New York Attorney General Letitia James took aim at Donald Trump's luxurious Palm Beach County estate, Mar-a-Lago, as she announced her findings regarding allegedly artificially inflated assets.
Speaking to the press on Wednesday, James said that Trump "blatantly ignored legal restrictions at Mar-a-Lago." She explained that the property of Mar-a-Lago was valued on the "false premise that it sat on unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use."
Trump knew, she said, that Mar-a-Lago had restrictions on residences. In fact, when Trump moved to Florida to live at Mar-a-Lago, the city council met to re-vote after previously saying that he couldn't live there more than a certain percentage of the year.
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"Mr. Trump himself signed deeds sharply restricting changes to the property and donating his residential development rights in an effort to get a tax deduction and later to lower his property taxes on the property," said James. "The deeds also require Mr. Trump to donate over 23 percent of Mar-a-Lago's value to the historic trust for historic preservation if he ever sold it. Despite these restrictions, Mr. Trump valued it based on the fact it was an 18-acre plot of land that could be sold and used as a private home. The valuations represent that these restrictions don't even exist."
She explained that the revenue from Mar-a-Lago is less than $25 million and should have been valued at no more than $75 million. Instead, Trump valued it as high as $739 million.
Mar-a-Lago was just one of the many properties that Trump used to pad a wealth that James called nothing more than "smoke and mirrors."
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