Trump Won Tax Breaks While Donating Tens Of Thousands To Corrupt Official

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-donations-alan-hevesi_us_57da25b8e4b0071a6e05666b

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave at least $45,000 to the campaign of Alan Hevesi, a New York state comptroller who later went to prison for his role in a pay-to-play bribery scandal, according to a Huffington Post review of campaign finance records.

Trump’s donations coincided with a $500 million lawsuit he filed against the city of New York in the hopes of reducing his property taxes. As the city comptroller and later the state comptroller, Hevesi, a Democrat, played a role in evaluating and settling legal claims against the city of New York and its officials.

The bulk of Trump’s donations went to Hevesi’s campaign for state comptroller, a race Hevesi won in the fall of 2002. In the fall of 2003, by which point Trump had given Hevesi $35,000, the city settled Trump’s lawsuit, a decision that would have involved both the state comptroller ― i.e., Hevesi ― and the new city comptroller.

The city reduced the tax assessment for Trump’s newest building by 17 percent and awarded the building a special tax abatement. In exchange, Trump agreed to subsidize 200 units of affordable housing in the Bronx. The settlement saved Trump $97 million in taxes he didn’t have to pay, he later wrote in Trump: How To Get Rich.

Trump had donated small amounts to Hevesi during the course of Hevesi’s decades-long career as an assemblyman and a comptroller. But the tens of thousands of dollars Trump gave between July 2002 and January 2004 had no precedent, and no postscript. According to finance records, after 2004, Trump never gave to Hevesi again.

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