Domain 03
Financial Fraud and Manipulation
Securities violations, tax fraud, bank fraud, and financial manipulation.
23 entries
The 2025 Tariff Regime: Economists Called It the Largest Tax Increase in Decades as Markets Crashed and Consumer Costs Surged
2025 - 2025
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 ...
Trump Media and Truth Social: SEC Fraud Charges Against SPAC, Insider Trading Convictions, and the Digital World Acquisition Corp Merger
2021 - 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...
The $2 Billion Kushner-Saudi Investment: Saudi Arabia Funded Jared Kushner's Firm After He Shaped Favorable Middle East Policy
2021 - 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...
The Trump Tower Meeting: Campaign Officials Met with a Russian Lawyer Promising Dirt on Clinton, Then Trump Dictated a Misleading Cover Story
2016 - 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...
Trump's Tax Return Battle: Years of Legal Obstruction Followed by Revelations of Minimal Tax Payments and Failed IRS Audits
2015 - 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...
The Trump Tower Baku Project: A Hotel Deal Linked to an Azerbaijani Oligarch Family with Ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps
2012 - 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 Interna...
New York Civil Fraud: Judicial Finding of Years of Financial Fraud Through Systematic Asset Inflation
2011 - 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 en...
Two Sets of Books: The Trump Organization's Practice of Maintaining Inflated Financial Statements for Lenders and Deflated Valuations for Tax Authorities
2011 - 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 maintain...
Trump Organization India Projects: Licensing Deals with Politically Connected Developers and Blurred Lines Between Diplomacy and Business
2011 - 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 licens...
Trump Tower Manila and Trump Tower Punta del Este: Licensing Deals with a Philippine Trade Envoy and a Financially Troubled Uruguayan Project
2011 - 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. ...
The Trump Network: A Multi-Level Marketing Vitamin Scheme Built on Pseudoscience and Celebrity Endorsement
2009 - 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 ...
Trump Ocean Club Panama: Misrepresented Sales, Criminal Buyers, and a Violent Management Dispute
2006 - 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 figur...
Trump Organization Criminal Tax Fraud: Fifteen-Year Scheme of Unreported Executive Compensation
2005 - 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 entiti...
Trump University Instructor Qualifications Fraud: Scripted Deception, Fabricated Credentials, and the 'Hand-Picked' Marketing Claim
2005 - 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...
The Bayrock Group and Felix Sater: Trump's Business Partnership with a Convicted Felon He Claimed Not to Know
2002 - 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. Bayroc...
Tax Avoidance Patterns: Paying $750 in Federal Income Tax, Reporting Chronic Losses, and Claiming a Disputed $72.9 Million Refund
2000 - 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...
Trump Taj Mahal: $10 Million FinCEN Penalty for Willful Anti-Money Laundering Violations
1998 - 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 LL...
Undisclosed Debt and Deutsche Bank Entanglements: $421 Million in Personal Loans During the Presidency
1998 - 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 w...
Deutsche Bank Lending Relationship: Over $2 Billion in Loans from a Bank Facing Russian Money Laundering Sanctions
1998 - 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 rel...
Casino Bankruptcies: Six Chapter 11 Filings, $82 Million in Personal Compensation While Investors Lost Billions
1991 - 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...
Failed Trump-Branded Ventures: A Pattern of Misleading Marketing Across Vodka, Steaks, Airlines, Mortgage, Magazine, and Other Licensed Products
1989 - 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...
Trump Casino Junk Bonds: Billions Lost by Investors While Trump Collected Millions in Personal Compensation
1988 - 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...
Trump Family Tax Schemes: $413 Million in Fraudulent Transfers from Fred Trump's Empire
1968 - 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 transferre...