A searing report claims Donald Trump’s dad allegedly funneled up to a billion dollars to his son and dodged paying taxes on it. Here’s 5 things to know about Fred Trump.
Donald Trump has always bragged that he built his real estate empire off of a mere $1 million loan from his dad Fred, saying “I got peanuts” from his mega-rich pop. An Oct. 2. expose by the New York Times has blown apart that claim as three investigative reporters got their hands on what co-writer Susanne Craig described as “a massive trove of confidential docs – including 200 tax returns – from Fred Trump’s empire. We found Donald Trump received hundreds of millions from his dad, some of it via fraudulent tax schemes.” At one point according to documents obtained by the Times, he got a whopping gift equivalent to $413 million in today’s money from his dad and at least another $61M in loans, all while allegedly evading the I.R.S. That’s far from the $1 million in “peanuts” the president has always maintained. We’ve got five things to know about Fred Trump.
1. Fred Trump started out as a carpenter building houses on Long Island.
He built 20 homes by the time he was 21 but did it under the company name E. Trump & Son’s, as his mom Elizabeth managed the business because he was underaged. He then took back over the company at age 21 and went on to build what became the first supermarkets in the U.S. During WWII he built barracks and garden apartments for the U.S. Navy then went on to build middle-income housing for veterans as they returned after the war ended according to thefamouspeople.com.
2. Fred Trump Was investigated by the U.S. Senate for war profiteering
In 1954 he was investigated by a Senate committee for wildly overcharging the government on his public contracts. In a 2,700 apartment building near Coney Island called Beach Haven, he allegedly overcharged the government by a whopping $3.7 million.
3. In 1927 Fred Trump was arrested after a Klu Klux Klan rally in Queens, NY.
He and six other men were taken into custody for failure to disperse but were released without charges. In a 2012 profile in Vice, it was noted that “All seven men arrested were declared to be wearing Klan attire.” In 2015 when asked about the incident by the New York Times, Donald Trump said his dad was never arrested nor a member of the KKK. Of course Donald has proven while president to have a bad habit of not being truthful.
4. Fred Trump, along with sons Donald and Robert, were accused of being racist landlords.
In October 1973, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division filed a civil rights suit against the Trump Organization for violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968. They were accused of routinely turning away black and other minority tenant applicants in favor of whites. The Trumps counter sued to DOJ for $100 million for falsely accusing them of discrimination. During the investigation a rental agent at Trumps’ Tysens Park Apartments claimed Fred Trump had told him “not to rent to blacks” and to “decrease the number of black tenants already residing at Tysens Park by encouraging black tenants to locate housing elsewhere.”
5. Fred Trump allegedly funneled up to a billion dollars to son Donald and dodged paying taxes on it.
According to the NYT expose, Trump’s parents transferred “over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.” Instead Trumps parents only paid $52.2 million, or about 5%. What a dodge!
Donald Trump declined repeated requests from the paper for comment on their article. His lawyer Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement on Oct. 1., one day ahead of the article’s publication. “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” Mr. Harder said. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”
There might be consequences. After the article dropped, the NY State Taxation authority issued the following statement: “The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation.”
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