Did Jon Stewart Commit the Same Fraud that Resulted in a $450 Million Fine for Donald Trump?

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 28, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 28, 2024 |

On Monday night, Jon Stewart dismantled the case that Donald Trump is trying to make to suggest that the fraud Trump committed that resulted in a $450 million fine was a victimless crime. The NYPost followed up yesterday and absurdly suggested that Jon Stewart had perpetrated the same fraud that Donald Trump had, which MAGA ran with.

It’s not the same thing. After MAGA Twitter had their meltdown, Jon Stewart said as much.

I have no idea why the NYPost or anyone else suggested the cases were similar. Donald Trump, on financial statements that he submitted to banks and insurance companies, inflated the value of his properties. When it came time to pay taxes, however, Trump deflated the values so that he could pay lower taxes. It is not unusual to inflate the value of real estate in these instances. It is unusual to do so as egregiously as Trump. For example, he valued a piece of property at $80 million in 2005 and the same property the next year at $150 million. Likewise, he valued his golf course in Scotland at $200 million one year and $435 million the next. There were no changes that made those properties any more valuable than what they were the prior year.

Note, again, that these inflated values were provided by the Trump Organization.

This is vastly different than Jon Stewart’s case. In 2014, the city assessor (not Jon Stewart) assessed the market value of his penthouse at $1.8 million. The actual assessor valuation was $847,174. That’s what Jon Stewart paid taxes on. However, Jon Stewart sold that same property for $17.5 million.

An assessor’s determination of a property’s market value and actual property value are often wildly at odds. Anyone who has bought a house probably pays taxes on an assessed value less than what the home can be sold for. (This is especially true if the house was last evaluated before the pandemic.) Moreover, at least where I live, houses are reassessed only once every decade or so (the last time mine was reassessed, the assessed value doubled, which sucked because it meant significantly higher property taxes).

The important thing is that Jon Stewart didn’t assess the property himself. The city did. Jon Stewart got a lot more for the apartment than the city assessed. It’s unclear why, although NYC real estate prices have soared in recent decades. Still, suppose someone paid $15 million more than the property was worth because Jon Stewart once lived there. In that case, it’s no different than the thousands of yokels valuing Trump’s Truth Social company at $8 billion even though it only produced $100 million in revenue last year.

For better or worse, in a capitalistic society, the value of anything is what someone else is willing to pay. But you can’t make up a figure to get better rates on a loan and then change the figure to pay fewer taxes. That’s what Trump did. Jon Stewart paid taxes on the value of his property as assessed by the city but sold the property for a much greater value. If there was one, the mistake here was in an assessment from the city that was much lower than what the property was worth.