President Trump apparently needed more than a cash boost from his father to create his booming real estate business.
He and the Trump Organization also worked with "accused money launderers, alleged funders of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, and a felon who slashed someone in the face with a broken margarita glass" in recent decades to profit off real estate projects around the world using "deceptive practices," an investigation from ProPublica and WNYC revealed on Wednesday.
In the past, the Trump Organization has claimed it wasn't deeply involved with these sketchy characters. Putting the Trump name on a project with questionable partners was just for marketing purposes, and the Trump Organization wasn't actually developing these buildings, it explained. But the ProPublica probe seems to reveal otherwise — and also alleges the Trump family attracted investors and buyers with false sales and ownership figures.
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In one of a dozen examples, Trump told a Florida newspaper in 2005 he had a "substantial stake" in a tower being built in Tampa. "In reality, Trump had no ownership stake in the project," ProPublica writes. In another, Ivanka Trump told Portfolio she "sold over 90 percent" of a 1,000-unit building in Panama. Three months later, just 79 percent of the units were gone — and some of them were sold, for lower rates than she claimed, by a broker with ties to the Russian mafia. The project eventually went bankrupt and was stripped of its Trump name.
"These statements weren't just the legendary Trump hype; they misled potential buyers and investors about the viability of the developments," ProPublica and WNYC explain. And when the projects failed, as they often did, the Trumps reportedly still profited before distancing themselves from the failures.
The Trump Organization didn't respond to ProPublica/WNYC's request for comment, and the White House had no comment. Read more at ProPublica and WNYC.
