MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Tuesday laid out all the allegations laid out in a bombshell New York Times report about the tax fraud undertaken by President Donald Trump's father Fred — and how huge the grift really was.
The host noted that one of the largest revelations from the Times report was the previously-unknown existence of All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a shell company the patriarch used to markup appliances used in his buildings and reap the benefits so he could give large, tax-exempt monetary gifts to his kids.
"The Times calls this scheme around this company the most overt in Trump's company," Maddow said, later noting that the appliance markups were a fairly simple example of "tax evasion."
"When you move money from one party to another under a cover story that makes it look sort of like a real business transaction, but it's not at all," she continued. "It's a business transaction that makes no financial sense. It's a business transaction that only exists to disguise that flow of money from one party to the other and to avoid taxes on that flow of money."
The Times reported that Fred Trump created a total of 295 revenue streams to enrich his children that were initially divvied up evenly among his four progeny.
"But over time, as Donald Trump careened from one financial disaster to the next, his father found ways to give him substantially more money, records show," the report noted.
"President Trump has frequently bragged that he only ever got a $1 million loan from his dad," Maddow said. "He always says his dad didn't run a very successful business. Oh, and by the way, that little measly $1 million he got, he had to pay it back with interest."
With the revelations from this report, however, "it looks like Trump received more than $400 million [in today's dollars] over decades out of his dad and his dad's business, and that that actually is kind of the extent of his business success."
"It's nice work if you can get it," the host said, "as long as it's not illegal and provided that you haven't built your whole adult life around a completely false opposite story that ultimately led to a political career."
Watch below:
