The Trump Organization is now feeling the heat, with its CFO under indictment for grand larceny. Prosecutors are clearing to get that money man, Allen Weisselberg, to flip on his boss. But one interested observer says there may be another member of the Trump crew who’s even more likely to turn on the Don: his daughter Ivanka.
Both Ivanka and Weisselberg benefited from a similar perk, if that indictment by Manhattan prosecutors and reporting from The New York Times are to be believed. Both were officers of the Trump Organization and simultaneously were consultants for the company, too. It’s an arrangement that appears designed to shield all parties involved from paying taxes—and could open Ivanka up to tax fraud charges, just like her dad’s CFO.
“She’s much less likely to stay loyal than Allen Weisselberg,” says Mary Trump, the member of the family who has famously turned on the clan.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Wait, wait, whoa. You think Ivanka is less likely to stay loyal than Allen Weisselberg? Even though her dad gave her a job in the White House?” an incredulous Molly Jong-Fast asks Mary Trump on the latest episode of The New Abnormal.
Did you know you can listen to The New Abnormal bonus episodes in your member dashboard or a podcast app? Click here to get set up and sign up for new episode email alerts here.
“But Allen had a pretty cushy gig where he was. And I think kind of in the grand scheme of things, as counterintuitive as this might sound, I think Ivanka has, one, more to lose and, two, more to hang onto. Her husband’s family is legitimately very wealthy,” Mary Trump answers.
She sees a number of similarities in the emerging case against Weisselberg and her legal dispute with her uncle, the former president. “The kind of fraud that’s being alleged here is exactly the kind of thing my aunts and uncles did to me,” she says. “Patterns strongly imply intent, right?”
She adds, “After my dad died, my aunts and uncles were my fiduciaries, they were supposed to help protect my investments. And one of those investments was in a partnership called Midland Associates, that essentially my grandfather’s core business, Trump Management paid [it] to manage his [real estate] properties. And then in the ’80s, after my dad died, they created a shell corporation called All County, which the purpose of it simply was to siphon money away from both Midland Associates and my grandfather’s business, one, just to steal money from me… and two, to devalue Trump Management so much that when he died, they were able to claim it was only worth $30 million and thereby avoid paying almost $500 million in estate taxes.”
“I think my case also sets a precedent for what the fraud case is hopefully going to show,” she concludes.
Next up, Brian Beutler, editor in chief of Crooked Media, shares his big idea for getting a new voting rights bill passed in the Senate—without Republican votes. And climate specialist David Roberts explains how the hell part of the Gulf of Mexico caught on fire.
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
