After selling his father's properties, Trump adopted unorthodox strategies to expand his empire.

In 2005, Donald Trump embarked on a shopping spree and spending a decade, significantly expanding his hotel empire and golf courses and reinforcing his image as impresario.

The unorthodox approach that Trump has adopted to make these daring bets (go through hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and solicit loans from the wealth management office of Deutsche Bank) has emerged while he was in the field as a developer.

For the first time, he was operating without the safety net of the real estate empire of his late father Fred, who had been sold in 2004, according to a New York Times survey released last week.

This means that between 2005 and 2015, when Trump expanded its chain of hotels from 12 to 12 and its golf courses from 4 to 15, it was finally self-sustaining.

"Fred was a piggy bank to which Trump could regularly go when he needed an injection of funds. [But then] the piggy bank has disappeared, "said Tim O'Brien, a journalist who has studied Trump's business extensively for his 2005 book" TrumpNation. "

Trump received $ 177.3 million from the sale of his father's remaining assets, which he promptly used $ 149 million to meet the pressing needs of his own projects, according to the Times. After that, he bought 14 properties only with money, without borrowing, in a $ 400 million spending spree that defied industry standards, as reported previously by the Washington Post. To buy other properties, he got more than $ 300 million in loans from an unusual source – the wealth management office of Deutsche Bank, according to public documents. And Trump has found himself with a loan of more than $ 50 million that he still owes, according to financial information.

The Trump organization – the private company that President Trump still owns but does not manage – has not responded to requests for comment. The White House has not responded to a request for comment.

Company officials rejected the idea that she needed external financial assistance during this expansion period. Trump's son, Eric, who now runs the Trump Organization, said his father's business was producing so much money that there was plenty to make big purchases.

"He had incredible cash and incredible wealth," Eric Trump told The Post earlier this year. "He did not have to think about borrowing for every transaction. We invested in ourselves. "

[As the ‘King of Debt,’ Trump borrowed to build his empire. Then he began spending hundreds of millions in cash.]

Trump's unusual financial tactics – on which the Trump Organization has provided little detail – are about to be scrutinized by Congress next year if Democrats take control of one or more two rooms.

"The only way to verify this is to get your tax returns," said Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.), Member of the House Tax Writing Committee.

If Democrats take control of the House in mid-term elections this fall, Pascrell said, the committee will seek his return to closely scrutinize Trump's trading partners and creditors.

At the same time, tax authorities in the state of New York are evaluating the opportunity to open an investigation into the tax practices detailed in The Times. And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said last week that the city's government "is seeking to recover the money that Donald Trump owes to the people of New York, a point that's worth it." is everything, "according to the press.

The Times, drawing on hundreds of thousands of documents from the commercial empire of Fred Trump, reported that the New York developer had paid at least $ 413 million to his son during his lifetime , using what the newspaper calls "dubious tax schemes" to avoid taxes on gifts. .

The Times said the payments helped Donald Trump's company overcome its own crises. The most dramatic example is that of 1990, when one of Donald Trump's casinos in Atlantic City was struggling to make his payments. Fred Trump bought $ 3.5 million in casino chips and did not use them, giving an interest-free loan to his son's casino, the Times reported.

The details contradict Donald Trump's claim that his father "loaned me a very small loan in 1975," as he said in a 2016 presidential debate. At Other Times, Trump stated that the loan amount amounted to $ 1 million.

In a statement to the Times, Trump's lawyer, Charles Harder, said his findings were "100% false and highly defamatory".

"There has been no fraud or tax evasion on the part of anyone," Harder told the newspaper. "The facts on which the Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate."

Some details of the report even surprised Trump's biographers, who had spent years trying to understand the family's finances.

"It never really made a difference," said Gwenda Blair, who had written in 2001 the family's story "The Trumps". Trump had escaped so many financial difficulties. The answer was: "There was daddy, dad's bank."

Fred Trump died in 1999. In 2004, according to the Times, Donald Trump had urged his siblings to sell their father's last apartments at a price of $ 737.9 million, giving up a steady stream of income for a single cash injection. Trump used his share to buy a partner in a Chicago hotel to buy a house in Florida and pay off the creditors of New Jersey casinos, the Times reported.

[N.Y. tax agency weighs probe after report that Trump family built wealth through tax-avoidance schemes and fraud]

At about the same time, Trump found a new source of money: selling his name, he had won the glory of his reality show "The Apprentice" in order to put the Trump brand on everything, hotels with cologne.

Last year, Yahoo Finance – citing internal documents from the show – had stated that "The Apprentice" had generated at least $ 65 million in Trump between 2004 and 2007.

In 2015, Trump earned more than $ 2.4 million a year by marketing products bearing his name – including a Trump brand urine test, according to financial information provided by Trump. He was also paid to sign up for other people's projects, including a hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, and golf courses in Dubai.

At the same time that Trump's television revenues were increasing, he was facing challenges in other areas of his business. His Atlantic City casino company filed for bankruptcy in 2004, facing a debt of $ 1.8 billion. A few years later, the financial crisis compromised the value of his new properties, such as the Chicago tower where he was trying to sell condos. Then Trump actually sued his own lender – the commercial credit arm of Deutsche Bank – with the aim of avoiding a loan repayment in 2008, according to legal documents.

Nevertheless, at about the same time, Trump had enough money to start buying real estate in an unorthodox way – without borrowing money through a mortgage.

These all cash transactions started relatively little. In 2006, Trump paid $ 12.6 million for land in Scotland, where he then developed a golf course. Transactions grew over time, resulting in the purchase of $ 67.8 million from another Scottish course, Turnberry, in 2014.

In total, these all-cash purchases – five houses, eight golf courses and a winery – cost Trump more than $ 400 million, according to an analysis by The Post.

They challenged one of the fundamentals of the real estate industry, that borrowing money is smarter than spending your own money, because it leaves less risk for the developer.

And they challenged Trump's own story. For years, he had bragged about being "the king of debt" and loving investing with other people's money.

Eric Trump said there was no secret to this change in his father's buying habits: he had the money to buy, so he had done it. "It's a very nice luxury," said Eric Trump earlier this year.

Donald Trump has also found funding for some projects from an unconventional source for a developer.

In 2012, at the end of the Chicago project, Trump received more than $ 300 million in loans from the private banking branch of Deutsche, a German bank, according to public records.

A private banking office is generally dedicated to managing the finances of high net worth individuals and not to providing large loans for construction.

"It's very unusual to go through the private bank," said Jeffrey M. Zell, real estate consultant for the Real Estate Department. One of the reasons for the borrower, he said, would be to avoid the underwriting criteria or collateral requirements normally used by commercial bankers who subscribe to the construction.

"Those in charge of building the bank will check the contractors 'offers and the borrowers' reserves," he said. "The private bank will say," We do not care, as long as the borrower has money. "

The loans that the Trump company has received from this Deutsche Bank office have allowed to repay the last loan of $ 640 million in Chicago and provide Trump with $ 125 million for the renovation of the Doral golf complex in Miami and $ 170 million for the development of the Trump Hotel in Washington. .

During the 2016 campaign, Trump quoted a private banking executive, Rosemary Vrablic, as a finance expert.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment on his relationship with Trump.

Some of Deutsche's lending practices have been closely scrutinized by US and foreign regulators. Last year, Deutsche agreed to pay fines of $ 630 million to US and UK regulators for "negative trades", which allowed Russian investors to launder $ 10 billion of their bank account in four years .

Trump has emerged from his shopping frenzy for a decade with another major debt – oddly enough, according to records, it should be.

Since 2012, according to his financial information, Trump owes more than $ 50 million to a company called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC. The information provided indicates that the debt is related to the Trump Hotel in Chicago but does not require it to reveal the exact amount.

The acquisition of units in Chicago is not a bank. He does not have his own office. Instead, he is based at Trump Tower in New York – and belongs to Donald Trump.

So, why should Trump be more than $ 50 million?

The Trump Organization refused to answer the questions of the position on the loan.

But in 2016, Trump told the Times that the loan began as a debt contracted to a group of lenders. Instead of paying him back, however, he bought the loan himself – and kept it in his own books, as a debt of one part of his empire to the other.

"I have the mortgage. That's all there is. Very simple. I am the bank, "he told The Times.

He did not explain what loan he had bought.

La Poste checked the two major outstanding loans on the Trump building in Chicago in 2012, but none seemed to fit Trump's description. A loan of $ 640 million had been due to Deutsche Bank's corporate loans, but public documents show that it was repaid and canceled, thanks to the money Trump obtained from particulars of the bank.

And Trump had taken out a $ 130 million loan from another group of banks. Public records show that it also came to an end in 2012. Two people involved in this deal said that Trump had not bought this loan either – he had simply paid it off with a discount, by paying $ 48 million instead of $ 130 million.

"The loan has been canceled," said a manager of one of the creditor companies, who requested the anonymity to describe a private transaction, and therefore did not exist to be bought or sold .