A Report Claimed Trump Campaign Is Sending Rent Checks To A Long Island P.O. Box, Could Be Of Interest To Tax Fraud Investigation

This is suspicious AF.


622
622 points

With Donald Trump’s corruption and scandals that we’ve all witnessed, it makes sense to follow the money as they say. The president’s attorneys have been trying — unsuccessfully so far — to invalidate a subpoena that the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. issued to Trump’s accounting firm. And Vance might want to take a look at another suspicious area with Trump’s finances.

According to Salon, although Trump has charged his own campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent for offices in Trump Tower for more than five years — the campaign doesn’t always send its rent to Trump Tower. Oddly, the checks — or at least most of them —  have gone to a post office box in Hicksville, New York. That means it’s not determined who exactly is receiving those checks, and experts say that the address may be of interest to Vance.

Vance Jr. has never revealed the scope of his office’s criminal inquiry, citing grand jury secrecy, but he recently gave us a good idea of what his office is looking at. Tax fraud seems to be a priority.

The Hicksville P.O. Box has been described, according to the outlet, by Trump money watchers as the “white whale” of Trump’s financial dealings.

And this looks pretty weird:

In 2015, 2016 and 2017, all rent checks all went to the Hicksville address. The rent payments stopped after September 2017, but resumed in 2018, the year after the Trump tax bill passed, and the same year that the campaign also took up offices in Rosslyn, Virginia. All rent checks in that year, 2018, went upstairs to the accountants in Trump Tower. But in the first half of 2019, the checks went back to Hicksville. Then, in the second half of that year, they once again went to Trump Tower.

The pattern grew even more erratic in 2020. This year, public filings show, the campaign has so far sent six of its eight rent checks to Hicksville — the two outliers being April and May, when the coronavirus ravaged the city and the checks went to Trump Tower, in Manhattan.

State income tax and commercial property tax experts familiar with the workings of New York City and state were baffled and responded by calling it, “Totally bizarre,” “No idea,” “I’ve never seen something like that,” and “Holy shit, that’s absolutely weird.”

We’re sure Vance has already been privy to the mysterious checks going to Hicksville. And Trump’s son, Eric, is in a mess of his own. The president’s son’s attorneys said that their client is willing to comply with a subpoena issued by New York Attorney General Letitia James, but only after the upcoming presidential election — and James wasn’t having it.

Trump repeatedly promised to release his taxes while on the campaign trail, but now, he refuses to do so. You’d think if Trump is innocent then he would release them to clear the matter up.

You can read the full report here.

Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0

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