President Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, sharply disparaged the president and said she believed he paid a friend to take his SATs in audio recordings published by the Washington Post Saturday night.
Trump “has no principles – no,” Barry said in recordings delivered to the Post. ‘It’s the phonony of everything. It’s the phonony and this cruelty. Donald is cruel. ”
Barry’s remarks were made in a set of secret recordings in 2018 and 2019 by her niece, Mary Trump, who has emerged as a fierce critic of the president.
Barry said that Donald Trump “did not read”, “that he was a brat”, and that she did his homework for him, adding that she believes he paid a friend to do the standardized tests that allowed him to transfer from Fordham University to the University of Pennsylvania.
The allegation that Trump threatened to graduate from high school was one of the most frequently asked excerpts from a book by Mary Trump published earlier this year, in which she describes the dramatic inner workings of the Trump family and how it shaped the psyche of the president. The recordings with Barry, delivered to the Post to substantiate the accusation, seem to be one of the underpinnings of her book.
Mary Trump’s spokeswoman told the Post she took her aunt to gather evidence to support her claim that she was cheated out of a significant portion of her inheritance after her grandfather and family patriarch Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999.
Barry, Robert Trump, and Donald Trump joined a lawsuit to prevent Mary from inheriting, and they finally settled the case in 2001, after being told the property was worth $ 30 million. She later came to believe that it was worth about $ 1 billion and that the family had lied about its value.
In her book, Mary Trump said she became a major source in a 2018 New York Times investigation into the sprawling financial corruption of the larger Trump family, who amassed their wealth in part because of tax services.
The Trump family has a long history of tax evasion and fraudulent business practices
The publication of Barry’s remarks is the first time that a family member, besides Mary Trump, has been heard alienating the president, and his history of cheating. But Barry – a former federal judge – is implicated in the Trump family’s shameful financial activity.
The 2018 Times survey revealed a pattern of tax evasion that allowed Donald Trump to get the current equivalent of at least $ 413 million from his father. Fred Trump, the patriarch of the family, whose real estate business was the foundation of their wealth, further enriched the family by hiding millions of dollars worth of gifts through shell companies.
As David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner of the Times reported in 2018:
A lot of [the $413 million] came to Mr. Trump because he was helping his parents evade taxes. He and his relatives set up a sham corporation to spend millions of dollars on their parents’ gifts, records and interviews. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take incorrect taxes for millions more value. He also helped formulate a strategy to underestimate his parents’ property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars on taxes, greatly reducing the tax factor when these properties were passed on to him and his brothers.
The IRS did not address it, and Fred Trump has transferred more than $ 1 billion to his children. The Trumps pay only about $ 52.2 million in taxes, instead of the at least $ 550 million they may be forced to pay.
In 2018, a lawyer for Donald Trump denied the Times’ report, saying the allegations of “fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and very blasphemous,” adding, “there was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone.”
Barry was the co-owner of one of those shell companies that used to take money from her father’s companies by marking purchases that were already made by employees, instead of buying equipment for Fred Trump’s buildings, the Times reported, as it claimed to do. The millions of dollars that were siphoned by the company went – without tax – to Barry, Donald Trump, and her other relatives.
After the Times’ investigation was published, a board of trustees set up and carried out an investigation into how Barry benefited from those tax systems and what they might have affected. The Times reported last year that Barry, now 83, retired 10 days after a court official told complainants that the investigation would receive “full attention” from the council, which ended the investigation. (Barry was appointed federal judge by President Ronald Reagan. She complained in the recordings of Mary Trump that Donald Trump had long had his ‘only favorite’ over her head: asked his lawyer Roy Cohn to pressure Reagan to appoint more female judges .)
Donald Trump claimed to be a homemade billionaire on the campaign trail and built his trust with many voters on the premise that his business expertise would benefit the country. But the Times’ report illustrates how Trump – who earned $ 200,000 a year today – was supported by family wealth.
The beneficiaries of the family scheme are now among the most powerful people in America. That will be on full display from Monday, when the Republican National Convention will attend the entire week with digital, partial personal events.
Some of the key speakers at the convention will be members of the Trump family. In addition to the president, Donald Trump Jr., Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and Tiffany Trump are all certain to appear, making it a true family affair.
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