Trump, Inc.

Trump, Inc.

In "We Don't Talk About Leonard", ProPublica reporters investigate the increasing politicization and expenses involved in state Supreme Court elections. The third episode uncovers plans by Leo and his allies for future influence over these courts.

October 13, 2023

Trump, Inc.

Investigating Leonard Leo's efforts to influence Supreme Court cases and fill judgeship vacancies via a network of nonprofits and dark money funding, as explored in the second episode of We Don't Talk About Leonard.

October 06, 2023

Trump, Inc.

Investigates Leonard Leo, a key figure in conservative takeover of America's courts, from his middle class roots in NJ to a Maine mansion; party hosted eve of Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade.

September 29, 2023

Trump, Inc.

Nancy Solomon's new podcast 'Dead End' explores the brutal murder of John and Joyce Sheridan, a politically connected couple, followed by their son's quest for truth regarding crime and corruption at high levels in New Jersey.

May 03, 2022

Trump, Inc.

New podcast series 'Capital-SZ' by Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz uncovers impact of Jan. 6th insurrection on US democracy; explores ongoing fight against autocracy with stories from diverse participants.

April 25, 2022

Trump, Inc.

Investigative journalists assemble a time capsule consisting of documents related to Donald J. Trump's business interests and leave it to be opened in 2031. The episode is the last of Trump, Inc., a joint production by WNYC Studios and ProPublica.

January 19, 2021

Trump, Inc.

In wake of Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and second impeachment, businesses, governments, and financial institutions are severing ties with President Trump. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post covers who patronizes the Trump family businesses. Next week is the final episode of Trump, Inc., with updates on future projects.

January 15, 2021

Trump, Inc.

Examination of ongoing legal investigations into potential civil and criminal wrongdoing by Donald Trump and Trump Organization in Washington D.C. (led by Karl Racine) and Manhattan (Cy Vance). Discussions with D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine about his pending action.

December 17, 2020

Trump, Inc.

The US Department of Agriculture has proposed a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines in its final days, alarmed food and worker safety advocates. The Trump administration is hurrying to finish several rules before Biden's inauguration, affecting diverse issues from life-or-death matters to showerheads.

November 25, 2020

Trump, Inc.

The Trump campaign is legally challenging the election outcome while reshaping the federal bureaucracy. Ex-Obama appointee Denise Turner Roth, Robert Shea under President George W. Bush's OMB, and retired Ronald Sanders of the Federal Salary Council have warned about potential politicization in the federal workforce.

November 12, 2020

Trump, Inc.

Radiolab's episode examines the 2020 U.S. election, reported by Bethel Habte (currently a producer at Gimlet) and produced by herself, with contributions from Tracie Hunte. Original music provided by Jeremy Bloom. The Transition Integrity Project's report is mentioned.

October 31, 2020

Trump, Inc.

On April 30, 2018, T-Mobile executives visited Trump's DC hotel during a merger critical period; later the same day, two businessmen (Parnas and Fruman) dined with the president and discussed their desire to remove a U.S. ambassador in Ukraine. Their actions were part of a wider trend during Trump's presidency where people who patronized Trump businesses could expect favorable treatment.

October 28, 2020

Trump, Inc.

Andrea Bernstein talks with Kai Wright on how U.S. history influences the 2020 election in a discussion of the Reporter's Notebook series.

October 22, 2020

Trump, Inc.

Despite his promises, President Trump's tax reform bill did not increase jobs, wages nor significantly reduce national debt as expected, according to The Heist podcast.

October 14, 2020

Trump, Inc.

Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann provides a new account into Robert Mueller's investigation into President Trump in his new book.

October 07, 2020

Trump, Inc.

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations. After the news broke in May of last year that government-sponsored lending agency Freddie Mac had agreed to back $786 million in loans to the Kushner Companies, political opponents asked whether the family real estate firm formerly led by the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, had received special treatment.  “We are especially concerned about this transaction because of Kushner Companies’ history of seeking to engage in deals that raise conflicts of interest issues with Mr. Kushner,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Tom Carper (D-Delaware) wrote to Freddie Mac’s CEO in June 2019. The loans helped Kushner Companies scoop up thousands of apartments in Maryland and Virginia, the business’s biggest purchase in a decade. The deal, first reported by Bloomberg, also ranked among Freddie’s largest ever. At the time, the details of its terms weren’t disclosed. Freddie Mac officials didn’t comment publicly then. Kushner’s lawyer said Jared was no longer involved in decision-making at the company. (He does continue to receive millions from the family business, according to his financial disclosures, including from some properties with Freddie Mac-backed loans.) Freddie Mac packaged the 16 loans into bonds and sold them to investors in August 2019. But Kushner Companies hadn’t finished its buying spree. Within the next two months, records show, Freddie Mac backed another two loans to the Kushners for an additional $63.5 million, allowing the company to add two more apartment complexes to its portfolio.  A new analysis by ProPublica shows Kushner Companies received unusually favorable loan terms for the 18 mortgages it obtained with Freddie Mac’s backing. The loans allowed the Kushner family company to make lower monthly payments and borrow more money than was typical for similar loans, 2019 Freddie Mac data shows. The terms increase the risk to the agency and to investors who buy bonds with the Kushner mortgages in them.  Moreover, Freddie Mac’s estimates of the Kushner properties’ profitability — a core element of any decision to back a loan — have already proven to be overly optimistic. All 16 properties in the firm’s biggest loan package delivered smaller profits in 2019 than Freddie Mac expected, despite the then-booming economy. The loan for the largest property lagged Freddie Mac’s profit prediction by 31% last year. U.S. taxpayers could be responsible for paying back much of the nearly $850 million in Freddie Mac financing if Kushner Companies defaults and its properties drop significantly in value. During the last real estate crash, taxpayers had to bail out Freddie Mac and its larger sibling, Fannie Mae, to the tune of $190 billion as the agencies plunged into the government equivalent of bankruptcy. (The agencies ultimately repaid the money and more.)  The involvement of Jared’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer adds to questions about whether the family sought to exploit its political influence. Meyer, who shares her brother’s slight build, porcelain features and dark chestnut hair, lobbied Freddie Mac in person on behalf of Kushner Companies in February last year, a timeline of the deal obtained by ProPublica shows. She has previously drawn criticism for invoking her brother’s name while doing Kushner Companies’ business before.  In a statement Freddie Mac said it does “not consider the political affiliations of borrowers or their family members.” It called ProPublica’s analysis “random, arbitrary and incomplete” and asserted that the Kushner loans “fit squarely within our publicly-available credit and underwriting standards. The terms and performance of every one of these loans is transparent and available on our website, and all the loans are current and have been consistently paid.” A spokesperson for Kushner Companies did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. There’s no evidence the Trump administration played a role in any of the decisions and Freddie Mac operates independently. But Freddie Mac embarked on approving the loans at the moment that its government overseer, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), was changing from leadership by an Obama administration appointee to one from the Trump administration, Mark Calabria, vice-president Mike Pence’s former chief economist. Calabria, who was confirmed in April 2019, has called for an end to the “conservatorship,” the close financial control that his agency has exerted over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae since the 2008 crisis. The potential for improper influence exists even if the Trump administration didn’t advocate for the Kushners, said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University specializing in government and legal ethics. She compared the situation to press reports that businesses and associates connected to Jared Kushner and his family were approved to receive millions from the Paycheck Protection Program. Officials could have acted because they were seeking to curry favor with the Kushners or feared retribution if they didn’t, according to Clark. And if Kushner Companies had wanted to avoid any appearance of undue influence, she added, it should have sent only non-family executives to meet with Freddie Mac. “I’d leave it to the professionals,” Clark said. “I’d keep family members away from it.” The Freddie Mac data shows that Kushner Companies secured advantageous terms on multiple points. All 18 loans, for example, allow Kushner Companies to pay only interest for the full 10-year term, thus deferring all principal payments to a balloon payment at the end. That lowers the monthly payments, but increases the possibility that the balance won’t be paid back in full.  “That’s as risky as you get,” said Ryan Ledwith, a professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, of 10-year interest-only loans. “It’s a long period of time and you’re not getting any amortization to reduce your risk over time. You’re betting the market is going to get better all by itself 10 years from now.” Interest-only mortgages, which notoriously helped fuel the 2008 economic crisis, represent a small percentage of Freddie Mac loans. Only 6% of the 3,600 loans funded by the agency last year were interest-only for a decade or more, according to a database of its core mortgage transactions.  Kushner Companies also loaded more debt on the properties than is usual for similar loans, with the loan value for the 16-loan deal climbing to 69% of the properties’ worth. That compares with an average 59%, according to data for loans with similar terms and property types that Freddie Mac sold to investors in 2019, and is just below the 70% debt-to-value ceiling Freddie Mac sets for loans in its category. “What we generally have seen from Freddie and Fannie,” said Andrew Little, a principal with real estate investment bank John B. Levy & Company, “is they will do 10 years of interest-only on lower-leveraged deals.” Loans right at the ceiling are “not very common,” Little said, adding that “you don’t see deals this size that commonly.” Meanwhile Freddie Mac and its lending partner overestimated the profits for the buildings in the Kushners’ 16-loan package by 12 % during the underwriting process, according to the agency’s data. Such analysis is supposed to provide a conservative, accurate picture of revenue and expenses, which should be relatively predictable in the case of an apartment building.  But the level of income anticipated failed to materialize in 2019, financial reports show. The most dramatic overstatement came with the largest loan in the deal, $120 million for Bonnie Ridge Apartments, a 960-apartment complex in Baltimore. In that case, realized profits last year were 31% below what Freddie Mac had expected.  “That’s definitely a significant amount,” said John Griffin, a University of Texas professor who specializes in forensic finance and has studied mortgage underwriting. He co-authored a recent paper highlighting as worrisome loans in which projected profits exceeded actual profits by 5%. “It’s a problem when underwritten income is inflated or overstated,” he said. “That is a key metric that determines the safety of the loan.” Griffin’s paper found that 28% of all loans examined had projected profits that were 5% or more greater than what the properties actually earned in their first year. Some instances of underperformance could be caused by bad luck, the paper acknowledged, but “such situations should be relatively rare.” Yet in the case of Freddie Mac’s estimates in the Kushner deal, 13 of the original 16 loans met or exceeded the 5% threshold — many by a considerable amount. Read Heather Vogell's full print story at ProPublica. Related episodes:• He Went To Jared• Dirt• Trump and Deutsche Bank: It’s Complicated The Freddie Mac headquarters building in McLean, Va., Saturday, April 21, 2018. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)

October 01, 2020

Trump, Inc.

Co-host Ilya Marritz discusses newly revealed tax data on President Trump for 20 years with Heather Vogell from ProPublica and Meg Cramer from WNYC, unveiling what Trump has been hiding.

September 28, 2020

Trump, Inc.

This story was co-published with ProPublica. Sign up for email updates from Trump, Inc. to get the latest on our investigations. President Trump likes talking about voter fraud. He also likes filing lawsuits. Now his campaign is filing lawsuits across the country, citing the alleged dangers of voter fraud. Plus: ProPublica reporters Mike Spies, Jake Pearson, and Jessica Huseman on secret, Republican-only meetings about election policy.

September 24, 2020

Trump, Inc.

Forbes senior editor and book author Omar Sacirbey discusses Qatari government's rental of office space in Trump Tower, which currently houses no employees.

September 17, 2020

Trump, Inc.

Tells the long lead-up to an attack reshaping the world, and opportunities missed to prevent it. A new series from HISTORY and WNYC Studios.

September 12, 2020