Accounting firm severs ties with Trump and retracts a decade of financial statements
Donald J. Trump’s longtime accounting firm cut ties with him and his family business last week amid ongoing criminal and civil investigations into whether Mr. Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets, court documents filed on Monday show.
In a letter to the Trump Organization on Feb. 9, the accounting firm notified the company of its decision and disclosed that it could no longer stand behind annual financial statements it prepared for Mr. Trump. The firm, Mazars USA, compiled the financial statements based on information the former president and his company provided.
The letter instructed the Trump Organization to essentially retract the documents, known as statements of financial condition, from 2011 to 2020. In the letter, Mazars noted that the firm had not “as a whole” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the actual value of Mr. Trump’s assets. But given what it called “the totality of circumstances,” the letter directed the Trump Organization to notify anyone who received the statements that they should no longer rely on them.
The statements, which Mr. Trump used to secure loans, are at the center of the two law enforcement investigations into whether Mr. Trump exaggerated the value of his properties to defraud his lenders into providing him the best possible loan terms. [Continue reading…]