The five Phoenix-area real estate firms most likely to be affected by President Donald Trump’s proposed tax bill are among those that have been named in a series of investigations by The Post’s special counsel team into Trump’s business dealings.
The firms are: Silver Lake Partners, a Phoenix-based real estate development firm; Sterling Management, a real estate firm based in Phoenix; Dillard Realty, a developer and real estate investment firm; Silver Lake Properties, a development company based in Las Vegas; and Silver Lake Investment Group, a residential real estate developer based in Tempe.
In addition to the five named in the investigation, at least two other companies are also being investigated by the team.
The Post has confirmed the names of those firms, but the firms’ attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
The investigation, led by Peter Schweizer, a former State Department official who now is an attorney with the law firm Cooper, Schiller, Loeb and Garrison, has identified dozens of Trump associates in a wide range of transactions, including Trump’s businesses, his personal properties and his real estate holdings.
Schweizer’s team also has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a group of Trump’s former employees that alleges the president committed obstruction of justice by refusing to cooperate with the investigation.
The five firms named in Schweizer and his team’s investigation are not alone in facing scrutiny by the investigation team.
Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that Trump had paid a company in New York $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit that accused it of falsely claiming it had secured millions of dollars in loans from Trump’s Trump Tower project in downtown New York City.
The firm is named in that case and was accused of misleading the Securities and Exchange Commission about the financial benefit of the loan and of failing to properly disclose that the loan had been secured by Trump properties in New Jersey.
The report also revealed that the company was accused by two federal agencies of falsely representing to investors that its Trump Tower property in New Brunswick, New Jersey, was eligible for a $2 billion loan from the government.
The complaint alleged that the firm had misrepresented the property’s financial value and misrepresented that the Trump Organization had received any loan funds.
The lawsuit was settled out of court in December.
The FBI investigation is looking at whether Trump committed any crimes.
The Washington office of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has been a lead investigator in the probe.
Its report released this week revealed that Trump is the subject of at least five criminal probes, but none of them has yet been fully concluded.
The probe into Trump and his businesses has included a federal grand jury and a separate probe by the Office of Special Counsel, a separate federal agency that probes whether any crimes were committed by former President Barack Obama.
Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing.
He has repeatedly claimed that the investigations are an attempt to “make me look bad.”
He has also repeatedly suggested that the investigation is politically motivated.
The President and his family have repeatedly insisted that the Russia investigation is unrelated to his campaign and that he has nothing to do with it.
But Schweizer has reported that a Trump Tower official in New Hampshire told investigators that Trump told him that his company was in the midst of the probe after he called to ask about the ongoing investigation.
Schweizers report did not name that person or any other person with knowledge of the call.
Trump’s attorneys have repeatedly claimed in recent days that they did not receive the call, and they have declined to confirm whether it took place.