CONFLICT: Trump just dumped by his own accountants over fraudulent practices alleged by NY AG
“You’re fired!”
Donald Trump got to hear his Celebrity Apprentice catchphrase aimed back at him once already when the vast majority of voters kicked him out of the White House in November of 2020.
Given that that experience likely helped inspire him to urge his followers on the following January 6th to “fight like hell,” one can only imagine how he will react now that the twice-impeached former president has been summarily dismissed by the accounting firm that has for many years prepared tax returns and financial statements for both Trump and his family company, The Trump Organization.
The news of the decision by the Mazars global audit, accounting, and consulting group to discontinue its work with the Trump Organization and its owners was revealed today in a court filing that disclosed a letter from Mazars’ general counsel William J. Kelly to the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer Alan Garten, declaring that any statements that it made regarding Donald Trump’s financial status from the years 2011 through 2020 — including practically the entirety of his presidency — “should no longer be relied upon.”
“We write to advise that the Statements of Financial Condition for Donald J. Trump for the years ending June 30, 2011—June 30, 2020 should no longer be relied upon and you should inform any recipients thereof who are currently relying upon one or more of those documents that those documents should not be relied upon,” said the letter, which was dated Feb. 9th.
According to Kelly, Mazars made their decision to cut ties with their longtime client “based, in part, upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General on January 18, 2022, our own investigation, and information received from internal and external sources.”
Kelly also notified the Trump Organization legal officer that the company will no longer be “able to provide any new work product to the Trump Organization” because falsities in Trump’s prior financial reports have created “a non-waivable conflict of interest” between the two companies.
Despite the repudiation of its own “work product” for the Trump Organization by Mazars, a Trump spokesperson attempted to spin the vote of no confidence from the accounting firm into a ringing endorsement of the legitimacy of the financial information that the prior statements contained.
“While we are disappointed that Mazars has chosen to part ways, their February 9, 2022 letter confirms that after conducting a subsequent review of all prior statements of financial condition, Mazars’ work was performed in accordance with all applicable accounting standards and principles and that such statements of financial condition do not contain any material discrepancies,” the statement from the Trump Organization said.
Apparently, the saying “garbage in, garbage out” hasn’t registered with Trump and his company.
The move by Mazars comes as New York State Attorney General Letitia James continues to pursue a civil fraud investigation case against Donald Trump and the Trump Organization saying that it already has “significant evidence” that the Trump Organization used fraudulent or misleading asset valuations to obtain favorable terms for real estate loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions.
The Manhattan District attorney is simultaneously pursuing a criminal investigation of the same charges.
At this point, the real question becomes which prosecutor will get to hold Trump accountable first as investigations into his attempts to “find” votes in the Georgia 2020 presidential results are being probed by the Fulton County, Georgia DA, and the Department of Justice is potentially weighing multiple avenues of prosecution for sedition, obstruction of justice, and violations of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
Meanwhile, the Trump Organization needs to find a new accounting firm, preferably one with a strong stomach and at least one blind eye if they’re going to work with a dissembling former president.
You can read a copy of Mazars’ letter to the Trump Organization in the tweet below, courtesy of The New York Times‘s Maggie Haberman.
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
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Original reporting by Corrine Ramey at The Wall Street Journal.
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