A House Democrat asked Palm Beach County, Florida, to tax Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort property at a rate in accordance with the valuation the former president claims it has amid his ongoing New York civil fraud trial. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., made the request of Palm Beach County appraiser Dorothy Jacks in a letter exclusively provided to NBC News, noting New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron's decision last week holding Trump liable for committing fraud for years by inflating and undervaluing his assets to banks and insurers.
Trump has since railed against the ruling, claiming that his Florida beach club is worth "50 to 100 times" what New York prosecutors in the lawsuit have said, or "closer to $1.5 billion" in value. "Between 2011 and 2021, you value the Mar-a-Lago property between $18 million and $28 million," Moskowitz wrote in the letter to the Palm Beach County appraiser. "Mar-a-Lago was listed as worth $490 million in financial documents given to banks," he added. "If the property value of Mar-a-Lago is so much higher than it was appraised, will you be amending the property value in line with the Trump family's belief that the property is worth well over a billion dollars?"
With Trump's civil fraud trial garnering nationwide attention, the letter, NBC News writes, is an effort from the first-term congressman to emphasize the disconnect between Trump's claims of his properties' values and the values set by appraisers, which the judge had cited in the ruling.
