NEW YORK (AP) – It’s sleepy by Donald Trump standards, but the former president’s century-old estate in Westchester County in New York could end up being one of his biggest legal nightmares.
Seven Springs, a 213-acre stretch of nature surrounding a Georgian-style mansion, is the subject of two state investigations: a criminal investigation by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and a civil investigation by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James.
Both investigations focus on whether Trump manipulated the property’s value to reap greater tax benefits from an environmental preservation deal he made in late 2015, while running for president.
Purchased by Trump in 1995 for $ 7.5 million, Seven Springs attracted new scrutiny as he prepared to step down and was on the verge of losing the legal protections he had as president. Vance issued new subpoenas in mid-December, and a judge ordered the evidence to be delivered to James’s office nine days after Trump left Washington.
Trump’s other legal problems, such as investigations into his attempts to influence election officials and payments made on his behalf to women who claim cases, dominated the headlines. But former Manhattan prosecutor Duncan Levin said white-collar investigators go wherever the newspaper’s trail leads.
“While a tax issue related to a conservation agreement may not be as attractive as a secret payment, prosecutors are likely to focus on any violations of the law they find,” said Levin. “Remember that the authorities caught Al Capone for tax evasion.”
Seven Springs is an exception in Trump’s property portfolio, filled with sparkling skyscrapers and gold-plated amenities. It is listed on his website as a family retreat, although Trump has not been there for over four years.
At the heart of the property is the mansion built as a summer retreat in 1919 by Eugene Meyer, who became president of the Federal Reserve and owner of The Washington Post. In 2006, while driving a plan to build luxury homes on the property, Trump suggested that he and his family would move into the mansion, but that never happened.
Brand new, the 28,322-square-foot residence featured more than a dozen rooms, an indoor pool, a bowling alley and a tennis court. Meyer’s daughter, the late Washington Post editor Katharine Graham, married in Seven Springs in 1940.
In his memoir “Personal Story”, Graham described ambivalent emotions about going there, writing: “The older I got, the more I didn’t like the loneliness of the farm, but in my childhood it was, as I wrote to my father when I was 10 years, ‘a great old place’ ”.
At one point, Meyer owned about 700 acres. A philanthropic foundation established by him and his wife, Agnes, donated 247 acres to the Nature Conservancy and the rest of the land and buildings that made up Seven Springs to Yale University in 1973, following the death of Agnes Meyer.
The property changed hands again when the foundation withdrew it from Yale and operated a conference center there before handing over real estate to Rockefeller University, which eventually sold it to Trump.
Trump paid about $ 2.25 million at the Seven Springs list price, acquiring the land as part of an effort to leverage his fortune after a series of failures in the early 1990s, including casino failures and the sale of his airline Trump Shuttle, which lost money.
Trump envisioned turning it into his first championship-caliber golf course, with an exclusive clientele and high membership rates.
He hired an architecture firm to design fairways and greens, but abandoned the effort when residents expressed concerns that lawn chemicals would contaminate neighboring Byram Lake, a local source of drinking water.
Trump then tried to build houses. He proposed the construction of 46 single-family homes and, after that plan, he also encountered opposition from the community, 15 mansion-sized residences, which he described in 2004 as “over-protected homes, like never before seen on the East Coast.” delayed by years of litigation and no houses were built.
In 2009, Trump made an impact by allowing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to pitch his Bedouin-style tent on the Seven Springs property, north of New York City, because he had nowhere else to stay for a UN visit.
Trump initially suggested that he did not know that Gaddafi was involved, but later admitted that he “made a lot of money” by renting the land to the Libyan leader. Local authorities stopped work at the tent and Gaddafi never stayed there.
With his development plans thwarted, Trump opted for a strategy that would allow him to retain ownership, but reduce his taxes. He granted an easement to a conservation fund to preserve 158 acres (60 hectares) of mature meadows and forests.
Trump received an income tax deduction of $ 21 million, equal to the value of the conserved land, according to property and court records. The figure was based on a professional appraisal that valued Seven Springs’ entire property at $ 56.5 million on December 1, 2015.
That was a far greater value than the assessment of local government advisers, who said the entire property was worth $ 20 million.
Michael Colangelo, a lawyer in the New York attorney general’s office, outlined the central issue surrounding the Seven Springs bondage at a hearing last year over an evidence dispute.
“If the value of servitude was unduly inflated, who has benefited from this undue inflation and by what amounts?” Colangelo said. “Needless to say, the attorney general needs to see the records that reflect the value of this deduction, as it flowed to intermediary entities and, ultimately, to Mr. Trump, personally.
A message asking for comments was left with Trump’s spokesman. In the past, the former Republican president denounced the investigations as part of a “witch hunt”.
Seven Springs caught the attention of investigators after Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told a Congressional committee in 2019 that Trump was in the habit of manipulating property values - inflating them in some cases and minimizing them in others to obtain favorable loan terms and tax benefits.
Cohen testified that Trump had financial statements saying Seven Springs was worth $ 291 million in 2012. He gave copies of three of Trump’s financial statements to the House Oversight and Reform Committee during his testimony.
Cohen said the 2011, 2012 and 2013 statements were the ones Trump gave to his main lender, Deutsche Bank, to inquire about a loan to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and Forbes magazine to substantiate his claim of a place on your list of the richest people in the world.
Trump, in his annual financial disclosure forms as president, said the property was worth between $ 25 million and $ 50 million.
The New York attorney general was the first to act. James issued subpoenas to commercial real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield for records relating to his appraisal work on behalf of Trump; for law firms that worked on the Seven Springs project; and to Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, for records relating to its annual financial statements and conservation easement.
James also subpoenaed the zoning and planning records in 2019 for the three villages of Seven Springs. Vance followed through on his own subpoenas in December. A city official said the investigators received “boxes and more boxes of documents” in response. They included tax returns, survey maps, environmental studies and minutes from planning board meetings.
James’ investigators interviewed Trump’s son Eric Trump, an executive vice president of the Trump Organization and president of the limited liability company through which he owns Seven Springs; Trump’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg; and the lawyers Trump hired for the Seven Springs project, who specialize in land use disputes and federal taxes.
Investigators have yet to determine whether any laws have been violated.
Vance, who as James is a Democrat, has not revealed much about his criminal investigation, in part because of the grand jury’s secrecy rules. The district attorney’s office said in court documents that it is focusing on public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct in the Trump Organization.”
Documents submitted in connection with the criminal investigation – supported by a United States Supreme Court decision last month, granting Vance access to Trump’s tax records – listed Seven Sources among the possible targets.
Along with the mansion, Seven Springs has a Tudor-style home that was once owned by ketchup tycoon HJ Heinz, and small carriages that Trump’s adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, said served as a “base” when they visited the property to walk and ride an ATV.
During his presidency, Trump himself opted for high-profile properties such as his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, where he has lived since leaving the White House.
The New York Times reported last year that Trump’s tax records showed that he classified the property not as personal residence, but as investment property, which has allowed him to write off more than $ 2 million in property taxes since 2014.
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