**DISCLAIMER: This article was first published in December of 2022**
It’s becoming increasingly apparent at this point that there is truly no limit to the depths of corruption that Donald J. Trump is willing to be embroiled in. Every time you find yourself thinking that the man could not possibly get any worse, he could not possibly sink any deeper into depravity, he proves you wrong with a vengeance.
Forbes broke reporting that now sheds new light on yet another previously unexposed shady scandal that begins and ends with the resoundingly corrupt former president of the United States.
The ex-president’s personal family company has been the subject of intense scrutiny ever since the day he announced his 2016 presidential campaign, and even to this day remains the subject of numerous massive investigations in the state of New York, on both civil and criminal levels. As Forbes notes in the opening paragraph of their report, one would truly think that, as a result of living under the microscope for so many years running now, there simply wouldn’t be much left to discover about the Trump Organization. You would think that every stone would be thoroughly turned at this point.
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However, there’s more. There is always more.
Forbes reports:
Buried in a heap of recently released financial paperwork sits a surprising revelation: Donald Trump had a foreign creditor he failed to disclose while running for president in 2016 and after assuming office in 2017.”
Donald Trump has been hiding a massive secret debt from the world. A $19.8 million liability debt, in fact, owed to “L/P Daewoo.” The publication reports that the hidden debt was ultimately uncovered by investigators with the New York Attorney General’s office, in the course of their investigation into the Trump Organization. The staggering bill appears to stem from a deal struck by Trump with South Korean conglomerate Daewoo to share some of the licensing fees associated with a Trump project near the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Forbes further reports:
Trump eliminated the debt five-and-a-half months into his tenure as president, according to the documents. He seems to have acted with some urgency to wipe the liability off his balance sheet. From 2011 to 2016, the documents show that the balance stayed static at $19.8 million. Paperwork capturing Trump’s financial picture as of June 30, 2017, five months into his presidency, appears to show that the balance had dropped to $4.3 million, $15.5 million less than it had been a year earlier. Trump got rid of the debt altogether shortly after that. ‘Daewoo was bought out of its position on July 5, 2017,’ the documents say, without specifying who exactly paid off the loan.
Although the debt appeared on the Trump Organization’s internal paperwork, it did not show up on Trump’s public financial disclosure reports, documents he was required to submit to federal officials while running for president and after taking office. Trump’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, told the New York Times in 2016 that his boss disclosed all debt connected to companies in which Trump held a 100% stake on the documents. That was not true.
There is a chance that Trump’s omission may have been legal, nonetheless. Although officials have to list personal loans on their financial disclosures, the law does not require them to include loans to their companies, unless they are personally liable for the loans. The Trump Organization documents do not specify whether the former president, who owned 100% of the entities responsible for the debt, personally guaranteed the liability, leaving it unclear whether he broke the law or merely took advantage of a loophole.”
Just when you think it can’t get any worse…
Read the extensive full report from Forbes here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
