Trump appears to have pocketed $123,000 from Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi: NYT bombshell
“The information contained within President Donald Trump’s tax returns continues to result in blockbuster stories by The New York Times.”
On Friday, the newspaper focused on Trump’s claims of philanthropy — which don’t always add up.
“In 2009, for example, he agreed to rent his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., to the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who hoped to stay in a tent on the grounds during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly,” the newspaper reported.
“Though the plans fell apart when local residents objected, Colonel Qaddafi made a payment of $150,000, which Mr. Trump told CNN in 2011 that he had given to charity. His 2009 tax returns, however, reported only $22,796 in business and personal cash gifts,” the newspaper explained.
The single largest cash donation he reported for his businesses, made to his own foundation, was the $400,000 he received in 2011 for being roasted on Comedy Central. In 2014, his Virginia winery contributed a glass sculpture valued at $73,600 to a small historical society in Pennsylvania. And in 2016, another one of his companies gave $30,000 to the American Hotel & Lodging Education Foundation.
Even without the details of Mr. Trump’s individual giving, The Times was able to identify public philanthropic promises that appear either to have been exaggerated or to have never materialized. In each case, the size of his pledge exceeded what he told the I.R.S. he had given in a particular year.
In 2009, for example, he agreed to rent his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., to the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who hoped to stay in a tent on the grounds during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
Though the plans fell apart when local residents objected, Colonel Qaddafi made a payment of $150,000, which Mr. Trump told CNN in 2011 that he had given to charity. His 2009 tax returns, however, reported only $22,796 in business and personal cash gifts.
In 2015, Mr. Trump promised to donate the earnings from his book “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again.’’
“The profits of my book? I am giving them away to a lot of different — including the vets,” he said at a news conference.
The tax records show that Waxman Leavell Literary Agency, which represented Mr. Trump’s book, made two payments to him in 2015 and 2016, totaling roughly $4.5 million. In those years, Mr. Trump reported giving a total of $1.3 million in cash to charity.
Many wealthy individuals create their own foundations, often as a way to have greater control over their philanthropy. While Mr. Trump’s foundation, started in 1988, gave millions to charity before shutting down in 2018, most of it was other people’s money. Mr. Trump himself donated $5.4 million to the foundation, with the last contribution in 2008, according to the organization’s tax filings.
The majority of the president’s philanthropy, though, has consisted of his four land deals with conservation groups or the government.
His first easement donation, which yielded a tax deduction of $39.1 million in 2005, involved a parcel of land at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
The next year, he donated 436 acres of land for a state park in Westchester and Putnam Counties in New York after development plans ran up against tough regulatory restrictions. While the precise value of the easement is not clear, he reported noncash charitable contributions of $34 million that year.
Mr. Trump had bought the property in the 1990s for $2 million, according to numerous published reports. Today it is overgrown and has few facilities or visitors.
The two most recent easement deductions are being examined by the New York attorney general, Letitia James — part of a broader investigation into whether the Trump Organization inflated the value of assets to get loans and tax benefits.
In 2014, after abandoning plans to develop an 11.5-acre property being used as a driving range at his Los Angeles golf club, Mr. Trump received a $25.1 million tax deduction for an easement agreement with a land conservancy. Few details of the inquiry into the deal have emerged.
Court papers shed more light on the other easement under investigation.
In late 2015, Mr. Trump got a $21.1 million tax break for 158.6 acres of land at the Seven Springs estate, after years of unsuccessful attempts to build a golf course on it.
The attorney general’s court filing says that after Mr. Trump abandoned plans to develop Seven Springs, he asked Sheri Dillon, a tax lawyer at Morgan Lewis who had advised him in the past, to have the land appraised.
Ms. Dillon told Cushman & Wakefield, the firm that did the appraisal, that “the client blew up at her,” and she leaned on the appraisers to take steps that would push the value up, according to the court filing.
Several weeks ago, after months of delays, Mr. Trump’s son Eric gave a deposition in the case.
