The former president and his business were found guilty of fraud last year when a judge with Democratic party affiliation sided with New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling that Trump and his firm had inflated the worth of their assets.
On a recent edition of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart commented on the situation surrounding Trump’s civil fraud lawsuit. Stewart said that Trump’s purported property overvaluation was not a victimless crime, and those who participate in such tactics for monetary benefit are ethically dubious.
This week, critics and the New York Post hinted that Stewart could have a sticky situation concerning property valuations.
On Wednesday, Stewart vehemently denied hypocrisy claims.
Over a decade, Trump was found to have illegally inflated the value of his properties in loan applications and purchase negotiations. Stewart claims that Trump purposefully devalued his properties when it came time to pay taxes but overvalued them when using them as collateral for loans.
Stewart claims that the banks were cheated out of their money and paid back with reduced interest rates.
On Tuesday, on his podcast, Tim Pool found a story from 2014 that spoke about Stewart selling a penthouse in New York City. The piece was published in The New York Times. The 6,280-square-foot penthouse was sold to investor Parag Pande for an unbelievable $17.5 million. The story states that Stewart paid $5.8 million for the residence in 2005.
According to Pool, the $17.5 million sale of Jon Stewart’s apartment raised questions about potential fraud. New York’s assessed value was around $800,000, whereas the market value was $1.8 million.
After swiftly heeding Pool’s advice, the New York Post got assessment documents from the sale’s year. According to these documents, the property was only worth an estimated $1.88 million. According to the Post, an even lower value of $847,174 was assessed.
Stewart allegedly paid much lesser property taxes based on the property’s assessed value, the same practice he indicted Trump of on Monday.
Mark Levin, host of Blaze TV, tweeted, “You’re Caught red-handed, and you present a foolish argument.”
