The Manhattan District Attorney in New York has obtained millions of pages of documents representing former President Donald Trump’s tax records and financial transactions over the past several years. The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. executed a subpoena on Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm after the Supreme Court ruled that the documents may be released to prosecutors in order to obtain the trove of documents.
The Supreme Court ruling shattered Trump’s efforts over the years to keep his tax and financial records private from investigators and members of the public. It must be noted that DA Vance had been fighting in the courts for almost two years to obtain the documents with a view to determining if Trump or the Trump Organization engaged in tax frauds under any guise.
Although the prosecutors have obtained the documents, they will not be released to the public since they protected by grand jury secrecy regulations. The trove of documents includes Trump’s tax reports from 2011 to 2019, papers related to preparation and review of tax returns, communications concerning engagement agreements, and other financial transactions.
The objective of the New York district attorney is to establish if the former president of the Trump Organization had been involved in tax fraud, insurance fraud, or any scheme to defraud. The prosecutors also want to determine if Trump or his business organization had provided untrue information to banks and other lenders as to the value of his assets and other interests in order to obtain loans, Politico reports.
The documents may encourage prosecutors to interview major witnesses and also determine if the former president and the Trump Organization had flouted the laws of any state in the process of conducting businesses. Prosecutors believe that the documents may reveal the decisions behind valuations of property and tax write-offs – a revelation that may reveal if the subjects had planned to commit financial crimes. The documents will be thoroughly reviewed before prosecutors decide whether to summon major witnesses before the grand jury, insiders revealed.
Key witnesses may include staffs of Deutsche Bank which gave Trump over $300 million in loans and Ladder Capital which loaned more than $100 million to the Trump Organization, as well as insurance broker Aon among other key witnesses. Key employees of the Trump Organization may also be subpoenaed to witness if the matter goes to the grand jury.
In 2020, the New York Times published some tax information which showed that Trump paid only $750 in 2017 as federal income tax while he paid nothing as income tax in 11 out of 18 years. The Manhattan district attorney’s office will likely look into all facts to determine if the former president or his organization had indeed been fraudulent in their finances.
Source: cnn.com