An explosive new report details “stark differences” in how Donald Trump reported his business assets to lenders and New York City tax officials.
Experts say the discrepancies suggest a pattern in which the president made his businesses appear more profitable to lenders who gave him money for his ventures, and less profitable to the tax officials responsible for reviewing his finances.
He also reportedly inflated occupancy rates at his Manhattan building in documents to lenders, which experts said made his real estate property appear more profitable than it actually was.
The documents were obtained by ProPublica and first reported on Wednesday morning.
The documents Mr Trump provided to his lenders compared to those he gave the tax department in his home state appeared to show “two sets of books”, according to financing expert and New York University real estate professor Kevin Riordan, who reviewed the documents.
“It really feels like there’s two sets of books — it feels like a set of books for the tax guy and a set for the lender,” he told the outlet.
He added: “It’s hard to argue numbers. That’s black and white.”
For example, whereas Mr Trump reported he took out insurance for his New York property that totalled $744,521 (£579,822) in a report to tax officials, he told lenders the insurance only cost him $457,414 (£356,227) in records that same year, according to ProPublica’s reporting.
Nancy Wallace, a University of California-Berkeley finance and real estate professor at the Haas School of Business, described the reported discrepancies as “versions of fraud”.
“This kind of stuff is not OK,” she told ProPublica.
The report arrives as the House moves closer to receiving the president’s tax documents from Mazars USA, the longtime accountant of Mr Trump which has withheld his returns while awaiting court proceedings.
Mr Trump lost his appeal in a 2-1 ruling at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last week.
The ruling says Mazars USA must comply with a subpoena from the House requesting more than eight years of Mr Trump’s financial records.
