Trump Defaulted On $287M In Bank Loans, New Report Shows

President Donald Trump has had $287 million worth of loans forgiven since 2010, according to a New York Times analysis of his tax returns—money that would normally count as taxable income but on which Trump has managed to mostly avoid paying taxes, the newspaper says.

The forgiven debts largely were for the construction of a 92-story skyscraper in Chicago, which was completed just as the Great Recession got under way in 2008—with the global economy in shambles, the Trump Organization was unable to sell many of the tower’s multimillion-dollar condos, the Times reported Tuesday.

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Trump, through two of his LLCs, had taken out more than $700 million in loans for the project from Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Fortress Investment Group, a private equity firm.

Trump refused to pay his debts when they came due, instead suing for “predatory lending practices” and seeking $3 billion in damages against Deutsche Bank.

The lenders, knowing Trump’s reputation for litigiousness and fondness for airing disputes out in public, chose to negotiate a settlement in which they forgave $270 million of the debt for which Trump was responsible.

Forgiven debt in most cases counts as income, but Trump used massive losses across his business empire to avoid paying almost all taxes on the forgiven loans, according to the Times.