CNBC ANNOUNCER: Joining us on the Squawk News line, uh, [INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS] Donald Trump, chairman and president of the Trump Organization. 

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: In May of 2012, Donald Trump made one of his regular appearances on CNBC. There's a panel, and they're discussing a law that makes it illegal for U.S. companies to bribe foreign officials. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or the FCPA. 

DONALD TRUMP: Now, every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do. It's a horrible law and it should be changed. I mean, we're like the policemen for the world. It’s ridiculous. 

FELLOW GUEST: Donald’s right. And by the way … [FADES UNDER] 

BERNSTEIN: There are four people on this panel. Three of them want to roll back the 1977 law, which was designed to make U.S. businesses abroad act more honestly. Trump says the law unfairly hinders American businesses. 

TRUMP: You’ll do business nowhere. And to think that we prosecute these people for bringing business is just — and by the way, Andrew, you know, the sad part? Every other country in the world is doing it. We're not allowed to. So … [FADES UNDER]

BERNSTEIN: He says, in essence, “Forget about it.”

TRUMP: There is one answer, go to your room, close the door, go to sleep and don't do any deals, because that's the only way — the only way you're going to do it is the other way. And you know what, it's fine for India to prosecute, but for this country to prosecute, because something took place in India, is outrageous.

BERNSTEIN: As it happens, at the same time he gave this interview — the spring of 2012 — Trump was ramping up his operations in India. Since then, the Trump Organization has launched five projects in India — more than in any other foreign country. And some of Trump's most important business partners there have been variously accused of money-laundering, tax evasion, insider trading, and fraud.

JESSICA TILLIPMAN: You do not engage in business dealings with individuals that are known for engaging in illegal activities such as this. 

BERNSTEIN: This is Jessica Tillipman, the assistant dean at George Washington University Law School, and senior editor of the FCPA blog. The FCPA was the first law of its kind anywhere. It says U.S. companies cannot bribe foreign officials or knowingly work with people who do. 

TILLIPMAN: So having knowledge of a prospective business partners prior, um, illegal activity or significant reputation for illegal activity is a huge red flag.

BERNSTEIN: A red flag for an American company to look further, to see if there's bribery going on, which would violate the FCPA. 

TILLIPMAN: Being in a — in a country with a reputation for corruption, being in a country that has weak rule of law, engaging with partners that have a known reputation for corruption … I mean, to me, that's a big red flag that most companies won't get past. 

[PLUCKY STRING MUSIC PLAYS]

BERNSTEIN: All of those factors make a deal risky for an American company, especially in India, where bribery and corruption are pervasive in the real estate industry. Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization spoke to us for this story, but in the past, Alan Garten, the Trump Organization lawyer, has said that, in other Trump foreign deals, Trump has played a passive role — where he just licenses his name So he's getting the money, not paying it out. Garden says that structure means there can be no violations of the FCPA. 

And we haven't uncovered evidence of bribery in the current Trump deals in India. But there are many red flags. And, as recently as October, the New Yorker reported, Trump was still formulating about the federal law that bars American companies from bribing officials overseas.

[TRUMP, INC. THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

BERNSTEIN: Hello, welcome to Trump, Inc., a podcast from WNYC and ProPublica that digs deep into the mysteries of the Trump family business. I'm Andrea Bernstein. 

ANJALI KAMAT: And I'm Anjali Kamat with the Investigative Fund. In our last episode, we tracked how the Trump's first project in India failed, and then, how the family signed deals with a more politically powerful partner. And how, now, Trump's connections are paying off in India, as the family brand is showered with positive attention.

BERNSTEIN: Today on Trump, Inc., Trump's business partners in India and their extensive tangles with the law. I'm going to turn things over to Anjali for a bit. I'll be back with ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger

DONALD TRUMP JR.: You know, as a business, we're going to continue to run. We have incredible assets all over the world. 

KAMAT: The face of the Trump Organization in India is a man named Kalpesh Metha. So we're starting with him. Recently, on CNBC in India, Don Jr. and Metha said the Trump's Indian empire began eight years ago. 

CNBC INTERVIEWER: Let me bring in your partners, Tribeca. You signed a partnership on a paper napkin, I believe, Kalpesh Metha?

KALPESH METHA: It was a business plan on the back of a — of a — of a coffee napkin. [LAUGHTER] Yes. Eight years ago. Eight years ago.

KAMAT: Kalpesh Metha is a contemporary of Don Jr's. He's got a square face, usually wears his hair slicked back, and tends to dress and stylish, well-fitting suits, often with cufflinks. 

He runs a company called Tribeca Developers, which is actually in Mumbai, not lower Manhattan. Since 2013, Tribeca has been calling itself the Trump Organization's exclusive representative in India, and Metha was with Don Jr. on every leg of his recent India tour. 

INTERVIEWER: So, Kalpesh, how difficult or easy was it to convince — to get, uh — uh, Don Jr. to come to India — for the Trumps to come to India? 

METHA: I think Don was already convinced, uh, when we met. Um, and I think —

DON JR.: I — I was a believer, but it was helpful to have someone that — I mean, we went to the same school. 

KAMAT: Metha did attend the Wharton School, where Don Jr. Ivanka and Donald Trump all went. They may have met through Wharton networks, but they didn't overlap there. 

[PLUCKY STRINGS PLAY]

KAMAT: Metha was involved in the Trump Organization's first India project — the one we reported on in our last episode, that got its permits revoked after investigators found “significant irregularities.” After that project failed, the Trumps hired him as a consultant. 

I was able to see a draft agreement between the Trump Organization and one of Metha’s companies. His responsibilities? To find new licensing deals for the Trumps in India. In return, he would get up to 12% of the licensing fees. 

METHA: Yeah. My, my overall responsibility is just to maintain and — and — and grow the brand and — and — and make sure that the standards that — that they’ve set in the U.S. are being adhered to and bettered in India. 

KAMAT: Metha has concluded at least three of the current deals for the trumps in India.

DON JR.: Kalpesh has become truly a friend. It's not just a business partner, and now … [FADES OUT] 

KAMAT: He’s also gotten a promotion of sorts. Now, he's not only a middleman for the Trumps, but has rebranded himself as a real estate developer, putting up buildings with the Trump name on them. 

METHA: So, you know, our relationship kind of changed. When we first brought the Trump brand to India, we were helping Trump license the brand. Now, you know, once Tribeca decided to enter development —

CNBC INTERVIEWER: Alright. Okay.

METHA: — and we’re the, you know — we’re — we’re the licensees with — with Don. 

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

KAMAT: There’s one other thing. According to that draft agreement I saw, and a consultant who has done business with the Trumps in India, Metha has also been given the responsibility of vetting those partners.

That consultant said the Trumps have hired outside legal firms in India, but said the bulk of the due diligence falls in people like Metha. Jessica Tillipman, the assistant dean at George Washington University Law School, says this is a highly usual arrangement. If Metha is the one getting paid to find new deals and to vet those potential partners, she says, there’s, quote, “too much of a conflict of interest.”

She says it could create a risk of overlooking the red flags that are supposed to warn businesses they may be in danger of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We're going to take a look at some of those red flags in Trump's projects across India. 

[A STRING FLOURISH]

KAMAT: Metha actually agreed to an interview with us in February, but after we contacted the Trump Organization with a list of questions, he stopped responding.

[SILENCE]

KAMAT: On Indian TV in February, Don Jr. couldn't say enough good things about Metha. 

DON JR.: We really spoke the same language coming from a — a similar mindset. And so, uh, it was able to get through some of those hurdles. Uh, you know, and — and simplify the process for me, which made things much easier. And it's, again, why we have the great relationship we do.

[QUICK KEYBOARD MUSIC]

KAMAT: Kolkata is one of the places they're working together. So that's where I went. 

KAMAT: [OVER TRAFFIC SOUNDS] Trump Tower. [PAUSE] Oh, Trump Tower Kolkata. Here's the sign. 

KAMAT: For decades, Kolkata was governed by a communist party. It used to be the capital of British colonial India. The city is majestic and crumbling. Think of an Indian Havana. 

KAMAT: [OVER MORE TRAFFIC SOUNDS] So we just got to the Trump Tower site and it's off this very busy highway — the south-eastern part of the city. There's a huge billboard here, “Trump Tower Kolkata: Be seen from everywhere.” 

KAMAT: Kalpesh Metha, who's one of the partners here, claims the project is 70% sold. There's no public data to back that up. And the site doesn't have much to show except for a billboard with an image of a gleaming tower. I talked to a construction supervisor who told me the work had started last summer. And so far, only the foundation had been laid.

[SOUNDS OF KAMAT DISCUSSING WITH THE SUPERVISOR]

KAMAT: Another one of Trump’s business partners on this project is a publicly traded company called the RDB Group, which has interest in real estate, truck terminals, and tobacco. Back in 2011, the directors were charged with insider trading by India's equivalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission. They were barred from India stock markets for four years. In December, the chairman’s son was fine for insider trading. In February, Don Jr. was in Kolkata to promote the product.

DON JR.: … here in Kolkata. You know, the first residential building with floor-to-ceiling glass. Unobstructed views overlooking parks. [FADES UNDER]

KAMAT: He's talking to a Business Today journalist. And sitting next to him is the man who was fined for insider trading, the chairman’s son. 

DON JR.: … yesterday. We had an incredible party here last night. There were buyers, and there were 500 other people from, you know, around and from the real estate community and people who are big in the town. 

KAMAT: The day after he left town, income tax officials raided the offices of the RDB Group, over alleged “financial irregularities.” So this Trump partner has been investigated for tax evasion and insider trading. 

[HEAVY PIANO FLOURISH PLAYS]

KAMAT: This is our red flag number one for the Trump Organization's business partners in India. The RDB Group did not respond to our questions about the charges against them. 

[A BEAT]

KAMAT: My next stop was Gurgaon, a suburb of the capital, New Delhi. A couple of decades ago, it was a small town surrounded by farm and forest land. Now it's run almost entirely by private corporations and jammed with skyscrapers. It's official nickname is Millennium City. It's unofficial power brokers are real estate developers. Many of the new construction projects are unfinished or unsold, and gleaming high rises are surrounded by pools of sewage.

This is where the Trump Organization has two projects. One is commercial, and we'll get to that in a bit. The other is residential, and it's being called the largest Trump project in the country. Renderings of it show twin towers of glass and steel rising above the clouds. Kalpesh Metha calls this project a joint venture — between his company, Tribeca, and a company in Gurgaon called M3M. That stands for “Magnificence in the Trinity of Men, Materials, and Money.” 

Here's one of M3M’s directors, Pankaj Bansal, on a television interview alongside Don Jr. 

PANKAJ BANSAL: Buyers have already started calling that road as Trump Road. So that is the power of Trump brand.

INTERVIEWER: [ALMOST IN DISBELIEF] They started calling it the Trump Road?

BANSAL: The Golf Course Extension —

INTERVIEWER: I think they gotta own Golf Course Extension. [BOTH LAUGH] But, see, “Golf Course Extension” kind of sounds —

DON JR.: I like “Trump Road” better. [ALL LAUGH] Personally, personally. But I would, I would.

KAMAT: I went down the so-called “Trump Road” to see where it would lead. On my way to visit the site, I met some farmers sitting in an open courtyard, filled with buffaloes, chickens running about, and a few men smoking a hookah and playing cards. Some of them are now millionaires after they sold their land to M3M and other developers in the area.

[THE SOUND OF MEN TALKING]

KAMAT: Just beyond that courtyard, I saw a cluster of high rises where the Trump project is supposed to come up. 

KAMAT: [OVER THE MEN TALKING] I went to the M3M sales office, and a salesman drove up in a golf cart to take me around their property. We went up to the penthouse of one of their non-Trump buildings so I could get a better view of the Trump project site.

SALESMAN: The last tower that you see — 

KAMAT: This big one?

SALESMAN: This — after this big one, the four more towers.

KAMAT: Yeah, yeah.

SALESMAN: [INDISTINCT] the Trump Towers.

[BOTH CONTINUE TALKING INDISTINCTLY OVER CONSTRUCTION SOUNDS]

KAMAT: “It’s right in front of those towers,” he said. He pointed to a small patch of empty land across from a parking lot. Beyond that, rows and rows of construction sites and unfinished high rises stretching into the distance. There's a glut in the luxury market here. And Gurgaon has over five years of unsold inventory.

M3M started off as land aggregators in Gurgaon, buying land from farmers and selling it to larger developers. The company has been investigated by tax authorities twice — most recently in 2011 — after they heard the company's founders spent $20 million on a lavish wedding party for his daughter on a Turkish island. Investigators found evidence of about $70 million of undeclared money. 

[MUSICAL FLOURISH]

KAMAT: A tax investigator told the Washington Post the company ultimately paid the taxes they owed. Last March, a senior forest official filed a police complaint against the company on allegations of bribing forest guards. A person familiar with the case told me the investigation is still open.

[HEAVY PIANO FLOURISH] 

KAMAT: Repeated investigations for tax evasion and a criminal complaint of bribery: that’s our red flag number two for the Trump Organization in India. M3M did not respond to our request for comment. 

[PAUSE]

KAMAT: The Trump's other partner in Gurgaon is in much worse trouble. That partner is called Ireo, a private equity fund focused on Indian real estate. They're building a commercial tower, they say. Here, too, there’s just an empty lot. 

KAMAT: There is not a whole lot going on here. [A GOAT BLEATS] There's four goats grazing. That's the bells you hear tinkling as they're walking by in the grass. [PAUSE, THEN, SPEAKING TO A GOAT] Hi, there.

KAMAT: Next, I went to the Ireo sales gallery nearby. The staff there had no information about the status of the proposed Trump Tower: no brochure, no architect’s rendering, no advertising materials, nothing. 

SALESPERSON: As for this map, it is somewhere in this space. 

KAMAT: Somewhere in this block. And when will construction — construction hasn't begun. 

SALESPERSON: No.

KAMAT: When is the launch date?

SALESPERSON: That’s not yet decided.

KAMAT: Okay. But it is happening?

SALESPERSON: It will. But when? We don’t know.

KAMAT: Even the local municipal office that issues permits said they hadn't heard about this project yet, which means the local developers still have to apply for dozens of permits — while Trump is President of the United States. And, as we've been reporting, bribery pervades this process in India.

[GOAT BLEATS]

[SILENCE, THEN LOW PLODDING MUSIC]

KAMAT: Since at least 2010, the Trump Organization partner Ireo has been under scrutiny in India for alleged financial crimes. First, money-laundering: in 2010, a national investigative agency began a probe into an influx of $1.5 billion into the company through Mauritius and Cyprus, both of which are tax havens. When the news broke, an Ireo spokesman denied wrongdoing, and said the investment came from major financial institutions. As of last summer, according to the Washington Post, the probe was still going — slowly. We couldn't get a further update. 

Second, fraud: last month, two investment companies filed a criminal complaint against Ireo in New Delhi for defrauding investors of nearly $150 million by establishing a fraudulent web of companies. It cites a former head of the company who said he witnessed, quote, “Various acts of cheating, fraud, and misappropriation of money” that created, quote, “huge wrongful gains.” In a letter to investors earlier this month, Ireo's managing director called the charges false, baseless, and devoid of any merit. 

Complaints of money-laundering and fraud for another Trump business partner in India: that’s our red flag number three. We tried contacting Ireo several times, but they didn't respond to our requests. 

[OLD-FASHIONED BOLLYWOOD MUSIC PLAYS]

KAMAT: My next and final stop: Mumbai, home to Bollywood. This narrow strip of a city was built across seven islands in the Arabian Sea. [TRAFFIC SOUNDS] It's a lot like Manhattan, and land prices are among the most unaffordable in the world.

[KAMAT ASKS SOMEONE ABOUT HOW TO GET TO THE TRUMP TOWER]

KAMAT: I’m almost at the Trump Tower site, and everywhere you look there's high-rise buildings, or new ones being constructed. 

KAMAT: The Trump Tower here is coming up in the middle of what used to be the working-class hub of the city. Now it's packed with commercial complexes and luxury towers. 

COMMERCIAL VOICE: [OVER MUSIC] Set in South Mumbai’s prime locale, Worli, at the very start of the Golden Mile, Mumbai’s lifestyle hub.

KAMAT: Here, the Trump's current partner is the Lodha Group. We talked about Mangal Prabhat Lodha in the last episode: a five-term state lawmaker with the ruling political party, the BJP.

MANGAL PRABHAT LODHA: [SPEAKING LOUDLY IN HINDI]

KAMAT: This is him giving a political speech before the last elections. As a sitting lawmaker and one of the most successful developers and wealthiest men in the country, Lodha holds an enormous amount of power in the city. Over several months, I spoke to architects, builders, civil servants, journalists, lawmakers, and real estate experts who knew him.

They all talked about his questionable reputation, but no one wanted to criticize Lodha on the record — except for one former chief of a state housing agency, Chandrashekhar Prabhu, who said publicly what others only told me privately. Prabhu is a prominent housing activist now. 

CHANDRASHEKHAR PRABHU: No police station wants to take action against anybody who acts on his behalf. On the contrary, those who are opposing him are subjected to police questioning.

KAMAT: We found that, by 2016, multiple government agencies were investigating various companies of the Lodha Group. Officials of three agencies told us they were looking into allegations of money-laundering, tax fraud, and violations of foreign exchange regulations.

According to an internal memo we obtained, one of the investigations named two Lodha Group companies that are also listed on the president's ethics filings as paying money to the Trump Organization. In 2016, when one of these investigations was first reported in the Indian Express, the Lodha Group said they were not aware of it. By early 2017, people in the agencies told us all the investigations into the Lodha Group had stalled.

Three people at different investigative agencies told us they were under, quote, “extreme political pressure” to drop the probes. By this year, they had all been closed. 

[HEAVY PIANO FLOURISH] 

KAMAT: An elected official whose companies are under multiple investigations. That's our red flag number four for a Trump business partner in India. Four partners, four red flags, four reasons to be wary of whether there might be violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

[LIGHT PIANO MUSIC PLAYS]

KAMAT: The Lodha Group and the Indian government declined to respond to our questions. 

BERNSTEIN: When we come back, just what were the Trump's obligations in India? We'll be right back.

[MIDROLL]

BERNSTEIN: It’s Andrea Bernstein and back with Anjali Kamat and Jesse Eisinger from ProPublica, who is the author of the book, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives. So Jesse, we have been talking about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act now in this episode, but let's just retrace why we have it, and what it is.

JESSE EISINGER: So it's a Watergate-era law. Part of Watergate uncovered that hundreds of companies had secret slush funds, and were bribing around the world. And, in fact, in some countries, you could deduct bribes from your taxes. [CHUCKLES] And so we passed a law in 1977 that said, uh, American companies — or, really, anybody who does business in America, like, they issue securities — they're subject to a law that says, “You can't go around the world, bribing foreign officials or having third parties bribe foreign officials.”

BERNSTEIN: We’ve been talking about all these red flags, which is not the same as our knowing that bribery occurred, but can you explain sort of when you see these red flags, what you're supposed to do with them, and what— what a comparable business would do? Some other hotel or — or real estate business and around the word.

EISINGER: So, comparable large businesses do a series of things. I mean, the first thing is, they usually hire some kind of compliance firm, or law firm and they conduct the kind of classic due diligence on the partners and the country and the way the business is going to be conducted. And what they're trying to do is avoid any susceptibility to bribery, and then also any kind of appearance of problems.

So most respectable, careful businesses would avoid partners that had huge red flags. And the point is, that if you are willing to launder money, or you're willing to evade taxes, or you're willing to trade in insider information, maybe that would also make you willing to bribe officials. 

KAMAT: I mean, the thing here is we haven't actually heard from the Trump Organization about what their business practice in India looks like. They haven't responded to any of our questions. 

But what I learned during the course of my reporting from a person who used to work for the Trump Organization in India is that they do have a law firm, but he told me that the bulk of the due diligence of sort of vetting these partners — looking out for these red flags — falls on people like Metha.

BERNSTEIN: So, tease that out a little bit. He has this unusual role: he's responsible for getting the new deals, and he's also responsible for saying whether there are too many red flags to go forward. 

KAMAT: So, this is a pretty unusual arrangement, as far as we know. Um, and it's definitely one of the more surprising things I found during the course of my reporting. The job that Kalpesh Metha has as an exclusive representative to the Trump Organization is to find new licensing deals and he gets a cut off new deals that are closed. So he has an incentive to close those deals. At the same time, the Trump Organization has also given him some of the responsibility for checking out those partners, for doing a background check, for vetting them. So then he has a responsibility to make sure that they're picking partners who don't have a whole lot of these red flags, presumably.

BERNSTEIN: Jesse, can you talk a little bit more about the due diligence? Like, why are companies doing it? And do we know anything about how the Trump Organization does it in general? 

EISINGER: What we do know is that the Trump Organization does very little due diligence. In fact, Alan Garten has said as much. 

BERNSTEIN: Explain why many companies believe it's in their interest to do the due diligence. 

EISINGER: So there's a variety of reasons why you would conduct due diligence on your partners. One is, at a very base level, you want to avoid criminal liability in the United States. So, if they are bad people who are more likely to bribe in a country that's rife with bribery, like India, you want to avoid that, for your own personal life ability. The second thing is that, if your partner gets investigated, you actually could harm your project. And then, of course, there's a reputational damage. Hilton and the Ritz Carlton don't want to be seen as partnering with money-launderers around the world. So that's the basic purpose of due diligence, is reputational protection and hoping that your project actually sees fruition. 

KAMAT: One thing I want to say here is that we haven't found any evidence that any of the Trump Organization's current partners have paid bribes on any of the current projects. But the question is, given that this is an environment that is so rife with bribery, and given that each of the partners have shown the various red flags that we talked about, what is the Trump Organization doing to make sure that no bribes will be paid? And that's something we don't know the answer to.

BERNSTEIN: And they haven't said, despite repeated attempts on your part?

KAMAT: Yes, absolutely. And the point here also that legal experts like Jessica Tillipman have made is that, you know, the question is, “Did the Trump Organization not know about these red flags, or did they just look the other way?” And, I mean, one of the things that we've been reporting in the past two episodes is just how closely involved someone like Don Jr. was, and has been, and continues to be — in these deals and with all of their partners. 

BERNSTEIN: Jesse, you've written a book called The Chickenshit Club — which I think we can say on our podcast. [BREATH] It’s about the lack of will by federal prosecutors to bring charges against some U.S. companies. What do we know about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? What is the history of prosecutions under this law?

EISINGER: So, prosecutions were dormant for a long time. Mostly, in the ‘70s, they were civil prosecutions, uh, from the SEC. And then, as I say, it kind of lies fallow for a couple of decades, and then it’s reinvigorated in the mid-2000s criminally, and the Department of Justice starts to bring a huge number of cases, from the mid-2000s on, but the wrinkle is that the American government is highly dependent on companies coming forth and volunteering their bad behavior and cooperating with the investigation.  So if you are an organization that is hell-bent on not cooperating, it's going to be very difficult for the prosecutors to investigate. 

BERNSTEIN: What is the history of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on licensing deals, like what the Trumps have in India? 

EISINGER: Yeah. So, the big question here is whether the Trump Organization has hacked the FCPA by licensing its name and having these third parties go off and do business and conduct business. Now, you technically are not insulated from an FCPA violation if a third-party agent bribes in your name. But, if you have no knowledge of it, then you can't be protected. Except there's a wrinkle here, which is that you can be willfully blind, and that can bring criminal liability too. 

BERNSTEIN: And the FCPA is enforced by the Justice Department, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, both of whose directors are appointed by President Trump.

EISINGER: Right. 

[CREDITS MUSIC PLAYS]

BERNSTEIN: Thanks so much, Anjali Kamat and Jesse Eisinberg from ProPublica. 

[A BEAT]

BERNSTEIN: Coming up on Trump, Inc., Trump’s taxes. No, we do not have a copy of the President's tax returns, but there's more than one way to look at how Donald Trump and his company settle up with the IRS. 

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: Now that the cases are in court, if Burke wins reductions for Trump on those tax cases, that money will come out of the city and school treasuries, and they will have to do without that money.

BERNSTEIN: The Trump Organization has filed lawsuits all over the country to lower its tax bills. Is that happening in your area? Do you know anything about how the Trump Organization tries to lower its tax bills? You can send us documents and tips, confidentially. Find out how at TrumpIncPodcast.org. 

And remember, you can read more from Investigative Fund reporter Anjali Kamat in the current issue of the New Republic. We'll have a link on our webpage. 

Trump, Inc. is produced by Meg Cramer. The associate producer is Alice Wilder. The engineers are Wayne Schulmeister and Bill Moss. This story was edited by Esther Kaplan of the Investigative Fund, Charlie Herman, and Eric Umansky. Terry Parris Jr. is ProPublica’s Editor for Engagement. Jim Schachter is the Vice President for News at WNYC, and Steve Engelberg is the Editor-in-Chief at ProPublica. The original music is by Hannis Brown. 

Anjali’s story, “Political Corruption and the Art of the Deal,” is the cover story of the April issue of the New Republic. It was edited by Theodore Ross.

Additional support for WNYC was provided in part by the Park Foundation. This episode was produced in partnership with the Investigative Fund’s Wayne Barrett Project. 

WAYNE BARRETT: So, at one point in the course of the interviews that I did with him, he said to me, “Wayne, you don't have to live in Brownsville. I got plenty of apartments.” And so, you know, that was just his way of dealing with anyone who was in his path, was to make some sort of a — an offer — even not too subtle an offer — and try to compromise somebody. He succeeded a lot of times.

[MUSIC OUT]

 

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