In 2005, Donald Trump submitted documents to Deutsche Bank in which he claimed a net worth of $3 billion, but his actual assets were worth far less, the bank itself determined, according to a blockbuster investigative report by The New York Times published on Monday. In fact, Trump's net worth was only about $788 million at the time, the bank found. But Deutsche Bank loaned Trump a staggering $500 million anyway to build a 92-story skyscraper in Chicago, according to the Times report, after Trump "wooed" bank executives with flights on his personal private jet and assured them that his daughter Ivanka would personally oversee the project a sign of the Trump "family's commitment to its success." The Chicago skyscraper alone was just one of several instances in which, The Times reported, Trump lied about the value of his assets in order to secure loans from the Germany-based, multinational bank. He was still engaged in the practice as late as 2014 when he sought a loan to purchase the NFL Buffalo Bills football franchise, a transaction that may have topped $1 billion, according to the Times report. Monday's revelations appeared to confirm congressional testimony last month by Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen. In his testimony, as western New York's Democrat and Chronicle newspaper reported, Cohen alleged that Trump inflated his estimated net worth in order to secure a loan to buy the Bills. Getty Images | Jim Rogash Donald Trump exaggerated his wealth to get a loan when he tried to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014, 'The New York Times' reported Monday. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump claimed that his net worth was approximately $10 billion, as the financial magazine Fortune reported. About a month before he made that claim, however, Trump said that his net worth was $8.7 billion. At the time, the Trump campaign said that the lower figure was more than one-year-old. The Times report said that $8.7 billion was the amount Trump claimed to be worth in "bare bones documents" that he submitted to Deutsche Bank in 2014 when he sought financing for his ultimately failed bid to acquire the Buffalo NFL franchise. But at that time, as well, Deutsche Bank executives concluded that the $8.7 billion net worth figure was another exaggeration by Trump. However, according to The Times, "they nonetheless agreed to vouch for Mr. Trump's bid." David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who has authored two books about Trump, has said that based on his own research, the value of Trump's assets have likely never topped even $1 billion, as The Inquisitr reported. "There is not now and never has been a shred of verifiable evidence that Trump is or ever was a billionaire," Johnston said.<doc-sep>The two-decade-long relationship between Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump has been rocky and clearly beneficial only to Trump, The New York Times detailed Monday night. One branch of the giant German bank after another stopped doing business with Trump, after loan defaults, creative litigation, and other red flags and hiccups. After Deutsche Bank's commercial real estate unit severed ties with Trump in 2004, he sought a large loan from the investment-banking division, the Times reports: Mr. Trump told Deutsche Bank his net worth was about $3 billion, but when bank employees reviewed his finances, they concluded he was worth about $788 million, according to documents produced during a lawsuit Mr. Trump brought against the former New York Times journalist Timothy O'Brien. And a senior investment-banking executive said in an interview that he and others cautioned that Mr. Trump should be avoided because he had worked with people in the construction industry connected to organized crime. Nonetheless, Deutsche Bank agreed in 2005 to lend Mr. Trump more than $500 million for the project. [The New York Times] After Trump sued the investment-banking unit when he couldn't pay back that loan, he started getting loans from the bank's private-banking arm. And when he sought $100 million for a golf course in Miami, "Deutsche Bank dispatched a team to Trump Tower to inspect Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate financial records," the Times reports. "The bankers determined he was overvaluing some of his real estate assets by as much as 70 percent, according to two former executives." Still, by that time Trump "was swimming in cash from The Apprentice" and had little debt, so "aside from his history of defaults, he was an attractive borrower," the Times says. He got the loan, and cited it in the presidential campaign to fend off attacks on his business acumen. Read more at The New York Times.<doc-sep>But the documents provide a glimpse of values Mr. Trump assigned to some of his properties that are out of line with other available estimates. [The testimony could create more legal issues for the president.] On his 2012 balance sheet, Mr. Trump described an estate he owns in Westchester County, N.Y., as being worth $291 million. He bought the property, Seven Springs, in 1996 for $7.5 million. In 2018, Mr. Trump said in a federal ethics filing that the property was worth no more than $50 million. Also in 2012 — just as the economy was beginning to recover from the financial crisis — Mr. Trump valued his skyscraper at 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan at $527 million. An article in The Wall Street Journal that year reported that property had a value of about $400 million, based on sales of comparable properties. It would be three more years until the building achieved Mr. Trump’s valuation, according to Trepp, which tracks commercial real estate lending. The 2012 Journal article also estimated that Mr. Trump’s golf resorts and related real estate in the United States and Scotland were worth nearly $1.6 billion. The Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index as of this week valued those properties at $650 million. In the 2013 financial statement, Mr. Trump said that $4 billion of his nearly $9 billion net worth was attributable to his “brand value.” He did not report such a hard-to-measure asset in 2011 and 2012. The financial statements for 2011 and 2012 carry the heading “compilation reports,” which in accounting terms means that the accountants that prepared them merely compiled information from their client without auditing the underlying figures. The 2013 statement does not appear to have been prepared by an accountant, and includes language that is not part of generally accepted accounting principles. [Mr. Cohen characterized the president as a con man, a cheat and a racist.] Determining the value of huge pieces of real estate is an exercise in subjectivity. In Mr. Trump’s case, according to bankers who have worked with him, he tended to make assumptions that were more aggressive than others in the real estate business would. For example, they said, he often made unrealistic forecasts about how much revenue he expected a property to generate, a practice that would result in a greatly inflated value for that asset.<doc-sep>Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified Wednesday that President Trump Donald TrumpTrump lashes out after grand jury seated for New York criminal probe Schumer tees up vote on Jan. 6 commission bill Senators struggle to save Jan. 6 commission MORE inflated and deflated his assets over the years, and provided Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria Ocasio-CortezGOP leaders face new calls to boot Greene Joe Crowley to register as lobbyist for recording artists Democratic leaders discussed restraining order for Ocasio-Cortez against Greene: report MORE (D-N.Y.) with a list of Trump associates who could provide additional information. Asked during his appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee if Trump ever provided inflated assets, Cohen answered that he had. The former longtime Trump lawyer added that lawmakers could find more related information and documentation at the Trump Organization and from executives Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari. ADVERTISEMENT Cohen also confirmed to Ocasio-Cortez that Trump was interested in reducing his local tax bills by deflating his assets. The New York congresswoman cited a golf club near her home district as an example. "You deflate the value of the asset and then you put in a request to the tax department for a deduction," Cohen said, explaining the practice. Cohen said he did not know whether an October New York Times report that Trump engaged in dubious tax practices to reap millions was true, but said that Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, would. . @AOC: To your knowledge did Donald Trump ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company? Michael Cohen: Yes. @AOC: Do you think we need to review financial statements and tax returns in order to compare them? Michael Cohen: Yes. MORE: https://t.co/sKIXYcWpqu pic.twitter.com/M06aMJ6E6y — Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) February 27, 2019 The exchange came near the end of a lengthy day of testimony that began with Cohen alleging in public testimony that Trump was a "conman" and a "cheat." The president, who was traveling in Vietnam for his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, accused Cohen earlier in the day of lying to try to reduce his prison sentence. Cohen is set to report to prison in May for charges that he pleaded guilty to last year, including financial crimes, violating campaign finance law and lying to Congress. Trump broke with years of precedent when he refused to release his tax returns when running for president. Cohen suggested Wednesday that it was unlikely that Trump was under audit, as the president and White House officials had suggested.<doc-sep>
Donald Trump at the White House on March 13, 2019. Photo: The Washington Post/The Washington Post/Getty Images Among the many investigations into Trump’s alleged misconduct — political, financial, ethical, etc. — the New York attorney general’s inquiry into the Trump Organization’s relationship with Deutsche Bank could be the most embarrassing for the president, as it may reveal just how he conducts his business, and how much he is really worth. A taste of that potential revelation came on Monday evening, when the New York Times published a comprehensive report on Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, which loaned Trump a reported $2 billion over two decades. Around 2004, shortly after the Trump Organization defaulted on hundreds of millions in bonds, Trump reportedly went to Deutsche’s commercial real estate unit in pursuit of a loan to build the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago — but not before the bank realized that Trump, on paper, was not who he said he was: Mr. Trump told Deutsche Bank his net worth was about $3 billion, but when bank employees reviewed his finances, they concluded he was worth about $788 million, according to documents produced during a lawsuit Mr. Trump brought against the former New York Times journalist Timothy O’Brien. And a senior investment-banking executive said in an interview that he and others cautioned that Mr. Trump should be avoided because he had worked with people in the construction industry connected to organized crime. That revelation — Donald Trump was not a billionaire when The Apprentice began — has been public since at least 2009. But a pattern emerged in the Times’ interviews with more than 20 Deutsche Bank officials: Unconcerned by the real estate mogul’s obvious risk, the bank kept lending to Trump, even after he defaulted on loans and exaggerated his net worth. In 2010, Trump looked to Deutsche for a loan to purchase the $100 million Doral Golf Resort outside of Miami. Two of the bank’s former executives claim that, in his 2010 loan application, Trump overvalued some of his real estate assets by as much as 70 percent. Four years later, when Trump hoped to purchase the Buffalo Bills, the NFL required that he prove he had the assets to pull off the billion-dollar deal. Trump then sent Deutsche Bank “bare-bones financial statements that estimated his net worth at $8.7 billion.” In February, Michael Cohen testified that Trump had inflated his assets in the attempt to purchase the Bills. Deutsche executives came to a similar conclusion; still, an executive involved with the deal claims the bank vouched for Trump anyway. To add a touch of color, the report also contains a fun detail about the president’s notorious stinginess. In 2003, Trump reportedly dangled a Mar-a-Lago trip in front of Deutsche’s bond salesmen, only to attempt to reel the offer back in once the deal was completed: According to a Deutsche Bank executive who heard the remarks, Mr. Trump gave a pep talk. “Fellas, I know this isn’t the easiest thing you’ve had to sell,” the executive recalled Mr. Trump saying. “But if you get this done, you’ll all be my guests at Mar-a-Lago,” his private club in Palm Beach, Fla. The sales team managed to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bonds. Mr. Trump was pleased with the results when a Deutsche Bank executive called, according to a person who heard the conversation. “Don’t forget what you promised our guys,” the executive reminded him. Mr. Trump said he did not remember and that he doubted the salesmen actually expected to be taken to Mar-a-Lago. “That’s all they’ve talked about the past week,” the executive replied. Mr. Trump ultimately flew about 15 salesmen to Florida on his Boeing 727. They spent a weekend golfing with Mr. Trump, two participants said.