How Trump Got Rich: The Real Story

Oh can even eaten everyone bon soir my name is Graham Harris and I am a member of the board of directors at the CJ F and I've also been a long-term supporter of this CGF through various corporate lives over the years it is my pleasure to welcome you tonight to tonight's Jay talk it promises to be an informed look at the bleeding edge of today's investigative journalism of course we would not be here this evening without the generous and ongoing support of Financial Group and we would also like to thank Seussian who has been a stalwart supporter of the CGF for many many years for those of you who like to share this event on social media please add our hashtag hashtag cgf Jay talk and if you add at Suzanne Craig you might just have the honor of being flamed boy at real Donald Trump tonight's subject will illuminate just how things are different now for investigative journalists during Watergate Woodward and Bernstein followed the money until they got to the president today we know it's the president's money but investigative reporters are deconstructing his wealth to see where it came from covering this story you have to walk like an accountant talk like a real estate developer and think like a lawyer who's trying to burry the truth in obscure and opaque filings 20 years ago I was in RBC's corporate communications department dealing with Suzanne as she was covering the biggest business story of the day it was becoming increasingly clear that the bank mergers were not going to happen and she continued her full-court press that she started when the mergers were announced eleven months earlier Suzanne was always professional and was fun to watch in action but I have to say a small part of me was relieved from the globcenter to new york it is now my pleasure to introduce someone who's going to tell you even more about suzanne an award-winning investigative journalist and the offer author of six books he was the senior producer for CBC's v estate for five years as a documentary writer and director he covered Wars corruption and human rights in Iraq Afghanistan Russia Africa and the Middle East his feature articles have appeared in The Globe and Mail the Toronto Star the New York Times and USA Today his books have tackled organized crime the justice system and human trafficking he's currently working on his next book and his training journalists in Europe and the Middle East ladies and gentlemen Julian share thank you thank you all you're in for a real treat tonight I first met Suzanne a couple of years ago I was I was speaking at a investigative conference in Sweden and the organizer said could you get somebody from the New York Times to come to talk about this new president and what's happening so I called a Suzanne up and she agreed to come and and we did a session very similar to this and we'll talk about one of those stories about her first tax returns story on Trump and when she shows up in Sweden she says I almost didn't make it because I'm working on this really big story they wanted me to keep working on it you know maybe you know like because we can get it nailed in the next couple of weeks so you know she shows up anyway she shows up anyways and then we you know we were some what do we have to rush down to Stockholm because it was a terrorist attack in the middle of the conference we meet six months later in Banff and I go hey how's it going how's that story going oh it's terrific it's an amazing story David Bairstow says it's like skiing on a on virgin snow where no one has gone right I keep waiting and waiting and friends are emailing me and I'm wondering if sue is still working at the New York Times and then of course you all saw that huge bombshell what we're gonna do tonight is we're gonna take you behind the scenes of that bombshell and show you some amazing details about how sue got to the New York Times how she knew Trump before and the huge digging that she and the rest of her team did quick bio when I called sue up I kind of said hey you know I'm from Canada I work at the CBC would you consider coming to Sweden you kind of have to introduce yourself to Americans and much to my surprise he said you know all about you know I'm Canadian some of you may not know that but sue actually started as a summer intern at the cow Harold in 1990 her first full-time job was just down the road at the Windsor star she wrote for The Globe and Mail and the Financial Post at The Globe and Mail she won the national newspaper award in Canada for business and the Michener award which is Canada the equivalent of Canada's Pulitzer and then making Graham happy she left Toronto became a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and 2010 she started at the New York Times continuing to report on Wall Street and the New York state government and finally Trump now tonight we're gonna focus on the great work that she did with David Bairstow and her and her colleague Russ Buettner what you're gonna see right now a brief little excerpt from a documentary that's airing on Showtime about their work let's queue up the little video clip there it is it was just this Alice in Wonderland moment where we got these dogs events we didn't want anybody to see this stuff so we had them set up a ribbon and only the three of us have access to the room we were incredibly fortunate to find sources who are able to give us access to over 200 actual jobs their tax returns of Trump companies Trump partnerships Trump trusts Fred Trump's estate tax return is in the building right now it's incredible that we have it and that opened a door to understanding a huge transfer wealth that happened and gave us so much more information to be able to understand the tax games that were played and then once you sort of pull the string the whole thing unravels we're gonna take you inside that room very few people have been inside that room and we're gonna take you inside that room sue and I have have mapped out a series of questions and that will make sure there's plenty of time at the end for you to ask your questions what we're going to start off with is we're gonna give you some background on Sue's career and how that story started then we're gonna take you inside that room and inside the story something that few people have ever seen or heard and then we'll move on to what the big reveals were and she can sue we'll try to take you through some of the really complicated issues and some of the unanswered questions that President Trump has not addressed and finally we'll end up talking about the impact and some follow-ups especially in light of Tuesday's election all right so we'll get started right away thank you sue for coming back to Toronto you got your start as an intern that as we mentioned in the Calgary Herald and I think most people you know don't know that but also don't imagine that somebody who starts off as an intern lands up being an investigative reporter for The New York Times covering the biggest story of the year President Trump how did you do that what was the path that landed you at the New York Times is it on or not former test test test there we go okay all right it always works with test test test so that's good okay just clip it on so you don't have to hold it that's okay I can just do it like that there we go okay okay it's gonna say I asked myself that now I have to like put it back on you can tell I didn't grow up on this anything this is why they should never have let me out of the room alright hold it buddy there you go all right I'm gonna play for the crowd not for the TV is that better no okay let's see is that better right yeah all right okay I were wrong all right I'm just glad I didn't go into it you know career and TV at this point so it's a good question I sort of still wonder about it every day I mean it's it's been an incredible journey and I think I just I started out with a simple thing that I really I as soon as I started at the University of Calgary and I majored in political science and I just I really I started out at the university paper and I just found really early on that I really loved journalism it was something that was in my blood I just love chasing stories and I just sort of continued that I remember when I was covering Wall Street at the journal I talked to this trader on Wall Street and he he was this really successful trader and he had this really obscure corner of Wall Street that he traded and I said what's your secret to success and he said I know what I do well and I just keep doing it and I sort of feel like I just keep doing reporting and it's worked out for me and I I think the other thing that's been really successful for me is I decided to go into business reporting and that's really served me well in my career in terms of being able to to advance I mean I love what I do every morning I wake up with a childlike love of it and I think business reporting is really sort of helped me move from both I mean I was at The Globe and Mail and I got on at The Wall Street Journal and that helped me move to The Times and it's led ultimately to me covering the president in the Investigations Unit so I mean I think the combination of the two and sort of specializing in there was a big deal now when you're at the New York Times you start off covering City Hall and you do and you also do a tremendous amount of real estate and business repairing can you talk about you you do some fairly extensive reporting on Trump and the word you get when most people are expecting he's not going to win the presidency and what what your career plan was at the New York Times and how that quickly turned around so I had been I covered Wall Street for a number of years both at the Times at the at the journal and I got a I'd switch and I was covering the governor and then I got moved to City Hall and I had been there two weeks and I got a call from the Metro editor of the New York Times and he said we'd like to you to come back from City Hall for two weeks we've got a pretty specific you know coverage area where you know New York and you know business and we'd like you to do a story on Donald Trump's business interests in New York it's going to take two months we don't nobody expected him to make it beyond two months or two or three months he says you'll be back at City Hall and this was in January he called me out you back at City Hall by March 1st I never went back there's Donald Trump kept winning and I sort of became the Donald Trump like investigative reporter almost by accident the team the New York Times - had dozens of reporters assigned to the candidates and Donald Trump sort of came out of nowhere and I ended up covering him throughout 2016 and into the president saying up until today I never went back to City Hall and they've never filled the New York Times the bureau chiefs drop down at City Hall it's incredible that not you know it's sort of like I was expecting to go back by March first and I've never been back after the election suddenly your expertise on Trump becomes vital to the New York Times tell us about that they you get that brown envelope that every journalist dreams about in your mailbox at the New York Times yeah that was one of the most magical days of my life so so I'm running around doing a story on on that day it was on goldman sachs and hillary clinton it was the only story I wrote on Hillary Clinton that year and we're closing the story it was a Friday afternoon and there was so much going on in the newsroom it was weeks before Election Day and I just swung by my mailbox on the way from one place to another and there's an envelope in my mailbox three and I open it it's I look at it and it's from the Trump Tower and I didn't know what it was was a complaint about something or whatever it was turned that mean turns out it wasn't even like was a false address but I open it and there were three pages of Donald Trump's 1995 tax returns in it and I just stood there staring at it and it's one of these things where you you have a gut feeling that it's true and you also know there's probably no way that you're gonna be able to prove it it could also be a complete hoax but you're just staring at ik just going what do I even do with this and not launched a 10-day odyssey in which we ended up confirming that the tax returns the 1995 tax returns that that we did I got that day we confirmed that they were true and brought them to publication and they showed the Donald Trump that year had almost a billion dollar loss and that was significant because it is essentially that billion dollar loss was like a gift card from the IRS that would allow him to shelter a billion dollars in taxable income going forward it was our belief on that day that he probably never paid income tax again up until the election it was not significant like that see there's so much money a lot of it was done on other people's money it was Bank losses but it was just and the other thing it was just it set the stage for that day you know Donald Trump has the only president in modern history that has not released his tax returns and all of us were chasing that we had spent months at the Times looking for his tax returns out as had every other publication but to be mailed it was such a great New York moment and to be able to confirm it in 10 days was just it was a great story and you know great I know you walk over to David Bairstow and others with with that with those pieces of paper how does that scoop eventually lead to this massive investigation what sort of so we we ran that story and then you know we sort of go on and we do some other stories and Donald Trump gets elected president and then in March 2017 you know five or five or six in the afternoon one day Rachel Maddow who is on MSNBC tweets out that she has got more pages of his tax returns from another year so everybody Tunes in at nine o'clock that night and it turns out she's got several pages of his 2005 tax returns and it was interesting as a journalist she's sort of you know we wish we would have had that we were like we were all glued to the TV but it was actually in some ways an unremarkable moment that the tax returns showed some things and but what they showed was that that year he made a hundred and thirty million dollars it became a story that when it came and went in a day the next day we came in and we were like how does he go from a billion dollar loss to making a hundred and thirty million dollars or hundred it was a hundred and fifty million and that question that single question launched us on the Odyssey that led to the story that was published a few weeks ago we just we were trying to figure out how he could have made so much money in the ensuing years that he you know was a that he actually had to declare income in 2005 from the billion dollar loss that he went to and what happened and we started at that point to question what are the origins of his wealth we didn't know where that trail was gonna lead us but that single question started this Odyssey that resulted in the publication of that story you know a couple weeks ago so it's a classic journalistic follow the money yeah from your scoop you get from the tax returns that show nothing to to the huge amount of money you're trying to solve this mystery how do you and David and and Ross if you can and we're moving into the second big theme which is taking you inside the story how do you develop the sources how do you do the shoe-leather work to get the tons of documents that you will eventually publish we and we started out not you know we started out on a very and we spent months with public documents what we first wanted to do is we realized really quickly that in 2004 there was a very big financial event in Donald Trump's life that had received almost no attention it had got a story in the New York Post there was one story about the sale of Fred Trump's real estate empire and Fred Trump is his father in nineteen ninety eight nine he had died and in 2003 Donald Trump in his siblings decided to sell the Empire it was sold in 2004 very quietly it was just remarkable how little publicity it received and the one story that we have on it Donald Trump actually had no comment that made me the first time in his life and we started with that and we and in New York property records are public and we started to we first of all just said what did we started out with a simple question of what did Fred Trump own and then we went through public records there's a system in New York called accros one of my colleagues said he just bought a dog around the time he said I wish I would have named my dog accros because it was like we just loved the system when we spent three or four months in it trying to just figure out what Fred Trump owned and what it's sold for nobody had done this work there was an estimate in the post but what it had sold for but we didn't know we figured it out by by looking at you can tell by what something sells for in New York by the transfer tax it's paid and we went through every building every block in lot and we started to create every building we just did almost like it was a personality and we started to create a personality profile of every building through these public records and what started to emerge from these things was not only the names of people that were involved and that traveled through Fred Trump's world we also started to see for example you know in the case of Beach Haven this massive complex out in Brooklyn that Fred Trump owned that he owned he owned the bricks and mortar at Beach Haven but he had placed the land under Beach Haven and a trust for his children when Donald Trump was three years old a trust was set up for him and his Spanish siblings and Fred Trump started paying them rent he was the you know he placed the land in a trust and he's sort of paying them rent because he owned the bricks and mortar and we've started to see all these different revenue streams that Fred Trump had set up you know he for a while he would pay bank he hated debt I'm like his unlike his son and he he started to he would be paying mortgages for a long time to banks and eventually he would transfer the mortgages to his children he would started paying them the payments instead of the banks and they were the Trust's that his children were able to afford these mortgages because he had seated them with money and we started to see all of these things through public documents through the New York property system so how what percentage of the documents that were the basis of the story were public did you just find documents that were out there for the looking and knowing for them I think initially and we spent probably four or five months looking through public documents that were able to lay the foundation for us to begin to find the documents that you know the the 200 tax returns in the tens of thousands of confidential documents but we began understand who was you know who were signing the documents in Fred Trump's world who his advisers were who the companies were that that were set up for the children and so we reached a point where we started and we were you know going out to people that we thought you know we could hopefully crack this world and these are you know for the most part I mean always we were the tenth or 20 or 30 or one-hundredth journalists at the door but because we understood their language eventually we got through the door where other people hadn't yeah can you talk a bit more about that because I think it's important for the audience to understand that a lot of those documents a lot of some of the great journalism that Sue and her team did were we're not through amazing confidential sources and and leaks and secret you know like the first tax return the New York Times just did what every good journalists organization should do is just start digging and scraping through the the the the public databases but then you knock on doors you knock on doors and you get in when others don't get in what was the success why were you able to do that when other people had been turned away by these very key sources inside the Trump Empire I think that was a really good lesson to us and I remember when we were talking about having to divide up the source list and it was just so daunting because every name on it was somebody that you knew had been approached so many times and how were we going to be successful and we thought you know we would spend a lot of time preparing our approach and part of it was this language that we spoke in the documents that we were able to bring to the door to say you know not just do we want to speak to you but here's what we want to talk to you about and we know about this and we know about a company called Midland and we know about a company called L County and we never you know I don't think any of us got of the first time we went to the door we got in but we kept going back and we tried I mean it you try not to be trying to bother people in a way where you annoy them but rather to convince them that you know what you're doing and it was a long tests of dance between a lot of sources that led us to these confidential documents and finally we got the trust of a few people who said okay and we got those in-house but if we hadn't have spent that many months traveling through the public documents we never got have done it you have a mountain of documents you're developing these important sources you know historically when the New York Times breaks the pentagon papers story they set up a secret room in in one of the local hotels as we saw in that video the New York Times decides to set up the secret Batcave for you and David and take us inside that room why did they set up that room who had access to that room and what for goodness sake was everybody else in the news room thinking when you would disappear every morning into that secret cave yeah it was interesting we had there's three of us who had access to there were three reporters who worked on it my colleagues Russ and David and two keys we were always swapping off keys and we just we were we just didn't want anybody to know we had to be in a room together because and I'll talk about this but we had to start piecing together what we had when you get all these documents in a room you don't know what's going to emerge from them and you have to start encoding them and it became like everyday a puzzle that we had to kind of sort out and talk about and it was really awkward because we were on another floor from the newsroom we were from the main news from the world we were outside the arts and travel section and everybody was nice enough not to ask but everybody was sort of wondering what we were up to and at a certain point you just sort of lose a lot of friends because you can't talk about what you're doing and everybody kind of wants know but they're nice enough not to ask but it became a yeah became an interesting and we were in there for almost a year and the only unfortunate thing I have to say is when we started this project months before we got the documents we had named it and there's a and then just in the you know I think all newspapers do this you name it you name a project and they had named it Trump toxa so I actually think there was an expectation the building that we had Donald Trump's taxes and I was getting calls from from friends at other publications who thought we actually had Donald Trump's taxes it turns out we actually had a lot of his tax information we didn't have his taxes but neck time I do a project I'm gonna name it something else like really boring so that you know yeah yeah I'd like to lower expectations on it it was no certainly for Linea for the journalists that are in the room and to some degree for members of the public it is extremely rare even for a newspaper like the New York Times to give three journalists a year 18 months to work on a project how did that come about and was there pressure was there people in in in management saying what's happening when are you gonna deliver I think the first key of getting 18 months of you a project is not telling your bosses that you're gonna take 18 months but we didn't know how long their journey was going to take and I think that that you know it there was a lot of pressure along the way but I think ultimately the times you know I think respected that just given the complexity of what we were dealing with in the topic matter that it was going to take time to get through there was but there was a lot of push and pull along the way in terms of what our timeline in but generally you had the strong support from your investigative editors and for them to let you take the time until you knew you were gonna yeah I just want to say once they realized what we had in house and sort of where we were heading with it 100% you when you started off with David and Ron you didn't think it would take that long either no I mean when we saw each other in April yes April or May of 2007 17 you know we were gonna be published by the end of the year yeah or sooner and a week wasn't we when we met we didn't have the documents at that point we still thought even given the public documents that we had that we had a great story but we didn't have the what ended up to be the hundreds of tax returns and thousands of financial documents that we got now a key issue for members of the public to understand that journalists have to deal with is you're gathering information as you saw Sue and her team get massive amount of documents have a lot of sources you're beginning to put together a thesis and some some important points at some point you have to decide when do you approach the subjects of your investigation in this case the President of the United States and give him or his team a chance to respond or or react to that let me start first by can you talk a bit about prior to Donald Trump becoming president when you were covering him and his family I think people would be surprised how often Ivanka and the the other Trump's including Donald Trump would be calling you at the new at the failing New York Times so can you talk about what it was like initially when you were covering yeah I didn't have that it's interesting because I covered him in you know starting in early 2016 prior to him getting the nomination and sometimes the calls were like comically relentless like I would be covering I did a story on it was interesting on his airplanes and it was a random it was an April of 2016 and I was looking at sort of how old the airplanes were they became a huge backdrop to sort of him advertising his wealth well in fact a lot of them were 20 30 40 years old and I eventually went to him to talk to him for comment and I couldn't get him off the phone he called me like consecutively between rallies and and this also you know other stories he was very engaged in what I was writing cuz it had to do with either his airplanes or his business and it was almost like okay I've like I've got enough and I don't have any more questions and you're just like okay like you know in a vodka Trump I would be I did another story where she was calling me and it was like I'd get four calls before I got to work at 9:00 in the morning and she's my best friend and like you know Girl Talk and it was kind of it was just crazy and then that's separating now who's a completely different world now but when in the run-up I mean they're very savvy at dealing with the media and you know I wear of that when you're taking their calls but you also it's interesting just wouldn't you compare that to Hillary Clinton who gave almost no out is you always want access to the subject but things really flipped coming into this story and it's interesting just how our concern going into the story and we've treated this story really differently and we thought a lot about how to approach them because we had seen in the run-up to our story and we had a lot of time to see how they were dealing with investigative product projects at the times and often they would tweet out information if we go to them you're worried that they're gonna leak it but at the core the core of what we're doing we also believe that they deserve fair comment and you have to kind of balance the two and this was a very different when we finally went to comment you know on our project which we had spent more than a year on we can't just give them one day to comment but we also have to be prepared that they're going to tweet it out and that we're ready to go to publication and so we got this story that we were pretty much ready to go and then went to them for comment in different stages and we have to go to not only in this case Donald Trump but all of his siblings but you we had to be and normally you would just engage people earlier in the process but we you know we were navigating well he tweeted out will he say something will they hold the press conference or do something to undercut the story and it became a real balancing act in the end ultimately we gave them almost a month and they came back with us to us you know with the threat to sue and that it was defamatory and that they would pursue litigation which they haven't but they never engaged us on a serious level and nor did any of the family members let's end the inside story aspect with just digging a bit more into that delicate balance because Donald Trump jr. had previously on a story naughty what they really come it's right you had gone to two Donald Trump jr. for as we have to as journalists for reaction and he tried to scoop the New York Times by tweeting it out with them he's gotta have it and got got ahead of it so on this story you gave them a month so President Trump knew the guts of your story a month before you went to bed we started to talk to them a month before and part of it wasn't I'm not sure you know a lot of things happened what we plan to run it one weekend and the hurricane happen so there was a lot of things that gave them more time but we were adamant and engaged in them at every step and I sent letters saying here's what we're doing and we tried to engage them on a substantial substantive level with the advisors that we knew knew about the information that we were going to publish ultimately the the lawyer that they hire to handle a lot of sort of high-risk media situations for them and that was hired Peter teal represented Peter teal and the Hulk Hogan case with Gawker was the lawyer that called us back he's a lawyer that does not know and did not know any of the substantive facts of what we were talking about he's a lawyer that threatens to sue reporters was the lawyer that ultimately engaged us and hasn't hasn't sued us people probably know the famous Bob Woodward tape when just before his book comes out he he records his conversation with the president and the president kind of says oh I didn't know who you were trying to talk to me I would have loved to talk to you in your case you can document we thought oh and we got a comment from the president which was I got a million dollar loan from my father and I turn it into a billion dollar empire which was exactly the narrative of the story which was interesting that that's what they came back with and we can talk a bit more about the Twinings in the story but it's fed well into the narrative let's turn to that I hope you've got a good sense now as few people have about the amazing internal behind-the-scenes that Batcave operation that Sue and her two colleagues work that after a year a year and a half of work approaching the president giving president and the rest of the Trump family a month to respond the story comes out and we're gonna move on to what are some of the big reveals just before that we're gonna play a little social media video that the New York Times put together it's being played off of Twitter so there will be possibly a bit of buffering before you get to see it but take a look at this and this will help us set up Sue's explanation of what were some of the big reveals that you have to understand about where Trump got his money from I took a tiny little beautiful little company served by my father and I gained tremendous knowledge from my father because he was a great negotiator and I built it into a massive company that's worldwide he was so proud of me but I barred very little money from my father my father was tough and he was from Brooklyn and he built houses in Brooklyn and I borrowed a million dollars and I built it into a company that's worth more than ten billion dollar I started off actually with a father who is Frank but he was in Brooklyn Queens you grew up in Brooklyn or Queens I think right so you understand it's a different kind of a works it's not been easy for me it has not been easy for me my father was really hard buddy where he could give that guy's a buddy up my father didn't want me to go into Manhattan and he said son that's not our territory we should stay here that's not you know nothing about that but I want to build big buildings Bob because he was from Brooklyn and Queens what we did you know smaller things by the way one of my father passed away remember I have four I have a total of five in my family so we have brothers sisters these people writing books about I got peanut had already built a great well got line my father didn't leave a great fortune it was Brooklyn and Queens real estate and it wasn't a great fortune but now what they do is they build it up like oh he left sad Arnold money and my father never gave any money when my father passed away he gave stuff but by the time he advanced away I had already built my business I built this Empire and I did it by myself nobody did it for me maybe not so let's look at that because arguably Trump's collection and his success was the the story that I did it all by myself I've just borrowed a million dollars and paid it back with interest and if I can become a billionaire look what I can do to the country yeah and this was at the core of sort of our pursuit was that his his persona was at the core like that's how we you know campaign and got into the white house that he was a billionaire and you know I don't I don't ascribe to I don't know if he is or not because he's never released enough financial information for us to gauge that but he presented this gilded life and that he was sort of this kind of almost up from nothing guy who got into the White House and I think we all kind of a wink and a nod that wasn't true but what our story ultimately did was really kind of put the nail in that coffin that that was just give me a break I mean that was just the farthest thing from the truth so let's try to break it down to the audience I hope most of you took the time to read over a long long weekend the 14,000 14,000 words and there's some great so other social media video that you can watch on the New York Times site some of them narrated by sue that will take you through what the big reveals are but we're tonight over the next 15 or 20 minutes are gonna take you through with the leading expert what were some of the big things you need to know about how Donald Trump really got his riches so let's start with the the most famous one where you said I just got a million dollars from my dad that's all what what in the end was the total you were able to to piece together about what he really got so he did get a million dollar loan from his father and he got a million dollar loans many times over he got sixty some million dollar loans it was sixty at least sixty million dollars in loans that's in real real dollars over that we could at least track and I'm sure it was more than that and then he got more than four hundred million dollars over his lifetime starting at least when he was three up until today where he's still profiting off of his father's Empire through the sale of some I was in complex it's the largest federally subsidized housing complex in the United States called starett city his father had an interest in it and to this day there'll be checks coming to Donald Trump in the White House from that investment and it was a huge amount of four hundred plus million dollars and sixty million dollars in loans many of which were forgiven or had you know the interest was never paid or and we'll get into some of the other tricks that they use so we're talking about over four hundred and sixty million dollars total that that he gets what's Donald Trump's wealth when he's three years old by then he's pretty much a mill he's set he's an almost a millionaire at that level just at three years old he gets about that in that year and three years old he's getting the equivalent of a doctor salary just from the lease payments underneath the building complex that I mentioned in Brooklyn Beach Haven just in the lease payments that his father's paying and he's by the time he's nine or ten oh yeah he was going and I think there's a figure what what what's his worth had eight eight nine or ten my several million dollars so then it becomes the this becomes the the foundational the foundational I what's interesting I found is that in your reporting and in some of the interviews you've done done since in the 1980s in the 1990s the media was largely uncritical of this real estate tycoon he appears on Dick Cavett and interestingly the New York Times your own newspaper can you talk about the article that the New York Times does which in many ways becomes the the root of that myth well what's interesting about the story that we did to me is the the idea that that he was worth all this and we started to call it the foundational lie it's like the first lie that's committed and when we started to trace back sort of where this started I don't know if the New York Times did the first story but the first significant story that was done on Donald Trump that we could find was in the New York Times in 1976 and it was incredible this is a Donald Trump at this point he's in his mid 20s he just graduated from war and he's working for his father he has he owns nothing other than he's working for his father and he takes the reporter around he's showing this New York Times reporter around New York and he's showing him this building and that building he's like this is my building and this is my job and he's taking them around in a Calot that's you know his father's leasing and it was one building after the other and all of it was his father's wealth and he was claiming all of it as his own he claimed his his net worth to that reporter which was attributed and that story is more than two hundred million dollars his tax return that year showed he made about $26,000 it was a spectacular con and it was written in our Style section and that story became really significant it was interesting when we were in the room we would play over and over all the interviews that he gave from the 1970s to the mid-1980s and this stuff is repeated over and over and over and he became sort of the celebrity in New York some people took him seriously some people didn't but nobody really questioned the origins of the wels people knew that Fred had a lot they didn't really know what he was worth and he was hard to resist and people bought the story there was this good-looking guy he was on the scene in New York he was doing a lot of stuff at this point with real estate in New York his father was backing it which was showin the story that wasn't necessarily reported there was some good reporting along the way but a lot of it wasn't and a lot of it was celebrity driven and this began the foundational lie of Donald Trump that we're now still trying to unwind to this day and it's interesting that the media including the New York Times is in many ways responsible for that initial foundational I because people were so uncritical you start doing the criticism you're able to document that it's not 1 million but closer to 60 million in loans and 400 million plus in in in benefits but then you dig deeper it's not just because many people are not many people but people can have wealthy fathers who give them money and good for them you begin to investigate that it wasn't just wealth that was passed on but there were tax dodgers and possibly some illegal stuff that was going on inside that Empire so talk about all County and and how important that is to understanding terms wealth today yeah so we found along the way there was a lot of wealth it was passed along we mentioned like the the payments you know he made them as landlord he made them as banker there was a lot of stuff that was done that was completely legal there was dozens of revenue streams that we found that were generationally how people pass wealth from one generation to the other and then it was we started to get into the tax returns and the confidential documents that we found we started to realize this was going way over the line in terms of you know not just tax avoidance but tax evasion and tax fraud and the main the main fraud that we found was a company called all County Building Supply it has a great name because it's so innocuous but in the and it was incorporated in 1992 and this was a point in in Fred Trump's life Fred Trump is getting older and it's interesting because he owned buildings that were worth hundreds of millions of dollars and he also he didn't believe and he had very little debt it was it was incredible to see when we got into his documents but he also was sitting on huge amounts of cash in a corporate level all the buildings he owned just had so much cash sitting on them and in 1992 just you know actually he's at some point getting closer to death and at the time the children if they were have to if he were to die tomorrow would have been facing a 55% estate tax on the money that he was sitting on and so they came up with this the scheming Fred Trump was involved in and you know in the discussions on setting it up they said they set up this company and the shareholders were Donald Trump and his siblings and how it worked was for years Fred Trump would go out and he owned all these buildings and he would buy boilers and everything from boilers to bleach to fridges and stoves and he would pay for them and then one day instead of the buildings that he owned paying for them all County would pay for them and they would pay the same price or you know within a range but all County would then turn around and bill Fred Trump 20 to 50% more they started to drain all the cash that Fred Trump had into all county and it changed the tax rate on it and through all the documents we got and these were obtained not just through the confidential documents but through we first stumbled on L County on a public document it was a congressional filing we found through Donald Trump's sister who's a federal judge when we saw how much money she was getting from all County that's the first thing that flagged us to like what the heck Saul County and then we started doing fortunately in New York we can see through public documents we've started to understand because all County the insidious side of all county was not only were they draining all this money from Fred Trump's estate just to lower their tax rate they all of the number of Fred Trump's buildings were rent regulated and in order to increase the rent in these buildings they had to apply to the state to do it and they started submitting these padded bogus receipts to justify the rent increases and they were getting higher than what should have been rent increases and through FOIA requests we were able to pull these documents in and see they had submitted these bogus receipts to basically jam their tenants with higher than what should have been rent increases so through Freedom of Information requests we were able to get a lot of these documents it was in it once we sort of saw what was going on and there was millions of dollars that were being drawing down from Fred Trump's entities to the kids to lower the tax rate ultimately Fred Trump in 1999 when he died he was a guy who he had so much money we couldn't believe between 1998 and 1993 he drew out more than a hundred million dollars in like real money for five years from his you know on his tax returns he died with less than two million dollars in his bank account these kids had just drained his empire like it just was like unbelievable to see how much money we saw and this doesn't even include the personal bank accounts it had tens of millions of dollars that we saw going through it monthly so just for non fine you spent many years covering Wall Street my I have enough time balancing my my bank account but just be cleared you've got a very rich dad who when he dies if his money stays under his name Donald those will get a huge hit and there's all kinds of ways you can do it legally but what they do is they create basically this sham company yeah and money is siphoned away from the future taxman in the ship's company all I did was just produce receipts that went up to the bread to drain them yeah and and all the kids Donald included then get those millions without having to pay pay they they may obtain some tax we don't know but they definitely didn't pay fifty five percent yeah they de frauded the US Treasury so Donald thanks to both his his rich dad and also some rather creative tax dodges is sitting on millions and millions and millions but as his dad is dying Donald is a little worried tell us what Donald does to try to get even more money from his his elderly dad yeah this is one of the most incredible moments in this story for me and just in terms because this story you know a lot of it's about tax fraud and how he got his wealth but it ultimately is the story of a relationship between a father and a son and just this incredible I think the dynamic between the two of them over decades and how Fred Trump at every turn had Donald Trump's bat cover it he gave him hundreds of millions of dollars he co-signed loans he forgave loans and then in 91 there's the famous casino story yeah he had the 1990 and the when Donald Trump was in huge trouble and couldn't make the payments on the debt one of his casinos one of Fred Trump's bankers walks into one of his casinos and bites three point five million dollars see no chips and just walks out without placing a bet he made the bond payment for him and it was incredible you know this story's but out there and you know he they paid a fine but to see that checks written like we had the checks in house we were when we were we spent month or we spent weeks scanning all these documents and just to see the check to the Trump Castle going through we were like wow so you see the distress the Donald Trump is an in 1990 and dad is always there for him and it's that was like the the darkest moments of Donald Trump's financial life were it was it was in 1990 and you can see it and and we you know you can see it Fred Trump who never he tried to avoid taking out you know you could see for years on his tax returns very little money he took out and in those five years and that the you know in the greatest moment of his son's distressed took out more than a hundred million dollars and in nineteen and in December 1990 there's his moment in the story and it just is an incredible scene between these two men and a father who has at every turn supported his son Donald Trump has a lawyer in house one of his lawyers draft a codicil to his father's will to change his father's well which would have given he has that he has lawyers show up in his father's house and Fred Trump reads the codicil that if the son has drafted to the well he's given no notice that this is coming over and in Fred Trump immediately sees it as an attempt by Donald Trump to gain full control of his own empire of his you know Fred Trump's empire and Fred just flipped out he refused to sign the codicil and he immediately changed the executor Jean as well at that point Donald was his only executor and he put Donald Trump and his Mary Ann Trump Donald sister and Robert Trump the other sibling as the co-executor x' and ultimately drafted another well he he saw what was going on at medial it's just incredible that a son can send over a codicil and try and have his father's well changed at this point Fred Trump is getting on in age and at least he had the wherewithal to see what was going on and put the brakes on it but just an incredible thing that after all of that that somebody could do that let's wrap the section on the on the on the big reveals because I think you've taken the audience through some of the big chunks and shocking revelations is that on the front page of the New York Times you are in effect accusing the president of outright fraud then how do you how do you how you know how comfortable were you with that and and and how strong did you feel you have the evidence to be able to make such a damning accusation I think it was an evolution for us but I think ultimately we felt really comfortable over when you see things like all-county and we haven't even talked about all the games that were played with the appraisals and you know this is Fred Trump was a man who was one of the the greatest post-war builders in the United States hundred millions of dollars in real estate and to see how they you know through various either you know in the well or through other things that went on took real estate that was worth when it served them told the IRS it was worth nothing or real estate that wasn't worth a lot and when they needed it for charitable deductions told them it was worth tens of millions of dollars you know from the all-county scam that we told you about there was so many things that we saw we felt ultimately very comfortable I mean there were certainly were discussions at the New York Times about the allegation that we were levying on but we felt you foe come yeah we felt very comfortable about it in the final ten minutes we have before we can open it up to the to the audience let's talk about the impact of the story and also what's coming forward especially in light of of tuesday's tuesday's election it struck me you know when when there's a when it's revealed that hillary deletes some emails the republicans and fox and the other media pounced and to this day you're still hearing about crooked Hillary and the email servers you expose massive fraud illegalities and yet few politicians or the media seem to be talking about it during either the elections or or even now I'm wondering if that frustrates you you know I'm I guess I'm frustrated but not surprised it's frustrating cause III think it should be you know front and center every day but I think when you think about the world we live in compared to like I just were when I was a kid the only way we would we would consume news in certain ways every day the newspaper would arrive in a certain time and we would watch the Daily News and we would have time to process like what was being said and it was I sort of always remember Neil postman I when I was in university I studied him and I remember him even when USA Today was coming on opining about that sort of decline of news and now you're not only just you know USA Today is just almost quaint when you think about in Twitter we have to consume things and 140 characters or you know 280 characters I mean the attention span of people to consume news and how quickly they do it and especially now with TV news it just happened so fast that it's you know it had it had a life cycle and then it moved on to the next thing I mean I think it it's frustrating but III not I'm it's sad but I'm not surprised one of the things you mentioned in talking with the globe this week is that to some degree in journalism we try to surprise people and is there an element that you know exposing Trump as a liar and somebody who played the loose with money is shocking in his revelation but maybe not out of character is that it I think we were all under the joke that he got more than a million dollars from his father but I think what you know what was important about our story and I think about the investigative journalism behind it that myself and my colleagues did was simply the the amount of evidence that we were able to to back with that and I think that that's it is hard it's a challenge because you're always swimming up you know I think you know whenever you cover something about Trump you know is he a liar well I think with a lot of people that would be a shock did he misrepresent something you know you can go on and on and on and people aren't surprised when it is a challenge when you're covering him like what sort of what are you right next about him that's really gonna surprise that challenge and I think at least with this story I think the at least the magnitude of it and the documentation we have you know kind of was the shock factor more than actually the revelation itself and as you said at the beginning Trump has not talked about it he used when he gets angry about something but he's just tried to ignore it because he wants this to go away and in none of the statements by him or said or the press secretary or anybody else has there been any rebuttal of any of the major revelations and I I think the important thing to talk about about the story - isn't that you know it it had a life span of it wasn't and there was a lot of criticism you know sure we have we held it because there was a hurricane one weekend and then we were writing into the Cavanaugh hearings and people are like we should have held it for this day or that day you know a certain point you have a news story that's ready to go but I think that this story will have you know I think you know the house has changed now it's going to have a second life as we start talking more about the taxes now that there's a possibility that those are going to be aired and I think you know for history this will take a while to soak into the bloodstream but it's gonna change the narrative of how people write about the 44th President of the United States and I think that that's also something I think that there's going to be waves of how people process this story you mentioned that in the light of Tuesday's elections and the the Democrats gaining control of the house and that there's some changes also in the New York legislature what could come based on some of your revelations what could Trump be facing and in terms of more investigations into his finances in part thanks to your digging well the house now because it's now Democrat control they can they can request his tax returns that could be a major event when it happens I don't think it's going to happen without some legal Rommel rep you know wrangling and it's probably not going to happen immediately New York State also now the the Senate was republican-controlled it's now controlled by the Democrats the first time in a long time they've been seeking his tax returns and there's there's bills pending that could be reintroduced that could happen and there's also investigations going on both on the city level and the state level into some of the allegations that we raised I'm optimistic about some and not so optimistic about others a lot of this happened a long time ago but in some cases the document still exists and I think there's an appetite on certain levels to continue to pursue it so we're sort of feeling a bit of a mix oh yeah let me end on a broader Trump question in general not just about about your stories you know Trump has said that the media like the New York Times and the post love him because his reign is kind of revitalized media he kind of says when I'm gone they'll they'll they'll all be failing even more that he's helped their their finances and and given them a boost aside from you know his political reasons for saying that is there an element of truth in that that the Trump presidency has given you in the New York Times and The Washington Post an amazing revitalization of investigative journalism yeah it has I mean there's no there's no question it's I think given a lot of journalists a lot of purpose I've said it before I think he's he's good for journalism in the same way the war is good for the economy I don't think you'd wish that on anybody I think he he is it's you know he's been a corrosive force I mean he's a person who believes that the Bill of Rights begins with the Second Amendment and he is you know it's it's like you know they're saying and it's been used before but you it's you can't yell fire in a crowded theater and he's he's done not in the theater he's using as America he's in I believe inciting violence and and and and hatred talk against journalists and it's not a good thing for a society Free Press shouldn't be something that's a part as an issue it should be something we all support it's great for democracy and he has made it a partisan issue and I don't think anybody wins on not and as some of you most of you probably know he barred CNN's lead correspondent from the White House which is which is which is quite shocking finally in light of what what you've been saying all night and and your last comments what's it like working at the failing New York Times in the age of of Trump how exciting is it and also how crazy is it there you know it's been to be able to do that story was a great it was just a great experience in like you is an investigative journalist you think that something like somebody gets to the White House and all of the stuff should have been figured out in all of his history we had a in the room that we were in we had a board it was a bit out a homeland but we had on one side the headline that we wanted on the story which was Donald Trump the correction because so much of it was wrong in this history that was out there about him and on the one hand it's exhilarating to have been able to write that story but I also feel it's really I feel like we're working in a domestic war zone at this point when you walk into the New York Times every day there's police barricades out there now we go to we go to security meetings and we're concerned about which windows are now targets for sharpshooters we have a hotel on each side we have to work with the hotels for security I actually sit at a window and I look out every day and you're like looking for sharpshooters like it is not to something that's pleasant and this has been brought on by the person who's now in the White House I mean that it's incredible we have to go through training in case there's shooters that come in on how we get our to the building they want us to go to First Aid courses so we can learn how to bandage people in case of a mass shooting at the New York Times it's a really scary time and it's it is you sort of you worry about what's gonna happen every day when you walk in there so when the one one the one hand I think it has it's it's been great for journalism on one hand but I wouldn't wish it on anybody yeah on that optimistic note we're gonna open it up to questions from the from the floor we're bang on time so we'll have about 20 to 25 minutes please come up and use the mic so we can hear your voices please do ask questions don't make statements make them as pointed as you want and sue will take them all identify yourself if you feel like it just so we know where you're coming from sir you're first just a private citizen Paul so you it seemed to me that the there was an interchange of the terms like fraud and creative attache tax-dodging yeah I mean in terms of legal matters are you inferring a fraud in terms of a criminal liability and isn't that really deep purview of the American IRS to determine that excellent question it's a good question there was a lot of in the story and we tried to make those lines pretty clear there was tax avoidance tax evasion and tax fraud the criminal liability that I think the statutes have long told on that in terms of what we found there's a there's this there's statutes for criminal fraud and I don't think anything's gonna come of that we did find we believe pretty outright fraud on some issues and whether the IRS goes after or not you know we haven't heard anything from them I think that I think two things one is is you know I've talked to people at the IRS is that their practice to go over you know after fraud after 20-some years on a civil level they could it's unlikely because it's their practice not to and now the person they're pursuing is the president but we're I think in the story I hope we were pretty clear about the lines in terms of the different you know is it tax evasion tax avoidance tax fraud and we saw kind of all all stripe second story as of last night there's a new attorney general in the US who has not been confirmed by the Senate I'm an ordinary citizen but a political junkie and happy to be a Canadian is there any thought I mean he can shut them Muller if he chooses but he's not being confirmed if the Senate sits he will be confirmed he should excuse himself you've got all kinds of examples of why is there any thought of working on this in terms of the the TOC stuff I turn it just in terms of him being Attorney General and the power he has I don't see I continue to think that they're gonna refer in terms of the Special Counsel anything outside of it I think mother's been pretty clear on that he's referred a lot of stuff to the Southern District in New York that is not kind of at the core of what he's doing and I think you're gonna continue to see that I don't know from Muller's office you know I don't know what I mean I I wish I had a crystal ball to sort of see what what then what tomorrow is gonna bring with the the nominee that's in but I think with Muller you're gonna continue to see it's been a pretty consistent pattern of referring stuff to the Southern District she's telling Charlie Savage in today's New York Times has a has a couple of excellent articles that address some of your questions and he he takes you through why the new Attorney General can actually stay in office I think up to 210 days without without actually being confirmed and it could be renewed and what his powers are which are quite extensive to stop or block Muller so he should accuse himself well that was raised because the question is because of his previous statements about the investigation yeah yeah hi there um I have actually three questions rolled into one sorry I was thinking you've spent almost a year working on this and what surprised and delighted you about the results of what you did but what disappointed you in terms of the reaction and finally what would you have done differently alright so surprise disappoint and what would you have done do and what we what surprised me keep throw away and recycle I guess it's the theme oh it's a hard surprise disappoint what was the third one and then um what would you do differently what would you do differently nothing surprise me nothing disappointed me and nothing I would do differently [Music] I have to say the surprise I want to kind of focus on that I think the feedback and people have talked about how maybe it should have gotten more attraction I also think the feedback has been incredibly positive on it and I think it's renewed my faith in investigative journalism I think so much journalism that I see I consume it every day I'm there and I'm covering the president is you know what's happening today it's you know TV driven it's partisan driven and I think it's renewed my faith that you know sometimes let's like let's actually spend some time actually following the facts and that people want to see that sort of journalism it's been really heartening to see that so I actually think like I've had a really positive experience from the feedback on you know just renewing my faith in investigative journalism that people want to see more of this and they want to see you know papers doing more you know spending the time and spending the effort and in doing that we should pass that how big I mean you start off everything yeah we were surprised about how big your reveal was like the amount of money did you have any sense when you were starting out that we were talking you know 450 that I started out with and I did a story in 2016 where I I wasn't sure actually what Donald Trump owned and didn't own and I spent months doing a we actually hired a firm at that times to do a property search on all of his properties in the United States to find out which ones he owned and didn't own because there was always this like you know feeling in New York that he said he was worth all this and he actually was worth nothing and it was interesting because I ended up I sort of started out kind of more on the he wasn't worth a lot and it doesn't mean because he inherited all this money that he's worth something those are two different issues but to see the magnitude of wealth that was transferred one generation to the other was a really big surprise to me that at least he said he could have lost it all in a day so you know but that he over his lifetime about hundreds of millions of dollars from his father that was actually a surprise to me that when we actually you know figured that out at the end and all the loans yeah so that and in a macro sense you see it doesn't go to his net worth we still have no clue on his net worth but to see that he inherited that much money was sorry do you think he's a billionaire I don't know yeah I'm careful about yeah I don't know just a citizen but a media consumer and I enjoyed your piece very much you mentioned Mary Anne his sister who's a federal court judge and that it was her filings as part of her hearings glad that gave you up an important set of leads you suggested that the and both in your article and today that the all sip for Trump and his siblings were all complicit in what was fraud and tax evasion I assume you made an effort to talk to the judge she may not have talked to you but it seems to me that she's in a almost impossible position as a federal judge to be swept up in a tax fraud and tax evasion case and it's a really interesting question and I think there's been at least some complaints lodged against her she's now a senior retired drug judge but we in the story we lay out sort of levels of what people knew Donald Trump and Robert Trump his brother definitely knew about all-county and knew about the flow of money and what was going on Mary Ann Trump Barry the the judge was a recipient and it's unclear to us exactly what she knew about it and it's same with Elizabeth Trump the other sibling so I think there's different levels of complicity among the four there's proceeds of crime but there are and I I don't know where those we're looking into that is it as a you know what's gonna happen with her and she between 18 months in 1980 98 99 made more than a million dollars from all county that scammed the sham corporation that we that we talked about it's incredible and that was at the tail end of it so who knows how many millions of dollars were being drawing down in them in the previous years hello I am a journalist I Ryerson University and I just want to ask if Trump is found guilty for fraud what would be the penalty for his actions at this point because the criminal penalties have told it would be civil penalties so it would be there would be either fines fines with interest in penalties so those are the three kind of main ranges of it you know as far as the IRS and state and city people would be concerned in terms of that can they can they recruit money and how much and then finds an interest thank you hello I'm a political scientist specialist at U of T and I just had a question for you these past two years the White House administration in particular the president seemed to have a different headline in the news every day and as someone whose job it is not only to inform the public but to serve that watchdog function how do you feel seeing on one hand the very positive response to your story and obviously this great journalism which you've you and your co-workers have done but also the White House administration's ability to throw so many headlines and kind of have this big smoke screen and I guess the real question which I'm asking is are you ever afraid that your work might get lost in like the strange noise of this weirdly effective PR machine that they're running out of the White House no they're incredibly effective at it I mean I think you can say a lot of things about Donald Trump the one thing you can never underestimate this is ability to control the conversation and it is frustrating to see it even today you know we just woke up is it this morning yeah but the midterms seems like a long time ago and already the conversations changed and the Attorney General is now out and you know every day that the conversation changes and it's frustrating things don't ever discourage you every day I think you're seeing a rise of not only like and I talked a little bit about it about just the attention span of consumers and and this this world that we've been working to I think for a long time where a lot of it now is TV driven and it's soundbite driven from where we were and the inability I think of people to have a meaningful dialogue I mean it's it's it's a really really frustrating yeah it's a consumer of news and somebody who I appreciate that all of you have turned out today to actually have a meaningful conversation about an important story it's a rare thing Thank You Kowski I'm a freelance business journalist this might be a little inside baseball but I am curious to know how you actually wrote this thing there's three of you fourteen thousand words thousands of documents how did you sit down to put this to the page to forget that no we it's interesting we we started out and it's a good sort of journalism question because we how do you tell a story we had in it you know we could have told it in three stories we could have done a serial on it and then two three stories and we started to outline it and we started to outline it as three different stories and we realized in that process that it it ultimately it was one investigative narrative about it was about a father and a son in their relationship and we didn't feel because we were you know somebody's an investigative narrative when you're trying to map these things out we'll have a you know an anecdotal lede we happen to have a pretty hardened whose lead that he'd committed fraud and we didn't get to the fraud until kind of midway through the secretary story so we realized we couldn't really run a story on page one of the New York Times saying well there's a fraud here you have to wait till tomorrow to get to it so as we were sort of mapping all this out we we saw that it it just naturally became one story and it was a beast for the New York Times to deal with it round through eight pages of the paper and I think it's one of the longest stories the New York Times has ever written it was a huge commitment by them to do it but I think when they when they saw it and we kind of was a bit of an evolution of everybody talking about it in order to do this we had to get we have to get editors and and layout people and everybody on board to do this and how are we gonna lay it out and how are we gonna tell this story and it sort of was a beast that they'd never seen before so it was a difficult difficult process but I think I think we did the right thing I think there's some things you know the the scene about the the will scene I would have loved to have written not in a separate story where you know the Sun comes in and tries to change his father as well that's just such an incredible moment they I think you know would have been great to have let breathe a little bit in a separate story but I think it worked in this story so there was some hard choices that we had to make but I think it that's sort of how it how it came to be once we started to outline it became very obvious that it was one story Japanese statistics because it is a bold decision for for any publication - instead of breaking it up making it you know easy more more bites you know that they do either on TV or even on we actually didn't take out we did a we did a you know we actually did a summary story of the story which was that's right the real takeaways do you have any statistics or any sense of how well read it was on the website and in the paper and any sense of how many people consumed how many minutes they actually spent going through the I could have I mean I know more than we had at one point weeks ago more than five million hits but it's still getting one a hundred thousand hits a week just in the statistics we can pull up two-week windows and I bet the consumption is showing that people are reading yeah I see that they're going all the way through it they were really glad to it it's yeah you know it's a good my name is Ryan Lorenzo I'm just did not finance so not journalism first I want to commend you and your team for the diligence of the work and the report it was amazing and I hopefully you'll have Awards in your future on it my question is what do you think the endgame is for Donald Trump my view is it doesn't end well but I don't know what it looks like I don't know if he's behind bars I don't know if you just quit do you have a view of how this all plays out over the next couple of years or is it does it he just goes unscathed then he goes off into the to the horizon and wells but there's a lot of things I can't imagine that have happened I mean it's sort of a you know I mean I think we've shown that a lot of the things they did were out of an episode of The Sopranos yeah and you know still kind of nothing's happen but I think I don't know I like to believe that eventually you know things come to the top and that something will happen but I don't know I mean it's a hard question I don't know you know I like to hope for you know you know what we saw we couldn't believe and I really hope you know they were working off of tax returns that were you know from Fred Trump's Empire it gave us some visibility into a lot of stuff that Donald Trump did and I really hope that his tax returns are relieved because I think one of the main things they will show is the same toxin at against that we saw in the documents we had on Fred Trump's empire on his I think that's why that he doesn't want them released I mean that's more not gonna be one of the big reveals that we'll see if they're ever released following up on The Sopranos did you find connections in your work with what's going on with the Russian billionaire class and so forth we didn't know no simple yeah we didn't it's not to preclude it's not there but we didn't find it hi I'm just a concerned citizen I have a question in terms of what your excellent reporting really showed is that white-collar crime is really not investigated or prosecuted and what you would recommend to to resolve that because a lot of people are getting away with a lot of things that hurt people that are not yeah prosecutor part of what the story did lay bare is that the IRS is not you know they if they find something it's often settled you know for a small amount you know that was a really frustrating thing we saw over and over and over a lot of what we saw a lot of was illegal a lot of what we saw was also legal and dubious and it was settled and we saw some of the settlement we have the IRS documents where it was settled for you know not a lot of money it's frustrating and this is coming at a time where less and less money is being put into enforcement at the IRS in the United States there's no one here if I could follow up ya know yeah because with the Republicans keep being the Senate they have even more control over the judiciary which means that if the appetite is not there to prosecute it probably won't be so what can regular people hope for in terms of people you're being held accountable I I would I don't have an optimistic view of that I think actually laughs so I mean I think that you're looking at an agency with the IRS that relies on you know people who you know like when you get a paycheck that pay taxes and there's less money being put into enforcement on the wealthiest individuals in our society and that's a problem I mean you you they rely on people like they're either worried about it or they're automatically deducted in order to pay taxes in the United States and okay thank you it's troubling yeah final question here hi my name is Paul LaBelle we've all learned a lot of new words from Donald Trump one of them is amol you went from me are you going to be looking that at the plant that the times planning on investigating all his benefits that he's getting from being an office in terms of the emoluments are just writ large well both existed I guess the question is do you need the income tax returns to do that can you investigate like the hotels and things like yeah and I think we've done a lot of reporting on that and I think there's a lot of stuff not only on the emoluments question in terms of what's coming in but also just on you know there's great stories to be done on the benefits the family receives from from just being in office that come to them so I think both into I think we've done a lot of stuff on the amonium it's already but it's a great thread to continue and I think as the courts continue to push forward on some of that some cases are going forward it's going to be a great area to watch mmm thank you yeah I took a point I want to I want to end on we started with you as a young reporter intern the Calgary Herald man you'll end up covering business here in the Wall Street Journal covering Trump real estate and his the famous tax returns story and then you do this bombshell that I think has enthralled five million people and Counting on the web and and people here I know you can't reveal your your secrets but what is next for Suzanne Craig what what kinds of stories are you trying to work on in the months I mean I think we want to keep I think that the tax returns story is very rich I mean it's sort of a hard story to say you know we're gonna keep you know you're sort of hoping that more tax returns are gonna come forward but I kind of believe you make your own luck and we're working to reach out to people who we think have them and hope they have our phone numbers and hope they know we have some sort of expertise in dealing with them and hope that you know I think lightning strikes three times at this point so I mean I'm hoping that you know we continue to get more and more stuff to work with it's a bit of a you know open frontier right now because we don't have that but I hope that you know as we go forward we get that in the meantime I think we're gonna ask a lot of questions on things like emoluments and benefits and other things that are coming through the door well I think it's also clear you and the rest of the team davidon and Ross have have the street creds now on this issue yeah and I think a lot of bigger stories are going to come from Suzanne Creek and the New York Times a round of applause for we'll have some closing remarks Saddam will be around a bit for the reception so you could pester her with even more the Canadian journalism foundation this has been just an outstanding behind-the-scenes look at Suzanne Craig's unbelievable journey to her blockbuster investigation on behalf of the cjf in the entire audience I'd like to thank her for joining us in Toronto were honored to have one of our great Canadian journalists and a New York Times superstar on our stage tonight [Applause] Gillian share he embodies some of the best traditions of investigative journalism and he put a great deal of work and thought into making this a timely and relevant discussion for all of us tonight please join me in a round of appreciation just one more event coming up in our Jay talks season and we hope you'll join us on November 29th we have a Canadian exclusive a book launch with venerable former editor of The Guardian Alan Russ Bridger Alan's in Toronto to talk about his biggest stories at the Guardian think Edward Snowden WikiLeaks phone hacking and he'll talk about his new book breaking news and what it means to the future of journalism you can have a look at our social media for details on upcoming events and finally our thanks to all of you for being with us tonight and for supporting the work of the cjf we do hope you'll stay with us to meet Suzanne and Julianne and continue this conversation at the cocktail reception thank you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: CJFvideo

Views: 16,010

Rating: 4.5736041 out of 5

Keywords: Journalism, Politics, media, donald trump

Id: NUyicbdB07o

Length: 84min 23sec (5063 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 13 2018