WASHINGTON — A watchdog group on Thursday asked the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate whether former President Donald Trump made “material false statements” on federal financial disclosure reports when he claimed that one of his Chicago companies had a $50 million outstanding loan.
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — known as CREW — said in a letter to the FBI and Justice Department it’s possible that the loan, connected to the development of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, may be “nonexistent.”
Trump reported the loan as a liability of Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC on personal financial disclosure statements he filed as a candidate and president between 2015 and 2023, Bookbinder said.
“There is now credible evidence, however, that Mr. Trump’s statements regarding the Chicago loan were not true,” Bookbinder wrote in his letter to federal authorities. The loan issue came to light in a January 2024 report from a court-appointed monitor, hired to review Trump financial statements, an outgrowth of a New York civil fraud case against Trump in which it was determined he overstated his wealth.
Bookbinder wrote, “there is no public record of the loan, which is contrary to how most real estate loans of that magnitude are handled.” He said in his letter that while it is not clear why Trump “would have reported a nonexistent loan as a liability to one of his own companies,” it could have been a part of a “tax-avoidance scheme.”
The public financial disclosure system was established so that, Bookbinder said, the “assets, income and debt obligations” of candidates and the president “can be meaningfully assessed for conflicts of interest, including those that could expose the country to possible national security risk.”
As of late Thursday afternoon, a spokesperson for Trump had not replied to an email seeking comment on the CREW letter.
