secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) despite the fund's own advisory panel recommending against the investment on multiple…
Tier 3, Documented Through Primary EvidenceThe Trump Tower Meeting: Campaign Officials Met with a Russian Lawyer Promising Dirt on Clinton, Then Trump Dictated a Misleading Cover Story2016–2019
On June 9, 2016, three senior members of Donald Trump's presidential campaign met at Trump Tower in New York City with a Russian lawyer and several associates after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. The meeting attendees included Donald Trump Jr., Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and…
Tier 1, Adjudicated and Legally ResolvedTrump's Tax Return Battle: Years of Legal Obstruction Followed by Revelations of Minimal Tax Payments and Failed IRS Audits2015–2022
Donald Trump broke a decades-long bipartisan precedent by refusing to release his tax returns during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, then fought a multi-year legal battle to prevent Congress from obtaining them. The fight reached the Supreme Court twice and ended with the public release of six years of Trump's federal tax…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismThe Trump Tower Baku Project: A Hotel Deal Linked to an Azerbaijani Oligarch Family with Ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps2012–2017
In May 2012, the Trump Organization entered into a licensing and management agreement for a luxury hotel and residential tower in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The project, branded as Trump International Hotel and Tower Baku, was formally announced in November 2014. The Trump Organization's partner in the deal was a company controlled…
Tier 1, Adjudicated and Legally ResolvedNew York Civil Fraud: Judicial Finding of Years of Financial Fraud Through Systematic Asset Inflation2011–2025
On February 16, 2024, Justice Arthur Engoron of the New York Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump, his adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric, former CFO Allen Weisselberg, and multiple Trump Organization entities engaged in persistent fraud. They systematically inflated the value of Trump's assets on financial statements provided to banks,…
Tier 1, Adjudicated and Legally ResolvedTwo Sets of Books: The Trump Organization's Practice of Maintaining Inflated Financial Statements for Lenders and Deflated Valuations for Tax Authorities2011–2024
A central finding of New York Attorney General Letitia James's civil fraud case against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and several individual defendants was that the Trump Organization maintained financial statements that systematically inflated the value of its assets when seeking loans and insurance, while presenting lower…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismTrump Organization India Projects: Licensing Deals with Politically Connected Developers and Blurred Lines Between Diplomacy and Business2011–2018
The Trump Organization maintained more business entities in India than in any other foreign country. Between 2014 and 2016, the organization received an estimated $1.6 million to $11 million in licensing royalties from Indian projects. Trump's May 2016 financial disclosure reported up to $6 million in royalties from Indian deals in the…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismTrump Tower Manila and Trump Tower Punta del Este: Licensing Deals with a Philippine Trade Envoy and a Financially Troubled Uruguayan Project2011–2022
The Trump Organization entered licensing agreements for branded towers in both the Philippines and Uruguay, creating business relationships with politically connected partners in countries where U.S. foreign policy was active during Trump's presidency.
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismThe Trump Network: A Multi-Level Marketing Vitamin Scheme Built on Pseudoscience and Celebrity Endorsement2009–2012
In 2009, Donald Trump lent his name, image, and promotional endorsement to a multi-level marketing company called the Trump Network, which sold nutritional supplements, including a customized vitamin program determined by a urine test. The company was originally founded in 1997 as Ideal Health and had accumulated numerous complaints with…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismTrump Ocean Club Panama: Misrepresented Sales, Criminal Buyers, and a Violent Management Dispute2006–2018
The Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City, a 70-story luxury development that opened in 2011, was the subject of multiple fraud allegations involving misrepresented sales figures, connections to money laundering, and a violent dispute over management that culminated in the physical removal of Trump Organization…
Tier 1, Adjudicated and Legally ResolvedTrump Organization Criminal Tax Fraud: Fifteen-Year Scheme of Unreported Executive Compensation2005–2023
On July 1, 2021, the Manhattan District Attorney's office indicted Allen Weisselberg, the longtime Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization, along with two Trump Organization corporate entities, on charges of criminal tax fraud, grand larceny, and falsifying business records. The indictment described a fifteen-year scheme in…
Tier 1, Adjudicated and Legally ResolvedTrump University Instructor Qualifications Fraud: Scripted Deception, Fabricated Credentials, and the 'Hand-Picked' Marketing Claim2005–2016
Trump University, the for-profit real estate seminar program that operated from 2005 to 2010, marketed its instructors as experts "hand-picked" by Donald Trump who would share his personal real estate strategies. Internal documents, deposition testimony, and court filings revealed that this central marketing claim was false and that the…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismThe Bayrock Group and Felix Sater: Trump's Business Partnership with a Convicted Felon He Claimed Not to Know2002–2019
Between approximately 2002 and 2011, the Trump Organization maintained an extensive business relationship with the Bayrock Group, a real estate development company headquartered in Trump Tower. Bayrock's managing director, Felix Sater, was a convicted felon with ties to Russian organized crime who had previously pleaded guilty to a…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismTax Avoidance Patterns: Paying $750 in Federal Income Tax, Reporting Chronic Losses, and Claiming a Disputed $72.9 Million Refund2000–2020
A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by The New York Times, published on September 27, 2020, revealed that Donald Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in both 2016, the year he won the presidency, and 2017, his first year in office. The investigation, based on a review of more than two decades of Trump's tax information, documented…
Tier 1, Adjudicated and Legally ResolvedTrump Taj Mahal: $10 Million FinCEN Penalty for Willful Anti-Money Laundering Violations1998–2015
On January 27, 2015, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, imposed a $10 million civil money penalty against Trump Taj Mahal Associates LLC for willful and repeated violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. At the time, it was the largest BSA penalty ever imposed on a casino.
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismUndisclosed Debt and Deutsche Bank Entanglements: $421 Million in Personal Loans During the Presidency1998–2021
In September and October 2020, the New York Times published a series of investigative reports based on more than two decades of Trump's federal tax return data. The investigation revealed that Trump was personally responsible for $421 million in loans and debts, with much of the total coming due within four years, meaning it would need…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismDeutsche Bank Lending Relationship: Over $2 Billion in Loans from a Bank Facing Russian Money Laundering Sanctions1998–2021
Deutsche Bank extended over $2 billion in loans to Donald Trump and the Trump Organization across a roughly two-decade period, continuing to lend to him when no other major Western bank would. The relationship persisted even as the bank faced massive regulatory penalties for facilitating Russian money laundering and as internal…
Tier 1, Adjudicated and Legally ResolvedCasino Bankruptcies: Six Chapter 11 Filings, $82 Million in Personal Compensation While Investors Lost Billions1991–2014
Between 1991 and 2014, entities controlled or chaired by Donald Trump filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times across four distinct reorganization cycles. In every case the filing entities were corporations. In every case the pattern was the same: heavy debt loads financed through high-yield junk bonds, failure to service…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismFailed Trump-Branded Ventures: A Pattern of Misleading Marketing Across Vodka, Steaks, Airlines, Mortgage, Magazine, and Other Licensed Products1989–2016
Over a period spanning nearly three decades, Donald Trump lent his name to a series of consumer products and business ventures that were marketed with extravagant claims of quality and luxury, only to fail within months or a few years. The ventures shared a common pattern: Trump's personal brand was used to sell products or services with…
Tier 3, Documented Through Primary EvidenceTrump Casino Junk Bonds: Billions Lost by Investors While Trump Collected Millions in Personal Compensation1988–2014
Between 1988 and 1991, Donald Trump financed his Atlantic City casino empire through the sale of high-yield junk bonds that promised investors extraordinary returns while exposing them to catastrophic risk. The Trump Taj Mahal, which opened in April 1990 as the largest casino in the world, was financed primarily through $675 million in…
Tier 4, Credibly Reported Through Investigative JournalismTrump Family Tax Schemes: $413 Million in Fraudulent Transfers from Fred Trump's Empire1968–2018
On October 2, 2018, the New York Times published a 14,000-word investigation by reporters David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner documenting the mechanisms through which Fred Trump transferred wealth to his children, including Donald Trump, through schemes that the reporters characterized as involving "dubious tax schemes" and…