New York Times dissects Trump’s fortune

In a lengthy investigative report published Tuesday, The New York Times said President Donald Trump came by his fortune through illicit gifts from his father, a claim the president called “old, boring, and often told” in a tweet. The 13,000-plus-word article relates in painstaking detail how the Trump family shuffled wealth between patriarch Fred Trump and his children using clever tax avoidance maneuvers. Few of the anecdotes in the story rise to the level of anything potentially illegal, though the use of a company called All County Building Supply & Maintenance to shift cash from father to heirs using padded receipts has drawn the interest of the New York Department of Taxation and Finance, the Times reported.

The article states that Trump received $413 million in “today’s dollars” from his father, a claim the White House rebutted in a statement to the newspaper. “The president’s father gave him an initial $1 million loan, which he paid back,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the Times. “President Trump used this money to build an incredibly successful company as well as net worth of over $10 billion, including owning some of the world’s greatest real estate.”