by Matt Margolis
Earlier this year, a court fined Donald Trump $355 million for allegedly overvaluing his assets. With interest, the judgment came to $464 million — nearly half a billion dollars, in a case where there was no crime and no victim. He paid off the loan he acquired. The bank that New York Attorney General Letitia James claims Trump defrauded literally testified in Trump’s defense at the trial.
According to left-wing comedian Jon Stewart, though, it wasn’t a victimless crime. On Monday’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Stewart played clips of CNN’s Laura Coates interviewing famed entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, who has been highly critical of the judgments against Trump because Trump didn’t do anything real estate developers don’t do every day.
“How is he not this mad about overvaluations in the real world?” Stewart said of O’Leary. “Because they are not victimless crimes.”
Stewart argued that “A loan that goes to the liar doesn’t go to someone who’s giving a more honest evaluation. So the system becomes incentivized for corruption.”
“The Attorney General of New York knew that Trump’s property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties,” Stewart continued. “It was all part of a very specific real estate practice known as lying.”
Now Stewart is getting hammered over his blatant hypocrisy.
The New York Post reports:
But it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to look into Stewart’s own property history, where it shows an overvaluation of his New York City penthouse by a staggering 829%, records confirmed by The Post show.
In 2014, Stewart sold his 6,280-square-foot Tribeca duplex to financier Parag Pande for $17.5 million. The property’s asking price at that time is not available in listing records.
But according to 2013-2014 assessor records obtained by The Post, the property was market-valued at only $1.882 million. The actual assessor valuation was even lower, at $847,174.
Records also show that Stewart paid significantly lower property taxes, which were calculated based on that market value price — precisely what he called out Trump for doing in his Monday monologue.
Pande, who purchased the penthouse from Stewart, then resold the property at a nearly 26% loss than what he initially paid for it, according to the Real Deal — at just over $13 million — in 2021.
Stewart responded to the story by insisting that what he did was “completely different.”
OMG!! I've been caught doing something not remotely similar to Trump! I guess all I need to do now is start a fraud college, steal classified docs, bankrupt casinos, pay hush money, grab pussies, discriminate in housing, cheat at golf and foment insurrection and you'll revere me!
— Jon Stewart (@jonstewart) March 27, 2024
Except it’s not. In fact, it’s worse. Donald Trump repaid the loan he got. He made money. The bank made money. The man who bought Stewart’s home at the inflated price lost $4.5 million on the property. Will James indict Stewart for inflating his assets? Don’t count on it. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) insisted last month that the state was only going to target Trump.
“I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul said.
Of course, now Trump’s legal team has the perfect example to prove that the state has violated his 14th Amendment rights.
NY needs to re-evaluate property prices/values annually to keep up on the right amount of taxes to collect.
Jon Stewart “cheated” NY for however many years he paid tax based on such a low assessment.
The people of NY were the ones who lost out.
The City and the state are “in the red,” because of people like Jon who don’t pay their fair share (as joe puts it.)
Nothing like what Trump did.
I must again direct you to Rule #1 of 21st Century American Politics: It’s OK when a Democrat does it, for any and all possible values of “it.”
Start with that assumption, and it will explain everything.