Holy Scrutiny, Batman! No wonder Donald Trump was hoping that he could magnify the Durham report into something of Watergate proportions, knowing that this was in the pipeline. Mazars, USA sent a letter to the Trump Organization on February 9 stating that it could “no longer stand behind annual financial statements it prepared” for Trump, according to the New York Times:
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 the former president and his company. The Manhattan district attorney’s office and the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, have been investigating whether Mr. Trump used the statements to defraud his lenders into providing him the best possible loan terms. […]
It is unclear whether Mazars’ break with the Trumps will have any bearing on the district attorney’s criminal investigation into Mr. Trump. The firm has been cooperating with that investigation, and Mr. Trump’s main accountant at Mazars has already testified before a grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. Trump.
A spokesman for the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, declined to comment.
Both investigations still face obstacles. While the statements may contain exaggerated estimates of Mr. Trump’s property values, those same documents also include a number of disclaimers, including acknowledgments that Mr. Trump’s accountants had neither audited nor authenticated his claims.
Another disclaimer notes that Mazars did “not express an opinion or provide any assurance about” the statements, a common caveat in statements of financial condition. The firm also disclosed that, while compiling the information for Mr. Trump, they had “become aware of departures from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.”
Departures from accepted accounting principles? The hell you say? The Trumps?
AG James’ office has submitted a court filing Re Trump case that includes a letter from his company’s accounting firm saying nearly a decade worth of financial statements can no longer be relied upon. pic.twitter.com/sDUcDF1BEd
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 14, 2022
And for ten years? The accounting firm won’t stand behind reports for the past ten years.?
This is going to get hot.
ONLY NOW? We’re talking about a decade’s worth of financial statements and now, in 2022, they will not stand behind them? WTF? I’ve done auditing. This sort of happy horse-shit wasn’t the way I was taught.
I’m not an accountant but have prepared and defended (during the approval process) & then administered some significant budgets during my time. That means being able to back up estimates with actual data and come up with more if requested. So I don’t for one second buy the argument from that firm that they didn’t know some, if not a lot of what Trump gave them and the reports they prepared was bullshit. Or at least heavily laden with it. Surely some of the “grunt” CPAs the ones doing the real actual work raised questions to their superiors who dealt directly with the Trump Org. people. And got told to STFU and work with what they had. Since it wasn’t their name on the final product they probably did what they were told since some higher ups would be the ones certifying the work and risking THEIR licenses.
I’d imagine the powers-that-be at Mazars have for a long time been begging the feds to cooperate in exchange for leniency not only in criminal charges to them but their reputation. Basically throw Trump and his company under the bus in exchange not just for no charges but not themselves taking a hit in court for their lax practices. I’m also sure a lot of real estate and management firms in NYC and other cities play fast and loose with their numbers with the help of reputable accounting firms because it’s long been an open secret that unless someone draws too much attention that kind of white collar crime doesn’t get prosecuted. Like Glenn Kirschner said the mentality of federal prosecutors is to not file charges, especially in a complex case unless they are virtually certain they will win and let’s face it – a lot of those white collar defendants usually have much better representation than public defenders!
Mazars of course couldn’t provide materials while Trump was litigating to keep it away from Congress and prosecutors. But it sure seemed they were primed and ready to go if the courts ruled against Trump and in fact they wasted no time loading up trucks with boxes of records and passing them along when Trump was finally handed his ass in court.
My only regret about the folks at Mazars is about any low level accountants that did the grinding, day to day work on that account, raised questions and faced firing and loss of their careers if they didn’t toe the line and just accept what the Trump Org. provided. They will have to hire lawyers themselves and not cheap ones either. However you can bet that everyone who worked on that account will, if they haven’t already wind up having an uncomfortable chat with both prosecutors and Congressional investigators.
Keep an eye on this because I think Mazars is going to see its reputation take a big hit and get bought out and cleaned out by another firm in the not too distant future.
U lie down with dogs…u wake up with fleas.
Or: You wallow with pigs, you get coated in shit.
delliott has done us Politizoom readers a great service. As a former practicing lawyer, I could not agree with delliott more. Well stated. Retracting what Mazars has done for an entire decade? They must be squirming. They will give the prosecutors everything they want and no doubt are well on the way to doing so. This should be big. Maybe, finally, the orange moron will finally get caught.
Thank you, Ursula. You always focus us on the important issues.