This story was co-published with ProPublica.

A birth certificate, a bar receipt, a newspaper ad, a board game, a Ziploc bag of shredded paper, a pair of museum tickets, some checks, and a USB drive. The series finale of Trump, Inc.

This episode was reported by Andrea Bernstein, Meg Cramer, Anjali Kamat, Ilya Marritz, Katherine Sullivan, Eric Umansky, and Heather Vogell. We assembled our time capsule at Donald J. Trump State Park; it will be stored until 2031 with WNYC's archives department.

This is the last episode of Trump, Inc. But it's not the end of our reporting: subscribe to our newsletter for updates on what we're doing next. Show your support with a donation to New York Public Radio.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and an unprecedented second impeachment, a growing number of businesses, governments, and financial institutions are severing ties with President Trump.

David Fahrenthold is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers the Trump family and its business interests for The Washington Post. Zach Everson reports on who patronizes the Trump family businesses for the newsletter 1100 Pennsylvania.

Next week's Trump, Inc. will be the final episode of the series. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on what we're doing next. Show your support with a donation to New York Public Radio.

Donald Trump's presidency is coming to end, but there are ongoing legal investigations that will be following him out of the White House. We examine two of the pending probes into potential wrongdoing by Trump and Trump Organization. One, led by Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine for potential civil violations, the other by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance into possible criminal activity. 

We speak with AG Racine about his pending legal action. 

 

 

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

Six days after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified food safety groups that it was proposing a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines, a change that would allow companies to sell more birds. An earlier USDA effort had broken down on concerns that it could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella. 

Ordinarily, a change like this would take about two years to go through the cumbersome legal process of making new federal regulations. But the timing has alarmed food and worker safety advocates, who suspect the Trump administration wants to rush through this rule in its waning days.

Even as Trump and his allies officially refuse to concede the Nov. 3 election, the White House and federal agencies are hurrying to finish dozens of regulatory changes before Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. The rules range from long-simmering administration priorities to last-minute scrambles and affect everything from creature comforts like showerheads and clothes washers to life-or-death issues like federal executions and international refugees. They impact everyone from the most powerful, such as oil drillers, drugmakers and tech startups, to the most vulnerable, such as families on food stamps, transgender people in homeless shelters, migrant workers and endangered species. ProPublica is tracking those regulations as they move through the rule-making process.

Every administration does some version of last-minute rule-making, known as midnight regulations, especially with a change in parties. It?s too soon to say how the Trump administration?s tally will stack up against predecessors. But these final weeks are solidifying conservative policy objectives that will make it harder for the Biden administration to advance its own agenda, according to people who track rules developed by federal agencies.

?The bottom line is the Trump administration is trying to get things published in the Federal Register, leaving the next administration to sort out the mess,? said Matthew Kent, who tracks regulatory policy for left-leaning advocacy group Public Citizen. ?There are some real roadblocks to Biden being able to wave a magic wand on these.?

In some instances the Trump administration is using shortcuts to get more rules across the finish line, such as taking less time to accept and review public feedback. It?s a risky move. On the one hand, officials want to finalize rules so that the next administration won?t be able to change them without going through the process all over again. On the other, slapdash rules may contain errors, making them more vulnerable to getting struck down in court.

The Trump administration is on pace to finalize 36 major rules in its final three months, similar to the 35 to 40 notched by the previous four presidents, according to Daniel Perez, a policy analyst at the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. In 2017, Republican lawmakers struck down more than a dozen Obama-era rules using a fast-track mechanism called the Congressional Review Act. That weapon may be less available for Democrats to overturn Trump?s midnight regulations if Republicans keep control of the Senate, which will be determined by two Georgia runoffs. Still, a few GOP defections could be enough to kill a rule with a simple majority.

?This White House is not likely to be stopping things and saying on principle elections have consequences, let?s respect the voters? decision and not rush things through to tie the next guys? hands,? said Susan Dudley, who led the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget at the end of the George W. Bush administration. ?One concern is the rules are rushed so they didn?t have adequate analysis or public comment, and that?s what we?re seeing.?

The Trump White House didn?t respond to requests for comment on which regulations it?s aiming to finish before Biden?s inauguration. The Biden transition team also didn?t respond to questions about which of Trump?s parting salvos the new president would prioritize undoing.

Many of the last-minute changes would add to the heap of changes throughout the Trump administration to pare back Obama-era rules and loosen environmental and consumer protections, all in the name of shrinking the government?s role in the economy. ?Our proposal today greatly furthers the Trump administration?s regulatory reform efforts, which together have already amounted to the most aggressive effort to reform federal regulations of any administration,? Brian Harrison, the chief of staff for the Department of Health and Human Services, said on a conference call with reporters the day after the election. Harrison was unveiling a new proposal to automatically purge regulations that are more than 10 years old unless the agency decides to keep them. 

For that proposal to become finalized before Jan. 20 would be an exceptionally fast turnaround. But Harrison left no doubt about that goal. ?The reason we're doing this now is because,? he said, ?we at the department are trying to go as fast as we can in hopes of finalizing the rule before the end of the first term.?

Read Isaac Arnsdorf's full print story at ProPublica. 

Track more of the Trump administration's midnight regulations here. 

 

As the Trump campaign wages a haphazard legal campaign against the rightful outcome of the 2020 election, the Trump administration is working to remake the federal bureaucracy.

? Adam Klasfeld is a senior investigative reporter and editor for Law & Crime.
? Denise Turner Roth, an Obama appointee, served as administrator of the Government Services Administration from 2015 to 2017.
? Robert Shea was associate director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush.
? Ronald Sanders, who until last month was chairman of the Federal Salary Council, resigned over an executive order he warned would politicize much of the federal workforce. (Read his letter of resignation here.)

Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

We're all wondering how the 2020 election will pan out. Our colleagues at Radiolab went looking for answers.

This episode was reported by Bethel Habte (who's now a producer at the Gimlet podcast Resistance), with help from Tracie Hunte, and produced by Bethel Habte. Jeremy Bloom provided original music.

You can read The Transition Integrity Project?s report here. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

Go to New York Magazine to read our list of insiders who profited off the Trump presidency.

On April 30, 2018, nine top executives from T-Mobile checked in to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., with their names on a list of VIP arrivals. They landed in Washington at a critical moment: Just the day before, T-Mobile had announced plans for a merger with Sprint. To complete the deal, the company needed approval from the Justice Department, one block away on Pennsylvania Avenue. Hanging out in the lobby in his trademark hot-pink-and-black T-Mobile hoodie, then CEO John Legere was instantly recognizable to hotel guests. His company wasn?t just patronizing the president?s hotel. It was advertising that it was doing so.

That evening, in a closed-door suite just off the hotel lobby, a small group of political donors got to have dinner with the president of the United States. The guests included a steel magnate, who complained to the president about rules limiting the number of hours a trucker could be on the road, and a property developer, who suggested holding the next summit with Kim Jong-un at a site he had built near Seoul.

Also in the mix were two then-obscure businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. They had secured an invite to the dinner after promising a $325,000 donation to a Trump-aligned super-PAC. Like the other guests, they came with an agenda. Parnas and Fruman wanted to build an energy business in Ukraine but felt the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Marie Yovanovitch, stood in their way. Parnas fed the president a fabrication that was sure to get his attention: that Yovanovitch was an anti-Trumper. ?She?s basically walking around telling everybody, ?Wait, he?s going to get impeached,??? Parnas told the president. Trump was enraged.

Parnas and Fruman and the T-Mobile executives were pulling the same lever that night. And they all got results. T-Mobile?s merger was later approved, and Ambassador Yovanovitch was abruptly removed from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. Later, Parnas and Fruman were indicted on a -campaign-finance-violations charge (they had concealed the origins of their super-PAC donation) and were arrested with one-way tickets to Vienna in hand. (They have pleaded not guilty and face trial in 2021.) Trump claimed he did not know them.

This is the Washington Trump has built these past four years, where people who patronize Trump businesses can expect preferential treatment, where a deputy secretary can oversee a bailout that benefits his family?s company, where administration officials fly in private jets paid for by the public ? and where top government officials don?t bother to divest from industries whose policies they oversee.

It started at the top, of course. Just nine days before his inauguration, Trump held his first news conference as president-elect. Presiding over a table with towering stacks of folders, Trump?s lawyer suggested there would be a ?wall? between Trump?s business and his presidency, even though Trump himself made it quite clear that he would not be divesting. ?I have a no-conflict situation because I?m president,? Trump said. ?I could run the Trump Organization, great, great company, and I could run the company ? the country,? he added. ?I?d do a very, very good job, but I don?t want to do that.?

Trump never separated himself from his company in any meaningful way. Trump?s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, also didn?t fully divest from their business interests. The couple made tens of millions of dollars from an array of limited-liability companies while also serving in the White House. Trump?s Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, pledged to Congress that he would largely sell off his assets, then took dozens of meetings with executives to whose companies he had personal financial ties. Others did divest, but then proceeded to use their agency budgets as their personal piggy banks.

Friends, donors, and hangers-on also thrived. Top GOP financier Elliott Broidy leveraged his fundraising into access, including a meeting in the Oval Office. Broidy attempted to use that access as a calling card with foreign officials from whom he sought security contracts.

Like several other beneficiaries of Trump?s generosity, Broidy eventually found himself in legal trouble, pleading guilty to violating foreign-lobbying laws on behalf of Malaysian and Chinese clients. But many Trump affiliates benefited in ways that are perfectly legal. Attorney William S. Consovoy, who argued before an appeals court last fall that Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and be shielded from all consequences (the judges were unpersuaded), brought in $2 million from the RNC and Trump-campaign committees. Others sought the ultimate benefit: freedom. Roger Stone, who would not turn on Trump despite the threat of jail time, was one of many Trump loyalists and allies to receive clemency from the president.

To be sure, a lot of people found ways to benefit from Trump?s time in office: journalists, progressive nonprofits, high earners ? Trump donors or not. But Trump profiteers went far beyond what used to count as standard-issue Washington swampiness. New York partnered with WNYC?s Trump, Inc. podcast to identify 51 such insiders, whose unprecedented ability to gain from the Trump presidency will go down in history. Their schemes became ever more brazen these past four years, even as their goals shifted. The initial grifts tended to be strictly transactional on the model of the Trump Organization itself, through which the Trump name could be had by nearly anyone for the right price. Later on, not just money but power became the president?s currency. The quids became subtler: shielding Trump from legal consequences, investigating a political opponent, providing an intellectual rationale for understanding the presidency as Trump sees it ? not as a civic duty but as a business.

Read our full list of 51 Trump insiders (from Sheldon Adelson to Ryan Zinke) at New York Magazine. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

Trump, Inc. co-host Andrea Bernstein sits down with Kai Wright, host of The United States of Anxiety, to discuss how American history informs the 2020 election. The conversation, called "Who Matters in America 2020?," was part of Reporter's Notebook series at The Greene Space.

Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

President Trump ran for president on three promises: He'd build a wall on the Mexican border, repeal Obamacare, and overhaul the nation's tax system. And approaching the 2020 election, Trump's only accomplished one of them ? and even that didn't live up to the hype.

"It's important to point out is the impact has been not what he said it would be," says Sally Herships, host and co-executive producer of The Heist, a new podcast from the Center for Public Integrity. "It has not been what he promised, which was, a sizable increase in jobs, higher wages ... just kind of this rainbow-like better life for many Americans."

?Not only will this tax bill pay for itself," promised Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, "but it will pay down debt.? Yet nearly every analysis said the changes would add more than $1 trillion trillion to the national debt. This episode of The Heist, "Buyer's Remorse," looks at how the Trump administration rushed the law through.

Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

In his new book, "Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation," prosecutor Andrew Weissmann offers a new account into the inner workings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into President Trump.

Related episodes:
? The Questions Mueller Didn't Ask
? Trump's Moscow Tower Problem
? Six Tips for Preparing for the Mueller Report, Which May or May Not Be Coming

Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

After the news broke in May of last year that government-sponsored lending agency Freddie Mac had agreed to back $786 million in loans to the Kushner Companies, political opponents asked whether the family real estate firm formerly led by the president?s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, had received special treatment. 

?We are especially concerned about this transaction because of Kushner Companies? history of seeking to engage in deals that raise conflicts of interest issues with Mr. Kushner,? Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Tom Carper (D-Delaware) wrote to Freddie Mac?s CEO in June 2019.

The loans helped Kushner Companies scoop up thousands of apartments in Maryland and Virginia, the business?s biggest purchase in a decade. The deal, first reported by Bloomberg, also ranked among Freddie?s largest ever. At the time, the details of its terms weren?t disclosed. Freddie Mac officials didn?t comment publicly then. Kushner?s lawyer said Jared was no longer involved in decision-making at the company. (He does continue to receive millions from the family business, according to his financial disclosures, including from some properties with Freddie Mac-backed loans.)

Freddie Mac packaged the 16 loans into bonds and sold them to investors in August 2019. But Kushner Companies hadn?t finished its buying spree. Within the next two months, records show, Freddie Mac backed another two loans to the Kushners for an additional $63.5 million, allowing the company to add two more apartment complexes to its portfolio. 

A new analysis by ProPublica shows Kushner Companies received unusually favorable loan terms for the 18 mortgages it obtained with Freddie Mac?s backing. The loans allowed the Kushner family company to make lower monthly payments and borrow more money than was typical for similar loans, 2019 Freddie Mac data shows. The terms increase the risk to the agency and to investors who buy bonds with the Kushner mortgages in them. 

Moreover, Freddie Mac?s estimates of the Kushner properties? profitability ? a core element of any decision to back a loan ? have already proven to be overly optimistic. All 16 properties in the firm?s biggest loan package delivered smaller profits in 2019 than Freddie Mac expected, despite the then-booming economy. The loan for the largest property lagged Freddie Mac?s profit prediction by 31% last year.

U.S. taxpayers could be responsible for paying back much of the nearly $850 million in Freddie Mac financing if Kushner Companies defaults and its properties drop significantly in value. During the last real estate crash, taxpayers had to bail out Freddie Mac and its larger sibling, Fannie Mae, to the tune of $190 billion as the agencies plunged into the government equivalent of bankruptcy. (The agencies ultimately repaid the money and more.) 

The involvement of Jared?s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer adds to questions about whether the family sought to exploit its political influence. Meyer, who shares her brother?s slight build, porcelain features and dark chestnut hair, lobbied Freddie Mac in person on behalf of Kushner Companies in February last year, a timeline of the deal obtained by ProPublica shows. She has previously drawn criticism for invoking her brother?s name while doing Kushner Companies? business before. 

In a statement Freddie Mac said it does ?not consider the political affiliations of borrowers or their family members.? It called ProPublica?s analysis ?random, arbitrary and incomplete? and asserted that the Kushner loans ?fit squarely within our publicly-available credit and underwriting standards. The terms and performance of every one of these loans is transparent and available on our website, and all the loans are current and have been consistently paid.?

A spokesperson for Kushner Companies did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

There?s no evidence the Trump administration played a role in any of the decisions and Freddie Mac operates independently. But Freddie Mac embarked on approving the loans at the moment that its government overseer, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), was changing from leadership by an Obama administration appointee to one from the Trump administration, Mark Calabria, vice-president Mike Pence?s former chief economist. Calabria, who was confirmed in April 2019, has called for an end to the ?conservatorship,? the close financial control that his agency has exerted over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae since the 2008 crisis.

The potential for improper influence exists even if the Trump administration didn?t advocate for the Kushners, said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University specializing in government and legal ethics. She compared the situation to press reports that businesses and associates connected to Jared Kushner and his family were approved to receive millions from the Paycheck Protection Program. Officials could have acted because they were seeking to curry favor with the Kushners or feared retribution if they didn?t, according to Clark. And if Kushner Companies had wanted to avoid any appearance of undue influence, she added, it should have sent only non-family executives to meet with Freddie Mac. ?I?d leave it to the professionals,? Clark said. ?I?d keep family members away from it.?

The Freddie Mac data shows that Kushner Companies secured advantageous terms on multiple points. All 18 loans, for example, allow Kushner Companies to pay only interest for the full 10-year term, thus deferring all principal payments to a balloon payment at the end. That lowers the monthly payments, but increases the possibility that the balance won?t be paid back in full. 

?That?s as risky as you get,? said Ryan Ledwith, a professor at New York University?s Schack Institute of Real Estate, of 10-year interest-only loans. ?It?s a long period of time and you?re not getting any amortization to reduce your risk over time. You?re betting the market is going to get better all by itself 10 years from now.?

Interest-only mortgages, which notoriously helped fuel the 2008 economic crisis, represent a small percentage of Freddie Mac loans. Only 6% of the 3,600 loans funded by the agency last year were interest-only for a decade or more, according to a database of its core mortgage transactions. 

Kushner Companies also loaded more debt on the properties than is usual for similar loans, with the loan value for the 16-loan deal climbing to 69% of the properties? worth. That compares with an average 59%, according to data for loans with similar terms and property types that Freddie Mac sold to investors in 2019, and is just below the 70% debt-to-value ceiling Freddie Mac sets for loans in its category. ?What we generally have seen from Freddie and Fannie,? said Andrew Little, a principal with real estate investment bank John B. Levy & Company, ?is they will do 10 years of interest-only on lower-leveraged deals.?

Loans right at the ceiling are ?not very common,? Little said, adding that ?you don?t see deals this size that commonly.?

Meanwhile Freddie Mac and its lending partner overestimated the profits for the buildings in the Kushners? 16-loan package by 12 % during the underwriting process, according to the agency?s data. Such analysis is supposed to provide a conservative, accurate picture of revenue and expenses, which should be relatively predictable in the case of an apartment building. 

But the level of income anticipated failed to materialize in 2019, financial reports show. The most dramatic overstatement came with the largest loan in the deal, $120 million for Bonnie Ridge Apartments, a 960-apartment complex in Baltimore. In that case, realized profits last year were 31% below what Freddie Mac had expected. 

?That?s definitely a significant amount,? said John Griffin, a University of Texas professor who specializes in forensic finance and has studied mortgage underwriting. He co-authored a recent paper highlighting as worrisome loans in which projected profits exceeded actual profits by 5%. ?It?s a problem when underwritten income is inflated or overstated,? he said. ?That is a key metric that determines the safety of the loan.?

Griffin?s paper found that 28% of all loans examined had projected profits that were 5% or more greater than what the properties actually earned in their first year. Some instances of underperformance could be caused by bad luck, the paper acknowledged, but ?such situations should be relatively rare.? Yet in the case of Freddie Mac?s estimates in the Kushner deal, 13 of the original 16 loans met or exceeded the 5% threshold ? many by a considerable amount.

Read Heather Vogell's full print story at ProPublica.

Related episodes:
? He Went To Jared
? Dirt
? Trump and Deutsche Bank: It?s Complicated

The Freddie Mac headquarters building in McLean, Va., Saturday, April 21, 2018. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)

President Trump has spent years fighting with politicians and prosecutors who wanted to see his taxes. Now we know what he?s been hiding.

Co-host Ilya Marritz talks to ProPublica's Heather Vogell and WNYC's Meg Cramer about what's in the groundbreaking new reporting from The New York Times and the new questions raised by 20 years of Trump tax data.

Check out some of our own stories from years of covering President Trump's taxes:

? The Accountants
? The Family Business
? The Numbers Don't Match 
? What We've Learned From Trump's Tax Transcripts
? Trump and Taxes: The Art of the Dodge
? Trump?s Company Is Suing Towns Across the Country to Get Breaks on Taxes

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

President Trump likes talking about voter fraud. He also likes filing lawsuits. Now his campaign is filing lawsuits across the country, citing the alleged dangers of voter fraud.

Plus: ProPublica reporters Mike Spies, Jake Pearson, and Jessica Huseman on secret, Republican-only meetings about election policy.

The Qatari government rents office space in President Trump's most profitable building. No one works there.

Dan Alexander is a senior editor at Forbes and author of the new book "White House Inc: How Donald Trump Turned The Presidency Into a Business." This interview is based on an excerpt of the book that ran in Vanity Fair.

The story of the long, strange wind-up to the attack that remade the world? and the chances we had to stop it. A new series from HISTORY and WNYC Studios.

This story was co-published with Time Magazine and ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

Rick Perry came to Washington looking for a deal, and less than two months into his tenure as Energy Secretary, he found a hot prospect. It was April 19, 2017, and Perry, the former Texas governor, failed presidential candidate and contestant on Dancing With the Stars, was sitting in his office on Independence Avenue with two influential Ukrainians. ?He said, ?Look, I?m a new guy, I?m a dealmaker, I?m a Texan,?? recalls one of them, Yuriy Vitrenko, then Ukraine?s chief energy negotiator. ?We?re ready to do deals,? he remembers Perry saying.

The deals they discussed that day became central to Ukraine?s complex relationship with the Trump Administration, a relationship that culminated in December with the House vote to impeach President Donald Trump. Perry was a leading figure in the impeachment inquiry last fall. He was among the officials, known as the ?three amigos,? who ran a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine on Trump?s behalf. Their aim, according to the findings of the impeachment inquiry in the House, was to embarrass Trump?s main political rival, Joe Biden.

Alongside this political mission, Perry and his staff at the Energy Department worked to advance energy deals that were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry?s friends and political donors, a six-month investigation by reporters from TIME, WNYC and ProPublica shows. Two of these deals seemed set to benefit Energy Transfer, the Texas company on whose board Perry served immediately before and after his stint in Washington. The biggest was worth an estimated $20 billion, according to U.S. and Ukrainian energy executives involved in negotiating them.

If this long discussed deal succeeds, Perry himself could stand to benefit: in March, three months after leaving government, he owned Energy Transfer shares currently worth around $800,000, according to his most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Perry appears to have stayed on the right side of the law in pursuing the Ukraine ventures. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York questioned at least four people about the deals over the past year, according to five people who are familiar with the conversations and discussed them with our reporting team on condition of anonymity. ?As far back as last year, they were already interested in events that had taken place in Ukraine around Rick Perry,? including ­allegations that Perry ?was trying to get deals for his buddies,? says one of the people who spoke to the Manhattan prosecutors. Perry is not a target of their investigation, according to two sources familiar with the probes.

But two ethics experts say Perry?s efforts were violations of federal regulations. Administration officials are not allowed to participate in matters directly relating to companies on whose board they have recently served. Other experts say Perry and his aides may have broken a federal rule that prohibits officials from advocating for companies that have not been vetted by the Commerce Department. ?Even if it skirts the criminal statute, it?s still unethical,? says Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer in the White House of President George W. Bush, with whom we shared our findings.

Through a spokesman, Perry said he ?never connected or ­facilitated discussions? between Energy Transfer and Ukraine?s state energy firm in one of the deals we uncovered. The spokesman declined to comment on the other ventures Perry advanced while in government, including the $20 ­billion deal, or on the federal probe. In response to written questions for this article, Energy Transfer said, ?We are not aware of any contact between Secretary Perry and Ukrainian officials on Energy Transfer?s behalf.?

Read the full print story by Time reporter Simon Shuster.

Update, Sept. 24, 2020: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter on Wednesday asking the Inspector General for the Department of Energy to investigate Rick Perry?s actions in Ukraine. Citing a joint investigation by the Senate?s Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate?s Committee on Finance, Wyden wrote that ?witness testimony in this investigation has directly implicated former Secretary Rick Perry in alleged wrongdoing and the Department more broadly in a scheme to undermine anti-corruption efforts that were implemented by Ukraine in partnership with the international community.? The letter noted that a Naftogaz board member testified that Perry ?inappropriately pressured the Ukrainian government to place Robert Bensh on the Naftogaz advisory board while Department of Energy officials were also pressuring the Ukrainian government to sign a memorandum of understanding with a private business entity connected to Mr. Bensh, Louisiana Natural Gas Exports.? The letter also cites reporting by ProPublica, Time and WNYC for ?Trump, Inc.,? as well as reporting by other media outlets, and asks the IG to investigate what role Perry played in ?pressuring Ukraine to make changes to the Naftogaz advisory board?; what efforts Perry and his staff made to ?facilitate a deal between any American companies and Naftogaz?; whether the Naftogaz deals ?were in Ukraine?s financial or economic interest?; whether Perry ?undermined anti-corruption reform efforts in Ukraine? and whether Perry received ethics advice ?about his efforts related to [Michael Bleyzer], Mr. Bensh, and Naftogaz.?

Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and President Trump's niece, talks to co-host Andrea Bernstein about the Trump family, the Republican National Convention, and her book "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man."

Additional reading:
? In secretly recorded audio, President Trump?s sister says he has ?no principles? and ?you can?t trust him? (The Washington Post)
? Mary Trump, The President's Niece (Fresh Air)

This conversation originally aired as part of WNYC?s Special Convention Coverage 2020.

In this bonus episode of Trump, Inc., co-hosts Ilya Marritz and Andrea Bernstein talk to Politico?s Natasha Bertrand and The Atlantic?s Franklin Foer about the new report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence detailing Russia's role in the 2016 election.

Additional reading:
? ?Russiagate Was Not A Hoax? by Franklin Foer
? ?The Trump-Putin Relationship, as Dictated by the Kremlin? and ?How a Russian disinfo op got Trump impeached? by Natasha Bertrand
? Read the full Senate report.

This conversation originally aired part of WNYC?s Special Convention Coverage 2020.

This episode was originally released Nov. 13, 2019. 

The impeachment inquiry focuses on whether or not there was a quid pro quo: Military aid in exchange for an investigation. But what if you look at the same events from a different vantage point? The business interests at play.

This episode: How Rudy Giuliani's associates worked their connections to oust the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine. How President Trump's personal interests came into alignment with the interests of an indicted foreign businessman. And how all of them have been working to discredit Joe Biden.

Read more about the flow of money in the Ukraine scandal. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica's investigations into the president's business practices.

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica?s investigations into the president?s business practices.

President Donald Trump?s recent musings about staging his Republican National Convention speech at the White House drew criticism from government ethics watchdogs and even one Republican senator, John Thune of South Dakota.

The suggestion wasn?t an isolated blending of official presidential duties and the campaign. It was part of a yearslong pattern of disregarding such boundaries in the Trump White House. There is a law, called the Hatch Act, that prohibits most government officials from engaging in politicking in the course of their official work.

The law does not apply to the president or vice president. While other presidents took campaign advantage of the trappings of the office, something that came to be known as the ?Rose Garden strategy,? they typically refrained from explicit electoral appeals or attacks on their opponents at official presidential events. Federal election law and measures governing appropriations prohibit using taxpayer dollars for electioneering.

Since resuming official travel at the beginning of May after a coronavirus-imposed pause, Trump has held 25 presidential out-of-town events. Of these events, transcribed on the official White House website, the president spoke about the election or attacked his opponent, Joe Biden, at 12 of them, nearly half. His presidential stage provided a venue for supporters to urge others to vote for Trump in November at three additional events.

Administration officials have been cited for breaking the Hatch Act 13 times by federal investigators at the Office of Special Counsel (not to be confused with special counsel Robert Mueller). Twelve more investigations are underway. The law dates from the New Deal era, enacted after a scandal where employees of the Works Progress Administration were pressured to work on the campaigns of candidates friendly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Neither the White House, the campaign or Trump?s campaign treasurer, Bradley Crate, responded to requests for comment.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, violated the Hatch Act so many times that the OSC took the drastic measure of recommending she be fired, calling her actions ?egregious, notorious and ongoing.? (Trump refused to do so.)

The special counsel, Henry Kerner, is a Trump appointee and member of the conservative Federalist Society. He previously worked for Republicans Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz on Capitol Hill.

When asked about the OSC?s recommendation, Conway said, ?blah blah blah,? adding, ?Let me know when the jail sentence starts.? Hatch Act violations are not criminal. The most significant result of a violation is dismissal.

Hatch Act violations were relatively rare in the previous two presidential administrations. Two cabinet officials were cited for Hatch Act violations during the eight years of Barack Obama?s presidency. Some half-dozen senior officials in the Obama and Bush administrations said that they were frequently advised to avoid even the appearance of electioneering at official events.

?There was a very bright line between what was a campaign event and what was an official event,? said Greg Jenkins, the director of advance for President George W. Bush during the period that included the 2004 reelection campaign. ?If you could stretch things and say, yes, it?s perfectly legal to do this, but it has the appearance of impropriety ? you don't do it.?

Kathleen Sebelius, the former secretary of health and human services under Obama, was cited for making a statement urging his reelection during a gala for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group. Sebelius apologized, and the Treasury was reimbursed for the cost of the trip.

?I?d prefer that it not be on my record,? Sebelius said in an interview from her home in Lawrence, Kansas. Given that she was on the Kansas ethics commission and was a national board member of Common Cause, ?it?s kind of a black mark.? She added: ?But I did what they say I did,? and said that ?it puts into perspective what goes on every day in this current administration that just makes the top of my head come off.?

Previous campaigns have reimbursed taxpayers for costs associated with politicking while on official travel. And while disclosures do show that campaign committees associated with Trump have paid $896,000 to the Treasury and the White House Military Office in May and June, federal law doesn?t require an accounting of what those expenses were for.

Trump would not violate the Hatch Act if he chose the White House for his nomination acceptance speech, but executive branch employees in the White House and agencies might be in jeopardy if they support or attend the event, experts said.

?There are several laws that prohibit the use of federal funds and resources for partisan political events like the president?s RNC speech,? said Donald Sherman, deputy director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. ?Trump?s predecessors scrupulously avoided mixing official conduct with politics in this way, but President Trump has routinely used the apparatus of the government to try to boost his electoral prospects.?

Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica?s investigations into the president?s business practices.

This year, President Donald Trump?s reelection campaign filed defamation lawsuits against three of the country?s most prominent news outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Then it filed another suit against a somewhat lower-profile news organization: northern Wisconsin?s WJFW-TV, which serves the 134th-largest market in the country.

The Trump campaign sued the station over what it claims is a false and defamatory ad WJFW  aired that showed Trump downplaying the threat of the coronavirus as a line tracking new COVID-19 infections ticks up and up on the screen.

Dozens of stations ran the ad. But the Trump campaign chose to sue just NBC-affiliate WJFW, which is owned by a relatively small company that only has two other local TV stations, both in Bangor, Maine. The campaign did not initially sue the political organization that produced the ad. That group later joined the case as a defendant.

The curious lawsuit is part of a larger, aggressive and exceedingly expensive legal operation by the Trump campaign that?s the focus of our latest ?Trump, Inc.? podcast.

The campaign has spent over $16 million on litigation and other legal costs ? more than any past presidential campaign and more than 10 times what presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has spent on legal services, according to disclosures.

Trump has long boasted about his penchant for filing lawsuits. The president and his businesses have reportedly filed over 2,000 lawsuits. After losing a 2006 defamation lawsuit against the journalist Tim O?Brien, Trump told the Post that he knew he couldn?t win, but he sued anyway. ?I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more,? Trump said. ?I did it to make his life miserable, which I?m happy about.?

As with other areas, Trump has taken his approach to running his personal life and business to the presidency.

Multiple media law experts told us that the suit against tiny WJFW has little chance of succeeding. Susan Seager, a media defense lawyer and adjunct professor at The University of California, Irvine, School of Law, said, ?The courts are very deferential and very protective of opinions about public figures and political issues.?

So if Trump isn?t likely to win, what might he be trying to do? Matthew Sanderson, who served as counsel for Sens. John McCain and Mitt Romney, said he thinks the Trump campaign is ?engaging in scare tactics.?

?The reason in my opinion that the Trump campaign is filing these types of lawsuits is not necessarily to punish the Wisconsin station ? they?re not going to be successful,? Sanderson said. ?The reason they?re doing this is to send a message to the rest of the stations to be careful? about running anti-Trump ads.

Unlike many other states, Wisconsin doesn?t have a law that makes complainants pay for defendants? legal costs if a defamation suit ends up being dismissed as frivolous.

Seager estimates that fighting a defamation lawsuit brought by a high-profile group like the Trump campaign could cost anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000, just to go through the process of getting it dismissed.

We asked the Trump campaign and its lawyers about the suit and why they chose WJFW. They did not respond.

The TV station commented, through a lawyer, that ?WJFW has no choice but to fight the Trump campaign?s attempt to bully a small-market broadcaster into surrendering its First Amendment rights. The public counts on local broadcasters, especially in an election year, to remain free to air criticisms of public officials.?

Of course, one critical difference between lawsuits Trump used to file in his business dealings and the ones his campaign is filing is that Trump no longer has to use his own money. His donors are picking up the tab.

Trump?s disclosures show his campaign has paid about $200,000 to the firm handling the Wisconsin case.

The campaign has also paid $3.3 million to the firm of attorney Charles Harder, who specializes in high-profile reputation defense lawsuits. Harder is representing the Trump campaign in the three other defamation suits against media organizations. Harder is perhaps best known as the lawyer who successfully sued Gawker into bankruptcy on Hulk Hogan?s behalf while being surreptitiously funded by venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

Another set of expenses in the disclosures is also interesting. It shows the Trump campaign spent $95,161 on ?legal & IT consulting? paid to ? ?The Trump Corporation.? Neither the campaign nor Trump?s company responded to questions about those charges.

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The Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decisions yesterday in two cases concerning oversight, presidential immunity, and the balance of powers. Both cases address whether subpoenas seeking financial information about President Donald Trump's business dealings, including his personal tax returns, can be enforced. 

The court held in one case that subpoenas in a criminal investigation into Trump's business dealings by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance can be enforced. The court's decision in the second case, concerning congressional subpoenas to the president's shadowy longtime accounting firm, was more complex. That case will go back down to lower courts with a four-pronged test created by Chief Justice John Roberts that aims to preserve Congress' authority to conduct oversight while ensuring they don?t abuse those powers. 

Trump, Inc. co-hosts Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz spoke with Melissa Murray, a law professor at NYU, about the decisions. Here are their takeaways:

We won't see the president's tax returns before the election. Trump can still try to fight Vance?s subpoenas on more specific grounds, and at the end the documents would only go to a grand jury, not the public. And while the court upheld Congress? right to subpoena documents from the president, there is little chance this back and forth will be settled by November.

The Supreme Court's decision may not have really settled the question of congressional oversight. On one hand, the court unequivocally affirmed that the president can be investigated by Congress. At the same time, it did not spell out exactly how Congress should conduct such oversight. While Roberts' four-part test seems straightforward, it's going to involve a lot of judgment in practice.

The real winner isn't President Trump or Congress. "The real winner here is Chief Justice John Roberts, who's managed to keep this court out of the political fray," said Murray. "He has effectively, with both of these decisions, steered the court through a really treacherous course that could have been a polarizing mess for the court to wade into, and he's done it in advance of what will likely be one of the most polarizing elections of the modern age." 

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

Donald Trump is famous ? and infamous ? for his use of Twitter and Facebook. But particularly since the pandemic forced him to largely swear off his favorite mass, in-person rallies, his campaign has been amping up the use of another form of alternative media: YouTube and podcasts.

The president?s most recent sit-down interview? As it happens, it occurred last week on ?Triggered,? a YouTube program hosted by his namesake son. In a conversation in the White House?s map room, Trump Jr. quizzed his dad about everything from who his favorite child is to whether aliens exist ? to a Fox News report that Osama bin Laden wanted to assassinate President Barack Obama so that Joe Biden would ascend to the presidency.

This was no ordinary campaign video, nor was it a random question, this week?s episode of ?Trump, Inc.? makes clear. ?Triggered? followed the exchange about bin Laden with a campaign ad that repeated the same point, showing how closely the program?s conversations are tied in with campaign talking points. ?Trump, Inc.? explores the Trump campaign?s universe of podcasts and YouTube shows, which has expanded since the coronavirus began locking down huge swaths of the country. (The campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)

Sure, every major candidate has a podcast. Hillary Clinton had one. Biden has one, though it hasn?t been updated since mid-May. But unlike those dutiful and largely ignored offerings, ?Triggered? is part of a growing constellation of shows. There?s the campaign?s official podcast, hosted by Trump?s daughter-in-law, Lara. (Kayleigh McEnany used to fill in occasionally as host before being promoted to White House press secretary.) And there?s ?The Right View.? Just imagine ?The View,? conducted entirely on Zoom, if Meghan McCain was considered too liberal to be on the panel and if no one ever disagreed. The programs have combined to create something of a Trump media network, one that takes the president?s bellicose messaging and transports it to an environment of family, friendship and banter.

People are starting to pay attention. Nightly programming of the unofficial Trump Network reaches upward of a million viewers each week. It?s a realm dedicated to reinforcing even the president?s most incendiary ideas ? with no pushback, skepticism or difference of opinion.

To learn more about how the programs lay out their views of everything from bin Laden assassination plots to the controversy over vote by mail, listen to this week?s episode of ?Trump, Inc.?

 

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

When Congress was considering passing the more than $2 trillion coronavirus bailout two months ago, President Donald Trump made his vision for oversight clear. ?I?ll be the oversight,? he said. 

The CARES Act empowers a number of different offices to make sure the money is spent wisely and without favoritism. Shortly after he signed it into law, Trump ousted the inspector general who was slated to lead the oversight ? one of five watchdogs the president has purged in less than two months. 

Trump also issued a signing statement asserting that he can ignore oversight provisions of the bailout law and that Congress does not have to be consulted. ?My Administration will treat this provision as hortatory but not mandatory,? he wrote. 

We spoke to an official just hired to do one of the jobs Trump cited in his signing statement. She told us that Trump?s moves have made her particularly careful to avoid any ?adverse? comments about the administration. 

Linda Miller began work this week as the deputy executive director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, or PRAC. Miller spent a decade at the nonpartisan, independent Government Accountability Office, where she dug into the case of a crooked Navy contractor nicknamed Fat Leonard. She said she?s learned that corruption often starts at the top. 

Here is an edited transcript of our conversation with Miller. She spoke with ?Trump, Inc.? co-host Ilya Marritz a few days before formally joining the PRAC. (Our episode also includes an interview with Bharat Ramamurti, a member of the bailout?s congressional watchdog.)

Trump, Inc.: You warned my producer when we booked this interview that there are a lot of things that you can?t talk about or won?t talk about. Just so I know, what are those things?

Linda Miller: Uh, anything that would be in any way adverse to the administration is something that I won?t be commenting on in any way.

Trump, Inc.: What do you mean by ?adverse to the administration??

Miller: I can?t speak negatively about the president or any of the decisions he?s made, particularly when it comes to the IG community. That?s the biggest, probably political football around my new role. The IG community is obviously under a lot of stress and scrutiny.

There?s a lot of politics, and people have been asking me what it?s going to be like to go work in the inspector general community. I can speak real broadly. I just won?t say anything that?s in any way derogatory about the president because, obviously in my role, I need to stay as neutral as possible in order to basically stay in my role, frankly.

Trump, Inc.: And that?s your judgment, coming into this job.

Miller: Right. That?s my judgment.

Trump, Inc.: I know that your career specialty is detecting risk of fraud. You did this at the Government Accountability Office. You also did it in the private sector. What are some of the frauds that you have uncovered?

Miller: My specialty is less in investigating fraud and more in helping organizations prevent fraud from occurring. So, often when a big fraud event occurs, I come in afterwards and help the agency or sometimes the private-sector company think about how they were vulnerable.

I?m not sure if you?re familiar with the very large Navy scandal, it?s affectionately known as the ?Fat Leonard? scandal. A contractor who bribed a variety of senior government officials all the way up to admirals, in order to get information that would give him a competitive advantage.

That particular scandal was shocking for the scale and the scope. There were bribes involving prostitutes, and meals, and jewelry and all kinds of stuff.

And I often use that fraud example when I talk about how fraud manifests itself, and especially when leadership is in any way participatory in it. And I?ve always found that interesting, that people who otherwise wouldn?t accept a bribe or participate in a collusion scheme, when they see other people doing it, and the people that they see doing it are people they respect, they tend to think it may not be so bad.  

Trump, Inc.: Right. You?re saying, if people at the top or near the top do it, everyone else thinks it?s OK.

Miller: Yup. Exactly. And it?s shocking how many fraud schemes are perpetrated by senior leadership of an organization. Often people below them won?t question decisions they make because they?re in charge. So they?ve got all this power and using that power, abusing that power, is a really common way that fraud shows up both in government, and in [the] private sector.

Trump, Inc.: So we are talking just a few days before you start work as the deputy executive director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, the PRAC. By the time people hear this, you will be at the PRAC already. How are you thinking about how you?re going to do that job?

Miller: I'm really excited about the opportunities for this new role. I mean, the PRAC was created by the CARES Act, which is the coronavirus stimulus act. As most people know, there?s over $2.4 trillion of federal money that went out in that stimulus bill. And so there?s obviously an enormous opportunity for fraud to occur across a variety of ways, programs and benefit programs, different agencies.

Trump, Inc.: So what are the main categories of fraud that you?re going to look for? Help us think about where things can go wrong.

Miller: I would say No. 1 on my list of concerns is identity theft. The biggest difference between the Recovery Act back in 2009 and now is the vast number of breaches that have occurred in the last 12 years.

Obviously the [Paycheck] Protection Program has gotten a lot of scrutiny, and we will be looking at a deeper dive into [it]. 

And then I think another big area that I envision the PRAC playing a role is building out some advanced data analytics capabilities that can look across the different government agencies and really identify patterns, trends, with the aspirational goal of essentially being able to provide indicators and red flags to agencies. Because you know, most of the IG?s world is what we call ?pay and chase.? The money?s gone out, and we?re trying to go back and get it back.

Trump, Inc.: Will you be looking at contracting as well?

Miller: Yes, definitely. Obviously when you put this much money out, and opportunities for contractors to gain an advantage over their competitors, they start to engage in a variety of fraudulent activities, including kickbacks and bribery and collusion, and all these sorts of corruption schemes. And friendships between leadership and contracting companies way too often plays a role in who gets a contract.

Trump, Inc.: At the beginning of this interview, I was actually kind of surprised you basically said, like, I cannot anger the president. So given that you have this concern about angering the president and knowing that investigations you do, or conclusions you draw, could anger the president, how do you do your job? I mean, see a lot of potential conundrums for you that you might face very, very quickly.

Miller: You know, actually, I don?t think we?re going to get on the wrong side of the president here at the PRAC. I think that what we?re really trying to do is go after unscrupulous actors who may have tried to get funding they weren?t entitled to.

We?re going to be looking at the bad guys outside of government. We?re going to be looking at the identity theft rings, and we?re going to be looking at the everyday bad actor who wants to cash in on a huge government program. And so we?re all on the same side here.

Trump, Inc.: I understand there are things that you don?t want to say, but the president has made it pretty clear that he sees government as a tool to reward allies and punish critics and enemies.

Here?s this huge pile of money that?s going out. It?s going out through executive branch agencies. One could imagine any number of scenarios where the president would be unhappy with a bright light being shined on bad things being done in those agencies or laws being broken in those agencies or rules being bent in those agencies. So if and when it comes to that moment, what are you going to do?

Miller: You know, the thing I?m being hired to do, and the thing I did for 10 years at GAO: to maintain generally accepted government auditing standards.

I'm a big believer in, my mom used to say, ?Always keep your side of the street clean.? 

Which really meant, focus on the things you can control. And for me, I?ve got a mission and I?ve got a job to do in this role. And I?m really excited and I feel a sense of responsibility. Really, truly, a sense of awesome responsibility to American citizens and American taxpayers to carry that role out. And nothing?s going to change about how I will assist and direct our organization in adhering to those standards.

And I think that?s what the country was founded on. And there?s a reason that the inspectors general were created in 1978. And I think the mission is as important now, if not more than it ever has been.

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This story was co-published with ProPublica. Our reporting on President Trump's relationship with Deutsche Bank was originally published in May 2019.

A decade ago, loan filings showed Trump Tower in New York City had a reported profit of about $13.3 million. But when the tower refinanced its debt soon after, the profits for the same year ? 2010 ? somehow appeared higher. A new lender listed the profits as $16.1 million, or 21% more than they had been recorded previously.  

The next year?s earnings for the building also ?improved? between the two filings. Profits for 2011 were listed as 12% higher under the new loan than the old, according to reports by loan servicers and data provider Trepp. 

ProPublica uncovered the Trump Tower discrepancies by examining publicly available data for mortgages that are packaged into securities known as commercial mortgage-backed securities, comparing the same years in reports for different CMBS. If a bank had held onto the loan, instead of selling it to investors, such information would have been kept private. No evidence has emerged that the Trump Organization was involved in changing the profit figures.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization?s chief legal officer, said: ?Not only were the numbers provided to the servicer accurate, but Trump Tower is considered one of the most underleveraged commercial buildings around.? 

The discrepancies in the tower profits match a pattern described in a whistleblower complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which ProPublica revealed this month. The complaint accuses commercial lenders of fraudulently inflating the income numbers underlying loans in many CMBS. 

The complaint named seven servicers and 14 lenders, including two of the country?s biggest issuers of CMBS ? Ladder Capital and Wells Fargo. Both were involved in the more recent Trump Tower loan, one as the lender, the second as the financial institution that packaged the loan into a CMBS. The complaint does not say which entities altered specific numbers and does not address whether borrowers were involved in, or knew about, the alleged fraud.

Wells Fargo declined to comment. Ladder Capital did not respond to questions about Trump?s signature Fifth Avenue tower. Ladder did respond to questions for ProPublica?s earlier article; it acknowledged it had altered historical numbers for two other loans ProPublica asked about, to remove expenses that were not recurring in the future. The lender said its actions were appropriate. (Ladder is a publicly traded commercial real estate investment trust with more than $6 billion in assets. It employs Jack Weisselberg, the son of the Trump Organization?s longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, as an executive director whose job is to make loans. Jack Weisselberg declined to comment.)

When the Trump Organization refinanced its loan for Trump Tower in 2012, it increased the size of its loan from $27.5 million to $100 million, extracting $67.9 million in cash. The interest-only loan originally represented about 8% of the more than $1 billion in mortgages assembled into the CMBS. (Only the commercial part of the tower ? with retail tenants such as Gucci and offices, including for the Trump Organization ? served as collateral for the loan.)

For both 2010 and 2011, data shows the discrepancies in net operating income between the old and new loans for Trump Tower were largely due to the new loan reporting lower expenses. The prospectus for the more recent loan stated that ?the historical expenses exclude security associated with Donald J. Trump?s personal services? ? though it did not specify dollar amounts for the change. Greater revenues were cited for both years under the new loan, too, but the prospectus did not explain why.

The whistleblower complaint, filed by a CMBS-industry insider named John Flynn, concerns the nearly $600  billion CMBS market. It accuses lenders and servicers of manipulating historical cash flows, failing to report misrepresentations, changing names and addresses of properties, and ?deceptively and inaccurately? describing loan representations. The complaint asserts that Flynn has found overstatements in $150 billion worth of CMBS since 2013.

The misrepresentations allowed properties to qualify for loans they wouldn?t have otherwise, Flynn asserts, while leaving investors in the dark.

The SEC has not taken any public action in response to Flynn?s complaint; the agency declined to comment. 

Altering past profits without providing an explanation is ?highly questionable,? John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert in securities regulation, told ProPublica for its earlier article on CMBS.

As hotels, retail and office properties face unprecedented difficulties due to the virus that has shuttered much of the country, Flynn says the manipulations have increased the likelihood and potential severity of a crash. 

Last year, ProPublica revealed another set of income discrepancies at Trump Tower and other company-owned buildings, ones that seemed to hark to the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who testified that Trump would inflate income figures when seeking a loan and deflate the figures when filing taxes. Other Trump Organization properties investigated by ProPublica reported higher profits in the CMBS filings than they did in tax filings. A Trump Organization spokesperson said at the time that ?comparing the various reports is comparing apples to oranges? because reporting requirements differ.

Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday, via teleconference, about the power to investigate the president.  

President Donald Trump has objected to subpoenas for his tax returns and other financial records. New York City prosecutors have demanded the documents as part of a criminal investigation into the president?s hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, while the House of Representatives has been seeking to investigate the conflicts of interests of a president who still owns a sprawling business. 

Trump?s lawyers have argued that a president shouldn?t be subject to investigation while in office. ?We're asking for temporary presidential immunity,? attorney Jay Sekulow said.

Andrea Bernstein of Trump, Inc. and NYU law professor Melissa Murray listened to the oral arguments and chatted with co-host Ilya Marritz about what struck them. A few takeaways:    

? Fights between the legislative and executive branch are not normally heard in front of the Supreme Court. Congress and the White House have typically negotiated solutions to such disputes. ?And the fact that we're in court is because this president hasn?t acceded to those norms,? Murray said.

? A phrase that came up repeatedly: ?presidential harassment.? It?s language that Trump frequently uses on Twitter and his lawyers raised in court. The assertion, Murray said, ?has transformed what would be considered, I think in other times, ordinary and essential legislative oversight into what accounts to bullying, harassment and mere partisan politics.?

? A number of the justices ? including the liberal Stephen Breyer ? expressed sympathy for the White House?s arguments against the House?s demands for documents, but they were far more skeptical about the claim that the president is immune from even criminal investigation. ?The court seemed not to be amenable to that kind of argument at all,? Murray said. 

The justices are expected to deliver a decision in the cases ? Trump v. Mazars, Trump v. Deutsche Bank and Trump v. Vance ? this summer.

Related reporting:
? The Accountants
? Trump and Deutsche Bank: It's Complicated
? How Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., Avoided A Criminal Indictment

On May 12, after a six-week delay caused by the pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the epic battle by congressional committees and New York prosecutors to pry loose eight years of President Donald Trump?s tax returns.

Much about the case is without precedent. Oral arguments will be publicly broadcast on live audio. The nine justices and opposing lawyers will debate the issues remotely, from their offices and homes. And the central question is extraordinary: Is the president of the United States immune from congressional ? and even criminal ? investigation?

The arguments concern whether Trump?s accounting firm, Mazars USA, must hand over his tax returns and other records to a House committee and the Manhattan district attorney, which have separately subpoenaed them. (There will also be arguments on congressional subpoenas to two of Trump?s banks.)

Trump?s accountants have been crucial enablers in his remarkable rise. And like their marquee client, they have a surprisingly colorful and tangled story of their own. It?s dramatically at odds with the image Trump has presented of his accountants as ?one of the most highly respected? big firms, solemnly confirming his numbers after months of careful scrutiny. For starters, it?s only technically true to say Trump?s accounting work is handled by a large firm.

In fact, Trump entrusts his taxes and planning to a tiny, secretive team of CPAs who have operated at various times from humble quarters in Queens and two Long Island office parks. That team, which has had two leaders with back-to-back multidecade terms, has been working for the Trumps since Fred Trump began using the firm back in the 1950s. It was eventually subsumed into Mazars USA, the American arm of a large international firm, through a series of mergers over decades.

One theme has been consistent: partners and sometimes the firm itself have faced accusations of fraud, misconduct, and malpractice on multiple occasions, an investigation by ProPublica and WNYC has found.

This story was co-published with ProPublica; visit their website to read Peter Elkind's full text story on President Trump's relationship with his accounting firm. Stay up to date with email updates about our investigations into the president?s business practices.

On April 2, Jared Kushner uncharacteristically took to the podium to speak at the White House?s daily coronavirus briefing. He?d been given the task, he said, of assisting Vice President Mike Pence?s Coronavirus Task Force with supply chain issues. ?The president,? Kushner said, ?wanted us to make sure we think outside the box, make sure we?re finding all the best thinkers in the country, making sure we?re getting all the best ideas, and that we?re doing everything possible to make sure that we can keep Americans safe.?

That very day, he said, President Donald Trump told him that ?he was hearing from friends of his in New York that the New York public hospital system was running low on critical supply.? So Kushner called Dr. Mitchell Katz, who runs the 12-hospital system, which serves, in a normal year, over a million patients. Kushner said he?d asked Katz which supply he was most nervous about: ?He told me it was the N95 masks. I asked what his daily burn was. And I basically got that number.?

In a chaotic environment, the New Jersey boy turned Manhattan businessman turned senior White House adviser is using his clout to help the cities and states at the epicenter of a global pandemic get the aid they need. 

Yet there?s another side to the equation. Kushner?s role is also a symptom of the dysfunction of the Trump administration, according to critics, some of whom worked in emergency management under Republican and Democratic administrations. The ad hoc nature of Kushner?s mission and its lack of transparency make it hard for people ? and government agencies ? to know exactly what he?s doing. So far, those officials say, there's little sign Kushner or anyone at the White House is helping New York or New Jersey with their urgent longer-term needs, particularly more testing and billions from Congress to ease the gaping holes that have emerged in local budgets. 

?If you can reach Jared, if you can applaud Jared, if you can convince him that you're the most needy, he will deliver for you,? said Juliette Kayyem, faculty chair of the homeland security project at Harvard University?s Kennedy School of Government and a former assistant secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration. But his role bypasses long-held tenets of how the federal government should work in a national emergency, she said, without addressing systemic problems, much less reinventing the bureaucracy. ?What's outside the box? What process is outside the box? It can't possibly be Kushner's [giving out his] cellphone number,? Kayyem said. ?But that's what it appears to be.? 

Read the text version of this story at ProPublica.

Related episodes:
? Dirt
? How Trump Is Eligible For A Coronavirus Rescue
? What To Look Out For

In a late March press briefing on the coronavirus, President Trump turned the microphone over to Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of a company called MyPillow. Lindell ? a regular on Fox News and at Trump properties, and a high-dollar donor to Republican causes ? talked about how his company was pivoting from pillows to protective masks ? and effusively praised the president's leadership.

We've been thinking about who stands to benefit from the coronavirus bailout, and that unusual moment highlights the close links between Trump and allies who stands to benefit (often in more ways than just publicity) from the government response to the pandemic. On this episode of the show we're examining:

? How the Trump family business qualifies for the two trillion dollar bailout
? How businesses close to Trump are getting regulatory rollbacks and other long-sought goals
? And what kind of oversight we should be expect in this new and uncertain era

Check out reporter Meg Cramer's story about how businesses within the Trump Organization stand to benefit from the coronavirus bailout and Peter Elkind's reporting on how Trump Org properties are responding to the crisis. And visit our tips page to learn how to securely share what you know. 

Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on WNYC and ProPublica's investigations.

The ?Trump, Inc.? podcast has long explored how people have tried to benefit through their proximity to the Oval Office. And we're going to continue digging into that as the Trump administration is tasked with rolling out more than $2 trillion in bailout money.  

We spoke to two people this week to help us understand the stakes. ?Some policymakers sitting in the Treasury Department or some other government agency have this awesome power to say, ?You get the money, you go out of business,.?? said Neil Barofsky, who served as the government?s watchdog for the 2008 bank bailout. ?One of the most important things we can do is make sure that power is exercised fairly, consistently, and, most importantly, consistent with the policy goals that underlie this extraordinary outpouring of taxpayer money.? 

We also spoke with journalist Sarah Chayes, a former NPR correspondent who has reported on corruption and cronyism in countries experiencing economic shock. She said powerful players often ?take advantage of adversity and uncertainty to enrich themselves.? 

But Chayes also described something else. She coined it ?disaster solidarity.? That?s when there?s so much suffering, so much adversity, ?that people's tolerance for selfish, hogging, me-first behavior is really low.? 

And that?s where you come in. We want your help to dig into the coming bailout. If you know something, please tell us.

Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. for the latest on WNYC and ProPublica's investigations.

The Trump Organization paid bribes, through middlemen, to New York City tax assessors to lower its property tax bills for several Manhattan buildings in the 1980s and 1990s, according to five former tax assessors and city employees as well as a former Trump Organization employee. 

Two of the five city employees said they personally took bribes to lower the assessment on a Trump property; the other three said they had indirect knowledge of the payments. The city employees were among 18 indicted in 2002 for taking bribes in exchange for lowering the valuations of properties, which in turn reduced the taxes owed for the buildings. All of the 18 eventually pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan except for one, who died before his case was resolved.

No building owners were charged, though the addresses of some of the properties involved became public. Trump?s buildings were not on that list. No evidence has emerged that Donald Trump personally knew of or participated in the alleged bribery. 

Trump denied any wrongdoing at the time, and the Trump Organization reiterated that position in response to questions for this article. ?To be clear, at no time did the Trump Organization or any of its employees or principals ever pay anyone for the purpose of unlawfully obtaining a lower tax valuation,? Alan Garten, the Trump Organization?s chief legal officer, wrote in a statement. ?This was corroborated by multiple investigations which found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the company or any of its principals. ... If anything, the Trump Organization was a victim of the scandal.? (Here is the company?s full statement.)

Read the full print version of this story at ProPublica. Special thanks to former New York Times reporter Charles Bagli, who first reported on the bribery scheme in 2002. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. for the latest on WNYC and ProPublica's investigations

Related episodes:
? The Numbers Don't Match
? Trump?s Company Is Suing Towns Across the Country to Get Breaks on Taxes
? Pump and Trump

This episode of Trump, Inc. was originally released on September 18, 2019. We?ll be back next week with a new episode of Trump, Inc.

We've done dozens of episodes over since Donald Trump took office, detailing how predatory lenders are paying the president, how Trump has profited from his own inauguration and how Trump's friends have sought to use their access in pursuit of profit. 

We've noticed something along the way. It's not just that the president has mixed his business and governing. It's that the way Trump does business is spreading across the government. 

Trump's company isn't like most big businesses. It is accountable to only one man, it has broken the rules, and those promoting it have long engaged in what Trump has dubbed, ahem, "truthful hyperbole."

Those traits are now popping up in the government. It may seem like the news from Washington is a cacophony of scandals. But they fit clear patterns ? patterns that Trump has brought with him from his business.

Last year, Eric Trump defended his father?s frequent visits to properties owned by the family business, saying that Trump hotels charge far less than others would. ?If they were to go to a hotel across the street, they?d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like 50 bucks,? Eric Trump told Yahoo Finance.

But recent reporting by The Washington Post?s David Fahrenthold revealed that?s not the case: records show that the Secret Service was charged rates as high as $650 a night to stay at Trump properties ? then tried to keep that information secret.

?It?s not only that Trump has control over this - he?s paying money to himself - but also that we weren?t told,? Fahrenthold said. ?You could make the case that if they publicly advertise this and listed these things in public spending databases and you and I knew about this from the beginning, they might be able to make the argument that like, ?Oh well, the public knows and they're okay with it.? But we didn't know. They didn't tell us. So there's a real moral distinction.?

Related episodes:
? The Government's Bar Tab at Mar-a-Lago
? How a Nigerian Presidential Candidate Hired a Trump Lobbyist and Ended Up in Trump?s Lobby
? Government Employees Spend Your Money at Trump Hotels

Learn more about Fahrenthold and The Post's unanswered questions about government spending at Trump properties. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica's investigations into the president's business practices.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman have attained notoriety for their parts in the Ukraine mess. They?re both Soviet-born U.S. citizens who worked closely with the president?s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, serving as emissaries in the campaign to oust then-U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and press Ukraine?s government to investigate Joe Biden?s son. 

But Parnas and Fruman also exemplify the shattering of norms when it comes to the influence of big money in politics during the administration of President Donald Trump.

?Parnas and Fruman are not the first people that we've seen fit this mold of someone with deep foreign connections, who's never given campaign contributions before, suddenly starts giving large amounts of political contributions and then shows up at exclusive events,? said Robert Maguire, the research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. But he says they can be a model for what to look for: political newcomers suddenly making big donations, often using an LLC to obscure their identity.

Parnas and Fruman now face federal criminal charges for, among other things, allegedly funneling foreign money into U.S. elections and trying to hide its source. (They?ve pleaded not guilty.)

The law is clear on this: ?At the most basic level, one is not allowed to solicit, accept, or receive any foreign money in connection with a US election at the state, federal, or local level,? said Ellen Weintraub, a member of the Federal Election Commission. In practice, though, it?s perhaps easier than ever for foreign money to enter the American political system undetected.

Learn more about how you can dig into campaign finance documents yourself with our new Reporting Recipe. Read about how watchdogs identified Parnas and Fruman?s suspicious campaign contributions at ProPublica. An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified FEC vice-chair Steven Walther as a Republican; he is an independent.

Andrea Bernstein discusses the reporting process behind Trump, Inc. and her new book, American Oligarchs: The Kushners, The Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power, with Death, Sex & Money host Anna Sale.

This bonus episode was recorded at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

Reporters Ilya Marritz and Justin Elliott have been reporting on Trump's inauguration since 2018. They looked at how the inaugural committee raised a record $107 million (and the big questions behind where that money went) and examined the role Ivanka Trump played in negotiations over space at the Trump International Hotel, located just blocks from the White House.

Those negotiations, first reported by Trump, Inc. in 2019, are now the subject of a civil suit filed by the District of Columbia?s attorney general. ?Members of the Trump family were aware of and involved in the negotiation of this unconscionable contract,? D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine wrote in the complaint charging the Trump inaugural committee and the Trump Organization with using around $1 million of charitable funds to improperly enrich the Trump family, filed Wednesday, January 22.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization dismissed the D.C. suit in an emailed statement: ?The AG?s claims are false, intentionally misleading and riddled with inaccuracies. The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that [sic] hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue. The AG?s after the fact attempt to regulate what discounts it believes the hotel should have provided as well as the timing of this complaint reeks of politics and is a clear PR stunt.?

This episode of Trump, Inc. was originally released on February 20, 2019.

For generations, the Trump family has used government and politicians as a path to profit. As president, Donald Trump has taken things even further.

?This guy is a state capitalist,? said Trump?s first biographer, reporter Wayne Barrett, in a 1992 WNYC interview, cited extensively in this episode. ?[In] every single one of his major deals, he was designated to be a millionaire and subsequently a billionaire by the government officials that he co-opted and compromised.?

?The Trump family is not shy on transforming their wealth into power in a very crude and brutal way,? says economist Gabriel Zucman, co-author of the book ?The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay.? ?But that's the nature of extreme wealth. When you're extremely wealthy what do you do? You spend your wealth and your time trying to defend your established position.?

This episode is based on reporting from host Andrea Bernstein?s new book ?American Oligarchs: the Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.? Read about the history of a 40-year tax break Trump negotiated for his Grand Hyatt hotel at ProPublica.

In 1996, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor and refugee to America sat down with an interviewer from the USC Shoah Foundation to recount what she had experienced.

?If we?re not going to tell now, in 20 years I don?t know who?s going to be to tell,? Rae Kushner said in her Yiddish-accented English. ?And now we have still the strength and we have the power to do this and to warn the rest of the world to be careful who is coming up on top of your government.?

Rae?s grandson Jared is now one of the most powerful people in the U.S. government. President Trump?s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, he is an influential voice on some of the nation?s most pressing issues, including immigration across the southern border. And to understand him, you need to understand his family story.

This episode is based on reporting from host Andrea Bernstein?s new book ?American Oligarchs: the Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.? Read more about the Kushner family at ProPublica and find an excerpt of Bernstein?s book at The New Yorker.

In the summer of 2019, Donald Trump Jr. traveled to Mongolia. On Instagram, he wrote "Guys I'm back after living the Yurt Life...We covered many miles on horseback and 4WD...Truly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen."

He didn't mention the fact that he shot and killed an endangered argali sheep. Or that the Mongolian government issued him a hunting permit after the shoot.

We learned that in many respects, Trump Jr.'s visit blurred the lines between private citizen and diplomacy. Trump Jr. even had a meeting with the Mongolian President.

Read more about Donald Trump Jr.'s trip to Mongolia. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica's investigations into the Trump family business.

Three women recall Gordon Sondland made unwanted sexual contact in business settings. One says he exposed himself. All recall professional retaliation after they rejected him. Sondland denies the allegations. 

Sondland is the US Ambassador to the European Union. He also served as a point-man for President Trump in Ukraine, as Trump put a hold on military aid. Then, Sondland became a key witness in the impeachment inquiry.

Long before Sondland moved his residence to a Brussels mansion, he was a high-profile hotelier and philanthropist in the Pacific Northwest. In Portland, he has long been a powerful investor, political donor, and patron of the arts.  

Read more about the accusations against Gordon Sondland. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica's investigations into the president's business practices.

Glenn Simpson has a lot to say about business corruption and Russian influence in the U.S. In this episode, we speak to him. Simpson first came to these issues as an investigative journalist at The Wall Street Journal. In 2010, he co-founded Fusion GPS, a research firm. During the 2016 campaign, he began to research Donald Trump for two clients: first for a Republican opposed to Trump and then for a lawyer for Democrats.

Fusion is most famous ? or infamous ? for hiring Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the so-called Steele dossier. We asked Simpson about the dossier, about becoming a part of the story, and about the deposition of former national security aide Fiona Hill, who said that when it comes to Russia, "corruption is our Achilles heel."

Simpson is now the author, with Peter Fritsch, of the new book, "Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump."

Read our full interview with Simpson. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica's investigations into the president's business practices.

The impeachment inquiry focuses on whether or not there was a quid pro quo: Military aid in exchange for an investigation. But what if you look at the same events from a different vantage point? The business interests at play.

This episode: How Rudy Giuliani's associates worked their connections to oust the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine. How President Trump's personal interests came into alignment with the interests of an indicted foreign businessman. And how all of them have been working to discredit Joe Biden.

Read more about the flow of money in the Ukraine scandal. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica's investigations into the president's business practices.

President Trump's Doral resort has been in the news a lot lately. His chief of staff announced from the White House that America would host the next G-7 summit there. Then, Trump backed off. We're looking at a conference that did happen at Doral. A conference that attracted conspiracy theorists, where a violent video featuring a fake Trump massacring members of the media was shown. (The conference organizers say they "condemn political violence.")

Trump, Inc. was there.

So was the President?s son, Donald Trump, Jr.

This week: The business of conspiracies.

Read more about who makes money when a bunch of conspiracy theorists throw a party at Trump's hotel. Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica's investigations into the president's business practices.

Donald Trump?s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is serving prison time for understating his income to the IRS, and for overstating his income to banks. Trump's former executive vice president and special counsel, Michael Cohen, is also serving prison time, for, among other things, making false statements to a bank. 

And Donald Trump? A lot of people want to see his taxes: At least two congressional committees. The Manhattan District Attorney. Trump doesn?t want ANYONE to see them. He?s gone to court three times to make sure they stay secret. The court fight is ongoing. Trump's tax documents remain walled off.

Heather Vogell of ProPublica found some anyway. She compared them to financial documents Trump filed with his lender ? and discovered that certain key numbers don't match. 

Heather spoke with over a dozen experts in accounting, law, and real estate. Not a single one of them could explain the discrepancies away.

In the past two weeks, we've heard a lot about efforts by President Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to push officials in Ukraine to investigate Trump's opponents. As the news has unfolded, it has introduced us to a litany of unfamiliar characters in both Ukraine and the U.S., many of whom were working with Giuliani or, in some fashion, on behalf of the president.

Trump, Inc. co-host Ilya Marritz was in Kiev last week following the trail of Giuliani in an effort to understand more about these obscure figures who have suddenly become so important. 

One thing that became clear during his travels: Giuliani's "anti-corruption" efforts involved working with men who have their own questionable histories. 

We reached out to Giuliani as well as the White House. We have not heard back. 

Here is a rundown of key players in Giuliani's efforts. 

The Former Prosecutor Fired for Not Going After Corruption?

Viktor Shokin was Ukraine's general prosecutor in 2015, a position akin to attorney general. He was responsible for investigating corruption. But according to U.S. officials, NGOs and the International Monetary Fund, he was not actually doing this. 

Giuliani has claimed that then-Vice President Joe Biden improperly pushed for Shokin's removal to avoid an investigation into Biden's son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. There is no evidence that is true. 

According to the now-famous whistleblower's report, Shokin spoke with Giuliani over Skype late last year in a call arranged by two Giuliani associates. (More on them in a moment.) 

In response to our questions, Shokin declined comment, explaining that he?s out of the country.

The Former Prosecutor Who Was Not a Lawyer? 

Yuriy Lutsenko took over the job of prosecutor general from Shokin in 2016. He got the job after allies in Parliament changed the law to allow the position to be filled by someone without a law degree. Lutsenko has no legal training. 

Lutsenko once told a reporter that the U.S. ambassador had given him "a list of people whom we should not prosecute." He later acknowledged that he was the one who asked for such a list. 

Lutsenko has said he's spoken with Giuliani "maybe 10 times." In the middle of one meeting in New York last January in which Giuliani and Lutsenko talked about investigating the Bidens, Giuliani reportedly called Trump to loop him in.  

In the spring, Lutsenko told a reporter he "would be happy to have a conversation" about Hunter Biden with Attorney General William Barr. Then, last week, he told the Los Angeles Times that he hadn't found any evidence against the Bidens, and said he had told Giuliani that any investigation should be conducted "through prosecutors, not through presidents."

In response to our questions, Lutsenko denied any wrongdoing. He was fired earlier this year. 

The Current Prosecutor Caught on Tape?

Nazar Kholodnytsky is now Ukraine's top anti-corruption prosecutor. Audio tapes captured Kholodnytsky in unrelated cases coaching a witness to give false testimony and tipping off suspects to police raids. Kholodnytsky acknowledged the tapes were authentic, but said they were taken out of context. 

Earlier this year, the U.S.?s then-ambassador to Ukraine called for Kholodnytsky?s firing. She explained, "Nobody who has been recorded coaching suspects on how to avoid corruption charges can be trusted to prosecute those very same cases." (The ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was removed from her position shortly after.) 

Kholodnytsky and Giuliani met in Paris in May 2019. Kholodnytsky told The Washington Post the discussion was private, "prosecutor to a former prosecutor." Kholodnytsky told the Post that he had questions about the Bidens as well as the prosecution of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.

When the Post asked Giuliani about the meeting, he said, "I'm not going to tell you about that."

Kholodnytsky told us he was too busy to answer our questions.

Giuliani?s Special Envoys? 

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are two Ukrainian-American businessmen who have worked with Giuliani and introduced him to the Ukrainian prosecutors. Giuliani has described them as his clients. They went to Ukraine after Giuliani canceled a trip in the wake of a New York Times article that revealed his travel plans.  

In a detailed story about their work with Giuliani, Parnas told Buzzfeed they did nothing wrong. "All we were doing was passing along information," Parnas said. He added, "We?re American citizens, we love our country, we love our president."

Parnas was sued for allegedly defrauding investors in a movie he was involved with, "Anatomy of an Assassin." 

"He conned us from day one," one of the investors told the Miami Herald, adding, "He financially ruined us." Parnas lost the case but has denied wrongdoing. "The truth is going to come out about that judgment," he has said. 

Fruman is well-connected in Ukraine, where he owns a number of businesses, including Mafia Rave, a beach club in Odessa. Fruman and Parnas have been political contributors in the U.S. Last year, they set up a Delaware LLC that weeks later contributed $325,000 to a Trump-allied political group. 

Giuliani was subpoenaed by Congress this week regarding his communications with Parnas and Fruman. 

Parnas and Fruman did not respond to our requests for comment.

In August, at a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, a tall man with a Viking beard and an elegant gray suit walked out on a stage, carrying a stack of red Make America Great Again hats, tossing them to an adoring crowd, shouting "Four more years!"

The man is Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who vaulted from a mid-level web designer to digital strategist for the 2016 Trump campaign and now manages the 2020 incarnation, Donald J. Trump for President Inc., which he claims will be America's first billion-dollar campaign. And as he's been doing this, Parscale has figured out ways to enrich himself and his firms, at various times collecting a salary from the Trump campaign, payments from the Republican National Committee and money from a super PAC, America First Action.

Like Trump, Parscale is a man who's reinvented himself, from working for a family company that declared bankruptcy to being a middling businessman, to becoming a high-profile avatar for Donald Trump. 

ProPublica's Peter Elkind joined Trump, Inc. to talk about his in-depth profile of Parscale in ProPublica and the political juggernaut Parscale is assembling to re-elect the President.

Here's what Elkind says about Parscale and the stories he tells about himself: "He changes dates. He rearranges facts. He omits conspicuous events. He basically rewrites his own life story to become a more romantic tale, to fit into the image that he's trying to convey. He is a promoter, he's a hustler, he's a marketer." In short, Brad Parscale is a lot like his boss. To find out more, listen to the episode.

The Trump, Inc. podcast from WNYC and ProPublica is back. And we'll be bringing you new episodes every two weeks. 

When we started all the way back in early 2018, we laid out how we'd be digging into the mysteries around President Donald Trump's business. After all, by keeping ownership of that business, Trump has had dueling interests: the country and his pocketbook. 

We've done dozens of episodes over the past 18 months, detailing how predatory lenders are paying the president, how Trump has profited from his own inauguration and how Trump's friends have sought to use their access in pursuit of profit. 

We've noticed something along the way. It's not just that the president has mixed his business and governing. It's that the way Trump does business is spreading across the government. 

Trump's company isn't like most big businesses. It is accountable to only one man, it has broken the rules, and those promoting it have long engaged in what Trump has dubbed, ahem, "truthful hyperbole."

Those traits are now popping up in the government. It may seem like the news from Washington is a cacophony of scandals. But they fit clear patterns ? patterns that Trump has brought with him from his business.  

Perhaps you?ve heard: Special counsel Robert Mueller testified on Wednesday. There?s plenty of analysis about who won and who didn?t. We?re skipping that part. Instead, on a special, speedy episode of Trump, Inc. we?re focusing on the few tidbits that were actually revealing and how it came to be that there weren?t more. 

ProPublica?s Jesse Eisinger and Heather Vogell talk with WNYC?s Andrea Bernstein about the many things we didn?t learn and why. They discuss potential mistakes during the investigation, avenues Mueller didn?t explore and witnesses ? like the president ? he decided not to try to question in person.

Mueller?s testimony is over. His report is done. And his office is closed. But there are plenty of critical yet unanswered questions remaining. And we?re still digging. Listen to the episode to hear what we still want to know.

Over the past two years, the Trump administration has been grappling with how to handle the transition to the next generation of mobile broadband technology. With spending expected to run into hundreds of billions of dollars, the administration views it as an ultra-high-stakes competition between U.S. and Chinese companies, with enormous implications both for technology and for national security. Top officials from a raft of departments have been meeting to hash out the best approach. 

But there?s been one person at some of the discussions who has a different background: He?s Donald Trump Jr.?s hunting buddy. Over the past two decades, the two have trained their sights on duck, pheasant and white-tailed deer on multiple continents. (An email from another Trump Jr. pal characterized one of their joint duck-hunting trips to Mexico years ago as ?muy aggresivo.?) 

Tommy Hicks Jr., 41, isn?t a government official; he?s a wealthy private investor. And he has been a part of discussions related to China and technology with top officials from the Treasury Department, National Security Council, Commerce Department and others, according to emails and documents obtained by ProPublica. In one email, Hicks refers to a meeting at ?Langley,? an apparent reference to the CIA?s headquarters.  

Hicks? financial interests, if any, in the matters he has discussed aren?t clear. The interests are much more apparent when it comes to at least one of his associates. Hicks used his connections to arrange for a hedge fund manager friend, Kyle Bass ? who has  $143 million in investments that will pay off if China?s economy tanks ? to present his views on the Chinese economy to high-level government officials at an interagency meeting at the Treasury Department, according to the documents.

Hicks is hardly the first private-sector power broker to emerge in a presidential administration, but he may represent a new subspecies: The Friend of the President?s Kid.

In fact, Hicks? influence and career overwhelmingly hinge on two people: Trump Jr., his friend of about two decades, and, first and foremost, Hicks? father. In a roughly 20-year career, Hicks has spent 17 of them working for investment funds and sports teams owned by his wealthy financier dad, Thomas Hicks Sr., and the other three working for a client of his father.

The generally privileged life of the younger Hicks has been speckled with occasional instances of misbehavior, one of them serious. At age 18, he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault, reduced from an original charge of felony aggravated assault, after he and two others were arrested in the beating of a fellow high school student at a party. (The victim was also kicked in the face during the assault, according to people familiar with the case. He told police that one of the three assailants ? he didn?t say which ? asked him, ?What is your name, faggot??) The criminal conviction did not prevent Hicks from being admitted to the University of Texas, where his father was an alumnus, a member of the Board of Regents and soon thereafter the first chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, which manages the school?s endowment and other assets.

As an adult, friends say, Hicks? carousing ways and occasional belligerent outbursts led some in his circle to bestow a heavily ironic nickname: ?Senator Hicks.? His tenure as a director of the soccer team his father owned in Liverpool, England, a decade ago ended right after an email he sent to a heckling fan ? ?Blow me fuckface. Go to Hell. I?m sick of you.? ? surfaced publicly.

Friends say Hicks has matured, particularly since he married and had three daughters. He has risen quickly in recent years. Hicks leveraged his Dallas financial network to become a top Trump campaign fundraiser in 2016 and a vice chairman of the inaugural finance committee; in January, he was named co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. His friends say he is motivated by patriotism. 

Hicks also played a behind-the-scenes role, according to two people familiar with the matter and an account by a Turkish journalist, in the freeing last year of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who was detained for two years by the Turkish government on what the U.S. government viewed as phony charges of spying and helping terrorists.

Even before becoming the second highest-ranking GOP official, Hicks was a frequent White House guest. He liked to have lunch in the White House mess with his half sister, who worked for a time in the communications operation. (The family is not related to Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director.) Hicks would then stroll the halls, according to a former senior administration official, dropping in to offices for impromptu chats with various officials, including Jared Kushner.

Those sorts of connections have given Hicks a convening power, the ability to call together multiple officials. ?He basically opened the door for having a conversation with people who I didn?t know but needed to know,? said Robert Spalding, a former senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Trump administration. 

The efforts, detailed in hundreds of pages of government emails and other documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Hicks had access to the highest levels of government to influence policymaking in ways that could lead to painful economic outcomes for the Chinese ? and a potentially lucrative result for Hicks? hedge fund friend, Bass.

?When somebody comes in like this, a hedge fund manager who has an interest in the viability of China?s economy, you?re giving them an opportunity to influence policy,? said Virginia Canter, a former ethics lawyer at the Treasury Department who now serves as chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. (CREW has sued Donald Trump for accepting emoluments from foreign governments.) ?The question is why?? 

Hicks? unusual role as a nongovernment employee who opened doors on behalf of both industry and others, Canter said, put him in a gray zone of ethics and lobbying regulations. ?He?s acting in a lobbyist role when he may fall outside the lobbyist disclosure rules, and it?s not clear how he benefits financially,? she said. ?So the question is: What?s he getting out of it? What are his friends getting out of it? And is the government processing it in a way that ensures the public benefits??

Bass presented his views on China?s banking system in the office of Heath Tarbert, an assistant secretary at Treasury in charge of international markets and investment policy and a powerful intergovernmental committee that reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security concerns. Among the officials at the meeting with Tarbert were Bill Hinman, the director of the division of corporation finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Ray Washburne, a wealthy Dallas restaurant owner and family friend of Hicks? who was nominated by Trump to head the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Hicks and Bass, both Dallas residents and longtime denizens of the financial community there, have invested together since at least 2011, according to securities filings and court records. They?ve owned shares of a publicly traded communications-technology manufacturer. And they were among the biggest creditors to the bankrupt law enforcement contracting company run by Chris Kyle, the ex-Navy SEAL portrayed by Bradley Cooper in ?American Sniper.? The managing director of a new investment fund started by Hicks had previously advised Bass on the successful stock-shorting of a Texas real estate lender, according to corporate filings and court papers from a lawsuit in state court in Dallas.

But it?s not clear if Hicks or his family have an investment in Bass? China-related funds. Reached twice on his cellphone, Hicks declined to be interviewed by ProPublica. In the second call, in June, Hicks didn?t dispute that he and his family have invested in Bass? funds. But when asked to detail their business relationship, he cut the conversation short. ?I?ve got to run. Let me see if I can get back to you,? Hicks said before hanging up. He didn?t call back.

Weeks later, after ProPublica followed up with questions to the RNC, a spokesman responded by emailing a ?statement attributed to Tommy Hicks.? It read: ?As a businessman, I passionately supported causes I believed in and, if appropriate, would sometimes meet with government officials to promote them. There is nothing wrong with that. I have taken every precaution during my time as Co-Chair of the RNC to ensure there is no conflict of interest between my job here and any personal businesses.? (The spokesperson also emailed a statement on behalf of the RNC: ?Tommy has done an outstanding job working on behalf of President Trump and his agenda.?)

Bass, who made his name and fortune by betting against subprime mortgages before the crash and is known for large bets that economies or certain macro trends will turn downward, declined to comment. ?I?m not interested in talking with you about my friends or any meetings I have or haven?t had privately with anyone,? he wrote in an email. In a subsequent message, Bass wrote that any suggestion ?that we had corrupt intentions in meeting with Treasury officials... is categorically false and defamatory and could negatively affect our business.? 

An administration official briefed on the Bass meeting at the Treasury downplayed it as ?strictly a listening session.? He said Bass did not ask the attendees to take any actions, nor did the attendees divulge anything about U.S.-China policy. Government ethics officers vetted the federal employees for any conflicts and found none, the official said. He acknowledged that the review didn?t include an examination of any financial relationship between Hicks and Bass.

Spalding said the conversation centered primarily on Bass? analysis of publicly available records on the Chinese financial system. ?I think the thing that I?ve discovered over the past years is that the information in the private sector is better than anything we have in government,? Spalding said of Bass? presentation. ?You have to reach out to where the expertise is. In our country, that?s where the talent is.?

An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment. Washburne, now out of government, didn?t respond to emails seeking comment.

Bass has become a vocal advocate for an aggressive U.S. policy toward China. On Twitter and on cable business channels he?s denounced everything from the country?s Communist Party government to its business practices. Securities filings show Bass raised $143 million from about 81 investors in two funds ? investments that would benefit if China?s currency were devalued or the country faced credit or banking crises. In April, in a letter to his investors, Bass wrote that his company, Hayman Capital Management, was positioned for coming problems in Hong Kong and was set up to ?maintain a massive asymmetry to a negative outcome in Hong Kong and/or China.?

Hicks? work on the 5G initiative was extensive.

Over just a few months in late 2017 and 2018,  records show, he was part of an informal group led by then NSC official Spalding, that advocated for a strategy in which the federal government would plan out a national policy for 5G. One memo described their goal as the ?equivalent of the Eisenhower National Highway System ? a single, inherently protected, information transportation superhighway.? 

The group conducted multiple meetings and briefings. For example, Hicks, Spalding and others traveled to Samsung Electronics? Dallas-area offices for one meeting in January 2018.

That same month Hicks attended a 5G meeting that he?d arranged with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Commerce plays a key role in the future of 5G since a division within the agency manages government spectrum and another maintains a list of companies the government believes are, or will become, national security threats. Companies that end up on that list can be effectively shut out from global deal-making. The meeting with Ross focused heavily on the threat of China, said Ira Greenstein, who served as a White House aide and was part of Spalding?s 5G crew.

Hicks was one of a dozen nongovernment employees, including executives from Wells Fargo, Nokia, Ericsson and Google, that Spalding sent reading materials to ahead of a 5G discussion in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Copied on the email were top Commerce Department officials, a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor and a senior adviser for cybersecurity and IT modernization at the White House Office of Science and Technology. On the agenda? ?Mid Band vs High Band? spectrum, ?security,? ?supply chain,? ?financing? and other critical issues.

Hicks wasn?t just a passive observer. On Jan. 2, 2018, the managing director of OPIC, which provides financial backing to American companies expanding into foreign markets, emailed Spalding and others to say that the CEO of a satellite company called OneWeb had a plan to provide worldwide 5G coverage by 2027. Hicks fired back a note from his iPhone. ?2027 is too late,? he wrote. ?Let?s discuss as a smaller group tomorrow.?

Spalding was forced out of the West Wing in early 2018 after a draft 20-page briefing memo he authored proposing a government-organized national 5G network was leaked, then panned as an attempt to nationalize the wireless broadband industry. Trump has not pursued such an initiative, ultimately deferring to wireless carriers to bid on publicly maintained spectrum and develop their own networks as has traditionally been the case.

Still, the administration has made significant efforts to counter Chinese influence in 5G and related technologies, which are said to be critical for industries such as driverless cars, artificial intelligence, machine learning and much more. In May the Commerce Department barred Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei from doing business in the U.S. for national security reasons. And the top Department of Defense official in charge of acquisitions also recently announced the creation of a government-approved private marketplace to pair American private equity firms with U.S. technology companies producing products with national security applications to keep Chinese money out of 5G.

It isn?t clear what influence, if any, Hicks had in those decisions. But his profile is only rising. In April, he led a Republican delegation to Taiwan alongside a U.S. government delegation. Hicks met with the country?s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who has lately been positioning her country?s corporations as safer providers of 5G equipment than those in China. Tsai thanked the U.S. for selling arms to Taiwan. She asked Hicks to convey her regards to the Trumps.

Under a six-lane span of freeway leading into downtown Baltimore sits what may be the most valuable parking spaces in America.

Lying near a development project controlled by Under Armour?s billionaire CEO Kevin Plank, one of Maryland?s richest men, and Goldman Sachs, the little sliver of land will allow Plank and the other investors to claim what could amount to millions in tax breaks for the project, known as Port Covington.

They have President Donald Trump?s 2017 tax overhaul law to thank. The new law has a provision meant to spur investment into underdeveloped areas, called ?opportunity zones.? The idea is to grant lucrative tax breaks to encourage new investment in poor areas around the country, carefully selected by each state?s governor.

But Port Covington, an ambitious development geared to millennials to feature offices, a hotel, apartments, and shopping, is not in a census tract that is poor. It?s not a new investment. And the census tract only became eligible to be an opportunity zone thanks to a mapping error.

As the selection process was underway, a deputy chief of staff to Maryland's governor wrote in an email that ?Port Covington does not qualify? as an opportunity zone.

Maryland's governor chose the area for the program anyway ? after his aides met with the lobbyists for Plank, who owns about 40% of the zone.

?This is a classic example of a windfall benefit,? said Robert Stoker, a George Washington University professor who has studied economic development in Baltimore for decades. ?A major investment was already planned and now is in a zone where they are going to qualify for all kinds of beneficial tax treatment.?

In selecting Port Covington, the governor had to exclude another Maryland community from the opportunity zone program. In Baltimore, for example, the governor dropped part of a neighborhood that city officials recommended for the program ? Brooklyn ? with a median family income one-fifth that of Port Covington. Brooklyn sits just across the Patapsco river from Port Covington, in an area that suffers from one of the highest drug and alcohol death rates in Baltimore, which in turn has one of the highest drug fatality rates nationwide.

In a statement, Marc Weller, a developer who is Plank?s partner in the project, defended the opportunity zone designation. ?Port Covington being part of an Opportunity Zone will attract more investors, foster more economic growth in a neglected area of the City, and directly benefit all of the surrounding communities for decades to come,? Weller said. Supporters say the Port Covington development could help several nearby struggling south Baltimore neighborhoods.

An official in the administration of Maryland?s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, said, ?The success of that project is really going to go a long way to providing benefits for the whole city of Baltimore.? The official added: ?The governor is a huge supporter of the development.?

A spokesperson for the state?s Department of Housing and Community Development, which was involved in the selection process, said that ?due to the time limits of the federal tax incentive, the state of Maryland did purposefully select census tracts where projects were beginning to increase the odds of attracting additional private sector investment to Maryland's opportunity zones in the near term.?

The Birth of a New Tax Break

In December 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, his signature legislative achievement. Much criticized as a giveaway to the rich, the law includes one headline provision that backers promised would help the poor: opportunity zones.

Supporters of the program argued it would unleash economic development in otherwise overlooked communities. ?Our goal is to rebuild homes, schools, businesses and communities that need it the most,? Trump declared at a recent event, adding, ?To revitalize these areas, we?ve lowered the capital gains tax for long-term investment in opportunity zones all the way down to a very big, fat, beautiful number of zero.?

The provision has bipartisan support. ?These cities are gold mines,? New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a 2020 presidential hopeful and main Democratic architect of the program, told real estate investors in October. ?They?re domestic emerging markets that are more exciting than anything you?ll see overseas.?

Here?s how the program works. Say you?re a hedge fund manager, you purchased Google stock years ago, and are sitting on $1 billion in gains. If you sell, you?d send the IRS about $240 million, a lot less than ordinary income tax but still annoying. To avoid paying that much, you can sell the shares and put the $1 billion into an opportunity zone. That comes with three generous breaks. The first is that you defer that $240 million in capital gains tax, allowing you to invest more money up front. But if that?s not enough for you, you can hold the investment for several years and you?ll get a significant reduction in those taxes. What?s more, any additional gains from the new investment are tax-free after 10 years.

It?s impossible to predict how much the tax break will be worth to individual investors because it depends on several variables, not least whether the underlying project gains in value. But one investment pitch projected 10-year returns would jump to 91% from 29% on a hypothetical $1 million investment. That includes $284,000 in tax breaks ? money the federal government would have collected from taxpayers with capital gains but for the program.

The tax code already favored real estate developers like Trump, and his overhaul made it even friendlier. Investors can put money into a range of projects in opportunity zones, but so far most of the publicly announced deals are in real estate. The tax break has led to a marketing boom, with Wall Street pitching investors to raise funds to invest in the zones. Critics argue that the program is flawed, pointing out that there?s no guarantee that the capital investment will help community residents, that the selection process was vulnerable to outside influence, and that it could be a giveaway for projects that were going to happen anyway. In a case in Chicago uncovered by the Real Deal, two tracts already slated for a major development project were selected by the governor as opportunity zones even though city officials hadn?t initially recommended them.

Under the new law, areas of the country deemed to be ?low-income communities? would be eligible to be named opportunity zones. The Treasury Department determined which census tracts qualified. Then governors of each state could select one quarter of those tracts to get the tax benefit.

That governor prerogative turned out to be very useful to Kevin Plank.  

Plank?s Dream

In 2012, Plank-connected entities quietly began buying up waterfront property on a largely vacant and isolated peninsula south of downtown Baltimore. Often using shell companies to shield the identity of the true buyer, they ultimately spent more than $100 million acquiring much of the peninsula. Plank?s privately held Sagamore Development now controls roughly 40% of the area that would later be named an opportunity zone.

In early 2015, more than two and a half years before Trump?s tax law passed, Plank revealed himself as the money behind the purchases. He planned a new development and headquarters for Under Armour, the sports apparel company he started after coming up with the idea as a University of Maryland football player. Today, Under Armour employs 15,000 people. Plank has a net worth of around $2 billion.

Though the Port Covington area was cut off from downtown by I-95, Plank said he likes the location because of the visibility. ?When people drive through Baltimore [on I-95] I literally want them to drive through and go, 'There's Baltimore on the right. There's Under Armour on the left,?? he told The Baltimore Sun.

A year later, Plank?s firm took his vision to the general public, running TV and print ads touting the new project. One of the ads, reminiscent of the Democratic presidential primary spots airing at that time, was filled with a diverse cast sharing their dreams for a new city within a city.

?We will build it. Together,? the ad begins, before running through a glittering digital rendering of contemporary urban design features. Office towers, shops, transit, parks, jobs ? all of it to be anchored by a new world headquarters of the city?s most visible brand name, Under Armour. Sagamore would spearhead the project and sell land to others who would build businesses and housing.

Even before qualifying for the opportunity zone break, taxpayers were going to subsidize the development. Days after the ads touting togetherness, Plank proposed that the city float $660 million in bonds to help build what the company has said would be a $5.5 billion development. Opponents contended Plank?s proposal amounted to corporate welfare that would exacerbate the city?s stark economic and racial divides. But the company agreed to provide millions of dollars to the city and a group of nearby low-income neighborhoods to gain support for the project, and the City Council passed the measure that fall.

As Under Armour?s stock plummeted in 2017 amid slowing sales growth and progress on the Port Covington project lagged. That September, Goldman Sachs stepped in to commit $233 million from its Urban Investment Group. Hogan, himself a real estate developer, personally spoke with the then-CEO of Goldman, Lloyd Blankfein, about the deal.

Meeting With the Governor?s Office

In the weeks after the 2017 federal tax overhaul passed, Plank?s team spotted an opportunity.

Nick Manis, a veteran Annapolis lobbyist who has also represented the Baltimore Ravens, reached out to Hogan?s chief of staff about Port Covington, according to emails obtained by ProPublica through a public records request. The developers and their lobbyists had given at least $15,000 to Hogan?s campaigns in recent years. A meeting was set for early February.

But the developers had a problem.

The Friday before the meeting, a deputy chief of staff to the governor wrote in an email that ?Port Covington does not qualify? for the coveted tax breaks.

The Port Covington tract, which includes a gentrified corner of South Baltimore north of the largely empty peninsula, was too wealthy to be an opportunity zone. There is a second provision of the law for wealthier tracts: A tract can qualify if it is adjacent to a low-income area. But Port Covington failed that test, too. Its median family income ? nearly 160% of Maryland?s ? exceeded the income cap even for that provision.

Port Covington was out ? unless the tract could somehow be considered low-income in its own right.

On Feb. 5, the Port Covington development team arrived at the second floor of the statehouse in the opulent governor?s reception room to meet with top Hogan aides. The agenda for the meeting included opportunity zones, as well as transit and infrastructure issues. The developer?s team requested that the Port Covington tract be made an opportunity zone. The state officials ?acknowledged their interest in receiving that designation,? a Hogan administration official said.

Bank Error in Your Favor

Three days after that meeting, Plank and the Port Covington developers got bad news. The Treasury Department released a list of census tracts across the country that were sufficiently poor to be included in the program. Port Covington was not included in that list.

Three weeks later, however, things turned around. The Treasury Department issued a revised list. The agency said it had left out some tracts in error. The revised list included 168 new areas across the country defined by the agency as ?low-income communities.?

This time, Port Covington made the cut.

It couldn?t have qualified because its residents were poor. It couldn?t qualify because it was next to some place that was poor. But the tract could qualify under yet another provision of the law. Some tracts could make the cut if they had fewer than 2,000 people and if they were ?within? what?s known as an empowerment zone. That was a Clinton-era redevelopment initiative also aimed at low-income areas.

Port Covington wasn?t actually within an empowerment zone, but it is next to one. So how did it qualify? The area met the definition of ?within? because the digital map files the Treasury Department used showed that Port Covington overlapped with a neighboring tract that was designated an empowerment zone, Treasury officials told ProPublica.

That overlap: the sliver of parking lot beneath I-395. That piece of the lot is about one one-thousandth of a square mile.

(ProPublica) (ProPublica)

There are no regulations or guidance on how to interpret the tax law?s use of ?within,? said a spokesman for the Treasury Department?s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which compiled the maps. The agency made what it called a ?technical decision? that any partial overlap with an Empowerment Zone would count as being ?within? that zone ? no matter how small the area, or if anyone lived there.

Or, if the overlap was even real.

Turns out, no part of Port Covington actually overlapped with the empowerment zone.

Treasury?s decision ignored a well-known problem in geographic analysis known as misalignment, mapping experts said.

Misalignment happens when the lines on digital maps made by two sources differ slightly about where things like roads and buildings lie, according to Henry Luan, a professor of geography at the University of Oregon.

For example, if a tract ends at a highway, one file might show the border on the near side of the highway while another ? when zoomed all the way in ? might show it a few feet away on the far side. When laid on top of each other, the two files end up with minuscule differences that don?t mean anything in the real world.

Except in this case, it had big real world consequences for Port Covington. The mapping error allowed the entire tract to qualify as an opportunity zone.

?That area of overlap is a complete artifact of? the map files Treasury used, said David Van Riper, director of spatial analysis at the Minnesota Population Center. ?It?s not an actual overlap.?

Sometime in the mid-2000s, the Census Bureau used GPS devices to make its map files more accurately represent the country?s roads. One of the maps used by Treasury appeared to be based on the older, less accurate Census maps, Van Riper said.

Even accepting Treasury?s misaligned maps, the entire Port Covington tract receives tax benefits, even though less than 0.3% of it overlaps with the neighboring tract.

?Only a minimal overlap, but you make the whole Census tract benefit from the policy?? Luan said. ?That doesn?t make sense to me.?

Port Covington is one of just a handful of tracts in the country that ProPublica identified that qualified through similar flaws in Treasury?s process.

Taking the Break

There is no evidence that Plank or the Port Covington developers influenced the Treasury Department?s revision.

But the lobbying of the governor before the Treasury change appears to have paid off.

As they were lobbying, Baltimore officials were working out which parts of the city would benefit most from being opportunity zones. They petitioned the governor to pick 41 low-income city neighborhoods to get the tax break, all of them well below the program?s maximum income requirements.

The city?s list remained largely intact when the governor made his selections in April. Hogan made just four changes, three of which qualified under the main criteria without the benefit of the mapping error. But the fourth didn?t: Port Covington.

Plank?s team cheered the revision. The very thing that made Port Covington a poor candidate to be an opportunity zone ? that it wasn?t a low-income area ? could make it exceptionally attractive to investors. In January, they convened an opportunity zone conference at their Port Covington incubator called City Garage featuring state officials and executives from Goldman, Deloitte and other firms.

?Port Covington kind of fits all the needs,? said Marc Weller, Plank?s partner, at the conference. ?It has all the entitlements, and it has a financial partner in place as well. It?s probably the most premier piece of land in the United States that?s in an opportunity zone.?

The opportunity zone program has restrictions intended to prevent already-planned developments from benefitting. But the Port Covington developers told Bloomberg that the firm will be able to reap the benefits of the tax break because it has found new investors. Among the potential new investors who might take advantage of the tax break are Plank?s own family, one of the developers told the Baltimore Business Journal. A Port Covington spokesman denied that Plank?s family members are potential investors.

To get the maximum benefit, investments need to be made in 2019, though investments made through 2026 can take advantage of growth tax-free. Only a portion of the Port Covington project is expected to be underway by then.

A Goldman spokesman said it is ?likely? that the firm will take advantage of the opportunity zone benefits in Port Covington, adding that it has ?made no firm decisions about how each component will be financed.?            

Margaret Anadu, the head of Goldman?s Urban Investment Group and the lead on the Port Covington investment, recently said of the opportunity zone program: ?These are the same neighborhoods that have been suffering since redline started decades and decades ago, pretty much eliminating private investment. ? And so we simply have to reverse that. And the only way to reverse that is to start to bring that private capital back into these neighborhoods.?

The Port Covington tract is just 4% black. For it to be included in the program, another community somewhere in Maryland had to be excluded. The ones that the city suggested that were excluded by the governor, for example, are 68% black and have a poverty rate three times higher than Port Covington?s.

There is some evidence suggesting being named an opportunity zone has already been a boon for property owners. An analysis by Zillow found that sale price gains in opportunity zones significantly outpaced gains in eligible tracts that weren?t selected. Real Capital Analytics found that sales of developable sites in the zones rose 24% in the year after the law passed.

Under Armour has said it?s still committed to building its new headquarters on the peninsula, but it?s not clear when that will happen.

Still, other aspects of the once-stalled project finally started moving forward in recent months. After presenting plans for the first section inside the opportunity zone this winter, the project finally got underway on a rainy day in early May of this year.

"The project is real,? Weller said at the kickoff event, which included Anadu, the Goldman Sachs executive, and city and state officials. ?The project is starting. We're open for business."