Eric Trump Is Trying to Stonewall a Fraud Investigation Into His Company Until After the Election

“We won’t allow any entity or individual to dictate how our investigation will proceed,” says New York’s attorney general.

Eric Trump, the son of President Donald Trump, speaks at a campaign rally for his father, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2020, in Saco, Maine. AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Eric Trump says he will now cooperate with an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James into whether the Trump Organization committed tax and banking fraud—but only after the election.

Last month, James filed a motion to compel Eric Trump and the Trump Organization to abide by subpoenas her office has issued for details of the company’s financial history. Specifically, she is trying to determine whether the president and his company misrepresented the Trump Organization’s finances to get better loans and tax benefits.

The investigation also focuses on whether Donald Trump paid taxes on more than $100 million in forgiven debt. Trump borrowed $120 million from private-equity fund Fortress Investment Group in 2006. In 2012, when the outstanding amount he owed had ballooned to roughly $150 million, he convinced Fortress to settle for $48 million. The rest of the debt was forgiven. Around that time, Trump said at least once publicly that he had purchased a loan from a lender. (When a loan is forgiven, the borrower owes a hefty tax bill, but if he or she buys it, the borrower can defer that tax liability at least temporarily.) Since he ran for president, Trump has listed a mysterious debt on his personal financial disclosure that he claims to owe to himself; it is worth $50 million or more and linked to the Chicago project. Trump has implied this debt was purchased from a lender. Mother Jones reported last year that this loan may be evidence of tax fraud if Trump in fact settled the debt and did not purchase it.

As part of her investigation, James confirmed that Trump did not buy the Fortress loan, and she asked the Trumps to provide documentation showing they paid the taxes on the forgiven portion of the debt. According to last month’s filing by her office, James also is scrutinizing whether Trump overstated the value of his properties to convince banks he was a better credit risk and whether Trump misreported a conservation easement on a large property he owns north of New York City.

James said in her filing that the Trump Organization readily supplied most of the information her office requested and that Eric Trump—who has largely been running the company while his father serves as president—was scheduled to sit for an interview under oath on July 22. However, according to James, Eric Trump abruptly cancelled the interview. When James’ office tried to reschedule, Trump’s attorneys told investigators “we cannot allow the interview to go forward…pursuant to those rights afforded to every individual under the Constitution.”

In a filing made on Thursday afternoon, however, the Trump Organization backtracked, saying Eric Trump would sit for an interview—just not any time soon. The Trump Organization’s attorneys said they didn’t allow the interview to go forward previously because they wanted to make sure James’ office didn’t provide the results of its investigation to other agencies that might be investigating Trump—possibly an allusion to New York City district attorney Cy Vance who is reportedly pursuing his own fraud investigation into Trump.

Although they didn’t get that assurance, the Trump attorneys wrote, they are now happy to make Eric Trump available, but not before November 19, “because of Mr. Trump’s extreme travel schedule and related unavailability between now and the election, and to avoid the use of his deposition attendance for political purposes.”

They added, “It is well known that most, if not all, law enforcement and regulatory agencies studiously avoid certain actions within the 60-day period prior to a major election.”

In a statement provided to Mother Jones, James said it wasn’t up to the Trump Organization to tell investigators when its executives are free to talk. “While we cannot comment on the particular steps we’re taking on specific litigation, we won’t allow any entity or individual to dictate how our investigation will proceed or allow anyone to evade a lawful subpoena. No one is above the law, period,” she said.

In its filing, the Trump Organization claims it has provided investigators with everything they requested regarding the Chicago loan—which the company’s motion confirms was paid off at a substantial discount—but most of the section on the deal was filed under seal and is redacted from the public version. 

The case is due in court on September 23 for an initial hearing. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate