NY Tax Officials Reviewing Trump Fraud Claims In NYT Report

NEW YORK — New York tax officials are looking into new allegations that President Donald Trump and his family committed financial fraud.

The New York Times published a bombshell investigation Tuesday outlining how Trump increased his own fortune by helping his parents evade taxes in transferring a huge sum of wealth to him. The story says the president "participated in dubious tax schemes ... including instances of outright fraud."

The report has drawn interest from the state Department of Taxation and Finance, which is already reportedly investigating the president's charity, the Trump Foundation.

"The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation," department spokesman James Gazzale said in an email.

The Times report is based on thousands of pages of documents as well as interviews with former associates of the president's father, Fred Trump. It says Donald Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions and, with his siblings, set up a "sham corporation" to conceal huge monetary gifts from his parents.

In all, the president received at least $413 million in today's dollars from Fred Trump's real estate business, "starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day," the Times reported.

A lawyer for the president, Charles J. Harder, downplayed Trump's involvement in his family's tax strategies in a statement to the Times, calling the paper's allegations of fraud "100 percent false, and highly defamatory."

The Tax Department subpoenaed Michael Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Trump who has pleaded guilty to federal crimes, in August amid its Trump Fondation probe. State Attorney General Barbara Underwood has separately sought to dissolve the foundation in a June lawsuit accusing it of "persistent" illegal activity.

Read the full New York Times story here.

(Lead image: President Donald Trump is seen in Washington, D.C. after returning from the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 27, 2018. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)