Still lethargic by Donald Trump’s well-known standards, the former president’s 100-year-old property in New York State’s Westchester County could end up being one of his major nightmares legal.
Seven Springs, 86-hectare strip of nature surrounding a mansion of Georgian style, Is the subject of two state investigations: one of a criminal nature by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and another civilian by New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
Both investigations focus on Trump himself 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 by $ 7.5 million, Seven Springs was the subject of a renewed analysis when the president was preparing to leave office and was close to losing the legal protections he had as president. In mid-December Vance Jr. he issued new summonses and a judge ordered the delivery of evidence to Letitia James’ office nine days after Trump left Washington.
Already other legal issues for Trump have dominated the headlines, such as investigations into his attempts to influence election officials and payments made on his behalf to women who denounce various adventures. But former Manhattan prosecutor Duncan Levin argues that bureaucratic investigators go where the paper trail leads them.
Seven Springs, bought by Trump in 1995 for $ 7.5 million. Photo: AP
“While a tax issue related to a conservation agreement pot not be so sexy as a payment of money in exchange for silence, prosecutors are likely to focus on any violations of the law they encounter, ”Levin notes.
“Remember that the authorities they caught A l’Capone for tax evasion. “
An atypical place
Seven Springs es an atypical place in Trump’s real estate portfolio, full of luxurious skyscrapers and gold-plated accessories. It appears on its website as a family haven, though Trump hasn’t been there for more than four years.
the mansion
At the heart of the property is the mansion built as summer refuge in 1919 by Eugene Meyer, who became president of the US Federal Reserve and owner of The Washington Post. In 2006, while pushing for a plan to build luxury homes on the property, Trump circulated the idea that he and his family were going to move into the mansion, but that never happened.
When released, the housing of 2,631 square meters it had more than a dozen rooms, an indoor pool, a bowling alley and a tennis court. In 1940 Meyer’s daughter, Katharine Graham, the late editor of the Washington Post, married Seven Springs.
Seven Springs, a 2,631-square-foot mansion. Photo: AP
In her autobiography Personal History, Katharine describes her ambivalent emotions as she went: “The older I got, the more I disliked the solitude of the estate, But in the days of my childhood, as I wrote to my father when I was 10, it was ‘A magnificent old place’“.
At one time, Eugene Meyer owned about 285 acres. A philanthropic foundation created by him and his wife Agnes, gave 100 acres to The Nature Conservancy and the rest of the land and buildings that formed Seven Springs at Yale University in 1973, after Agnes’ death.
Possession changed hands again when the foundation reclaimed it from Yale and managed a conference center on the site before transferring the real estate to Rockefeller University, which eventually it was sold to Trump.
Donald Trump paid a few $ 2.25 million less that the catalog price of Seven Springs, acquiring the land as part of an attempt to reactivate his fortune after a series of failures in the early 1990s, including casino bankruptcies and the sale of its Trump Shuttle airline, which was making losses.
Chain of frustrated projects
At the time the tycoon imagined transforming the property into its first golf course with category by championship, an exclusive clientele and very high social contributions.
He hired an architecture studio to draw the streets and greens, but abandoned the project when area residents expressed concern about the possibility that the lawn chemicals contaminate neighboring Lake Byram, a local source of drinking water.
Then Trump tried to build houses. He proposed building 46 single-family homes and, after this plan also met with opposition from the community, 15 mansion-sized homes, which in 2004 he described in terms of “high-end residential, as never before. seen on the East Coast “. The project was halted for several years due to litigation and no residence was ever built.
Donald Trump paid about $ 2.25 million less than the catalog price of Seven Springs. Photo: AP
In 2009 Trump caused a sensation by allowing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi set up your tent Bedouin-style on grounds in Seven Springs, north of New York City, because he had nowhere else to stay during a visit to the UN.
At first Trump hinted that he did not know that Gaddafi was involved, but later admitted that “He made a lot of money” renting the place to the Libyan leader. Local authorities eventually stopped work on the tent and Gaddafi ended up not staying in it.
the fraud
With his frustrated development plans, the former president opted for a strategy that would allow him to retain ownership but reduce your taxes. It granted assistance to a land conservation fund to preserve 60 hectares of adult meadows and forests.
He obtained a $ 21 million deduction in income tax, equivalent to the value of the land retained, according to property and court records. The amount was based on a professional appraisal that assessed the entire possession of Seven Springs a $ 56.5 million on December 1, 2015.
The sum turned out much larger than estimated by local government advisers, who reported that the entire property is worth it $ 20 million.
Michael Colangelo, a New York attorney general’s attorney, outlined the central issue of the subsidy or assistance granted by Seven Springs at a hearing last year in connection with a controversy over the evidence.
“If the value of the assistance granted it was improperly inflated, Who obtained the benefit of this undue increase and in what amounts? Colangelo said.
“Needless to say, the Attorney General needs to see the records that should reflect the value of the deduction applied, which drifted toward intermediaries and ultimately to Mr. Trump, personally “.
A message was left seeking comments from Trump’s spokesman. The former Republican president has in the past disqualified these investigations as part of a “witch hunt.”
The habit of manipulating values
Seven Springs caught the attention of investigators when Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, told a 2019 congressional committee that Trump was in the habit of manipulate property values, Inflating them in some cases and minimizing them in others to access favorable loan terms and tax benefits.
Cohen testified that Trump had filed financial statements that Seven Springs was worth $ 291 million in 2012. During his testimony, the attorney provided the House Oversight and Reform Committee with copies of three of Trump’s financial statements.
He also stated that these statements, from 2011, 2012 and 2013, were the ones Trump handed them to his main lender, Deutsche Bank, to ask for information about a loan in order to buy the professional football team. Buffalo Bills of the NFL and also to Forbes magazine to base its claim to appear on the list of richest people in the world.
While president, Trump stated in his annual financial disclosure forms that the property is worthwhile between 25 and 50 million of dollars.
The first to act was the Attorney General of New York. Letitia James sent subpoenas to commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield for records related to Trump’s appraisal work, to the law firms that worked on the Seven Springs project, and to Trump’s firm. , The Trump Organization, to obtain records related to their annual financial statements and the conservation assistance granted.
Attorney General James also cited in 2019 the zoning and planning records of the three communities over which Seven Springs extends. In December he followed Cyrus Vance Jr. with his own quotations. A city employee says investigators received “boxes and boxes of documents” in response. These included tax returns, topographic surveys, environmental studies and minutes of board meetings.
Letitia James investigators interviewed Trump’s son Eric, executive vice president of The Trump Organization and president of the limited liability company through which the company owns Seven Springs, the organization’s chief financial officer. Allen Weisselberg already lawyers Trump hired for the Seven Springs project, which specializes in land use and federal tax disputes.
The team of investigators has not yet determined whether any law was violated.
Vance Jr., who like Attorney James is a Democrat, has not revealed much about his criminal investigation, in part because of rules on grand jury secrecy. Through court documents, Vance Jr.’s office. has stated that it is focusing on public reports of “extensive and prolonged criminal conduct in the Trump Organization.”
The documents filed in connection with the criminal investigation – encouraged by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that last month granted Vance Jr. access to Trump tax records- spanning Seven Springs among the possible goals.
In addition to the grand mansion, Seven Springs comprises a Tudor style house which at the time was owned by the magnate of the ketchup HJ Heinz, And smaller carriage houses than Trump’s adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have said they served as a “base of operations” when they visited the farm for hiking and all-terrain vehicles.
During his presidency, Trump himself opted for higher-profile properties such as his Bedminster golf course in New Jersey, 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 Seven Springs not as a personal residence, but as an investment property, which allowed him to discount more than $ 2 million in property taxes since 2014.
The author is an Associated Press reporter
Translation: Román García Azcárate
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