NEW YORK (AP): He’s asleep by Donald Trump’s standards, but the former president’s 100-year-old property in Westchester County, New York, could end up being one of his biggest legal nightmares.
Seven Springs, a 213-acre natural area surrounding a Georgian-style mansion, is the subject of two state investigations: a criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and a civil investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Both investigations focus on whether Trump manipulated the value of the property to reap greater tax benefits from an environmental conservation agreement he made in late 2015, while running for president.
Bought by Trump in 1995 for $ 7.5 million, Seven Springs was re-examined as he prepared to step down and agreed to lose the legal protections he had as president. Vance issued new subpoenas in mid-December and a judge ordered that evidence be handed out at James’ office nine days after Trump left Washington.
Other Trump legal issues, such as investigations into their attempts to influence election officials and payments made on their behalf to women who report issues, have dominated headlines. But former Manhattan prosecutor Duncan Levin said white-collar investigators are going where the paper trail leads.
“While a tax issue related to a conservation agreement may not be as appealing as a cash payment, prosecutors are likely to focus on any violations of the law they encounter,” Levin said. “Remember, the authorities got Al Capone for tax evasion.”
Seven Springs is an atypical value in a Trump real estate portfolio, full of high-profile, gold-plated glossy features. It appears on its website as a family haven, even though Trump hasn’t been there for more than four years.
At the heart of the estate is the mansion built as a summer getaway in 1919 by Eugene Meyer, who became president of the Federal Reserve and owner of the Washington Post. In 2006, while pushing for a plan to build luxury homes on the property, Trump raised the idea that he and his family would move into the mansion, but that never happened.
Nine, the 28,322-square-foot home had more than a dozen rooms, an indoor pool, a bowling alley and a tennis court. Meyer’s daughter, the late Washington Post editor Katharine Graham, married in Seven Springs in 1940.
In his memoirs “Personal History,” Graham described ambivalent emotions for going there, writing, “The older I got, the more I disliked the loneliness of the farm, but in my childhood it was, like I wrote to my father when he was 10 years old, “a great old place.”
At one point, Meyer had about 700 acres. A philanthropic foundation established by him and his wife, Agnes, donated 247 acres to the Nature Conservancy and the rest of the land and buildings that formed Seven Springs at Yale University in 1973, following the death of Agnes Meyer.
The estate changed hands again when the foundation reclaimed it from Yale and operated a conference center there before transferring real estate funds to Rockefeller University, which eventually sold it to Trump.
Trump paid about $ 2.25 million for the Seven Springs list price, acquiring the land as part of an effort to start his fortune after a series of failures in the early 1990s, including the bankruptcies of the casinos and the sale of their Trump Shuttle airline that lost money.
Trump envisioned transforming it into his first quality golf course, with an exclusive clientele and high membership fees.
He hired an architecture firm to map streets and greens, but abandoned the effort when residents expressed concern that lawn chemicals would contaminate neighboring Lake Byram, a local source of drinking water.
Trump then tried to build houses. He proposed putting up 46 single-family homes and, following this plan, was also met with opposition from the community, 15 mansions the size of mansions he described in 2004 as “high-end residential, never to be they have seen on the east coast. ”The project was held back by years of litigation and houses were never built.
In 2009, Trump was shocked to allow Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to set up his Bedouin-style tent on the property in Seven Springs, north of New York City, because he had nowhere else to visit. the UN.
Trump initially suggested he didn’t know Gaddafi was involved, but later acknowledged that he “made a lot of money” by renting the land to the Libyan leader. Local officials stopped work at the store and Gaddafi never stayed there.
His development plans collapsed, Trump opted for a strategy that would allow him to maintain ownership but reduce his taxes. It granted an easement to a land conservation fund to preserve 60 hectares of mature meadows and forests.
Trump received a $ 21 million income tax deduction, equal to the value of the retained land, according to property and court records. The amount was based on a professional appraisal that valued the entire Seven Springs property at $ 56.5 million as of December 1, 2015.
This was a much higher amount than valued by local government advisers, who said the entire estate was worth $ 20 million.
Michael Colangelo, a lawyer for the New York attorney general’s office, outlined the central issue of Seven Springs bondage at a hearing last year over a dispute over evidence.
“If the value of servitude was inflated incorrectly, who got the benefit of that inappropriate inflation and in what amounts?” Colangelo said. “Needless to say, the attorney general has to look at the records that reflect the value of this deduction, as it came to the intermediaries and ultimately to Mr. Trump, personally.”
Trump’s spokesman left a message seeking comment. In the past, the former Republican president has denounced the investigations as part of a “witch hunt.”
Seven Springs caught the attention of investigators after Trump’s lawyer and personal repairman Michael Cohen told a Congressional committee in 2019 that Trump was in the habit of manipulating property values, inflating them into some cases and minimizing them in others to obtain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.
Cohen testified that Trump had financial statements that said Seven Springs was worth $ 291 million in 2012. He handed copies of three of Trump’s financial statements to the House Oversight and Reform Committee during his testimony.
Cohen said the 2011, 2012 and 2013 statements were the ones Trump gave to his main lender, Deutsche Bank, to ask about a loan to buy Buffalo Bills from the NFL and Forbes magazine to justify his claim to a place. from his list of the richest people in the world.
Trump, in his annual financial disclosure forms while president, said the property was worth between $ 25 million and $ 50 million.
The New York Attorney General was the first to act. James issued subpoenas to commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield for records related to his appraisal work on behalf of Trump; to law firms that worked on the Seven Springs project; and to Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, to obtain records related to its annual financial statements and conservation easement.
James also cited planning and zoning records in 2019 of the three cities spanning Seven Springs. Vance continued with his own citations in December. A city clerk said investigators received “boxes and boxes of documents” in response. They include tax returns, topography maps, environmental studies, and minutes of board meetings.
James researchers have interviewed Trump’s son Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and president of the limited liability company through which she owns Seven Springs; Trump Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg; and Trump lawyers hired for the Seven Springs project that specialize in federal tax and land use disputes.
Investigators have not yet determined whether any laws were violated.
Vance, who like James is a Democrat, has not divulged much information about his criminal investigation, in part because of the grand jury’s rules of secrecy. The district attorney’s office has said in court papers that it focuses on public reports of “extensive and prolonged criminal conduct in the Trump Organization.”
Documents filed in connection with the criminal investigation, reinforced by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month granting Vance access to Trump’s tax records – I have included Seven Springs among the possible targets.
Along with the mansion, Seven Springs has a Tudor-style house that was owned by ketchup mogul HJ Heinz and smaller carriage houses than Trump’s adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have said they served as a “home base” when they visited the estate. walking and riding quads.
During his presidency, Trump himself opted for higher-end properties such as his Bedminster, New Jersey golf course and his Sea-to-Lake club in Florida, where he has lived since he left the White House.
The New York Times reported last year that Trump’s tax records show that he classified the property not as a personal residence, but as a real estate investment, which allowed him to repay more than $ 2 million in property taxes. since 2014.
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