By: Serach Nissim
Donald Trump, former US President, may have his century-old estate in Westchester County turn into a giant legal nightmare.
As reported by Crain’s NY, Seven Springs, Mr. Trump’s 213-acre Georgian-style mansion, is now the subject of two state investigations— a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and a civil inquiry by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both of the investigations are centered on the possibility that the property’s value was manipulated by Trump, in order to gain tax benefits from an environmental conservation arrangement he made at the end of 2015, when he ran for president.
The estate, which contains a plethora of nature, was purchased by Trump in 1995 for $7.5 million. It began gaining negative attention at the end of his term as president, with Vance issuing new subpoenas in December, and a judge ordering evidence to be turned over to James’ office a week and a half after Trump left the White House. “While a tax issue related to a conservation arrangement might not be as sexy as a hush-money payment, prosecutors are likely to focus on any violation of law that they find,” former Manhattan prosecutor Duncan Levin said, suggesting that prosecutors will push anything they find against Trump. “Remember, the authorities got Al Capone on tax evasion.”
When Trump had first acquired the property, he had hoped to transform it into a golf club or build rows of high-end residential homes. When those plans fell through, he came up with an idea to keep the property but reduce his taxes. He granted an easement to a conservation land trust to preserve 158 acres of meadows and mature forest from the estate. Trump thus obtained a $21 million income tax deduction, equal to the value of the conserved land, as per property and court records. The sum was based upon a professional appraisal which valued the Seven Springs property at $56.5 million as of Dec. 1, 2015.
Local government assessors had said the entire estate was only worth about $20 million. “If the value of the easement was improperly inflated, who obtained the benefit from that improper inflation and in what amounts?” said Michael Colangelo, a lawyer in the New York attorney general’s office, in a hearing last year.
The estate first got investigators’ attention in 2019 when Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, had told a congressional committee that Trump sometimes manipulated property values to gain favorable loan terms or tax benefits.
