Donald Trump was once paid in gold bars that were wheeled into Trump Tower apartment

Donald Trump was once paid in gold bars rolled into the Trump Tower apartment, a new book claims, as he faces a sweeping $250 million lawsuit from New York AG Letitia James for ” lied about the value of his property”.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book, titled “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” shared with CNN, reveals new details about his dealings, including gold bullion payments.

She wrote that Trump sometimes received lease payments in cash, and that a tenant once gave him the gold bars that covered the cash portion of a parking garage lease.

The parking garage was in the General Motors building in Manhattan, which Trump bought in 1998.

According to Haberman’s book, Trump had no idea what to do with the gold bars.

He told Matt Calamari, a security guard who became CEO of Trump’s organization, to bring the bars to his apartment in Trump Tower.

But it is not known where the gold bars ended up. CNN reported that Calamari’s attorney did not comment on the matter, calling it a “fantasy question” by Trump.

It comes after the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against Trump was announced yesterday.

Letitia James announced the lawsuit against the former president at a dramatic news conference on Wednesday, citing a document accusing Trump and his three adult children of inflating properties well in excess of their true value when seeking loans to expand his real estate empire to expand.

James said the president and his children have been involved in “numerous acts of fraud” in a legal move aimed at robbing his ability to do business in their state for years.

She specifically named Trump and his three adult children, Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump, saying they “continued” to inflate the value of assets.

Trump hit back at James, who is black, calling her a “racist” and accusing her of bringing up the case to help her “really bad poll numbers.”

“Another witch hunt by a racist Attorney General, Letitia James, who failed in her run for governor, received almost no support from the public and now fares poorly against the highly regarded Law & Order AG candidate Michael Henry,” wrote Trump a post on Truth Social.

“I never thought this case would come up – until I saw her really bad poll numbers. She’s a con artist who’s been fighting on a ‘Get Trump’ platform despite the city being one of the most crime and homicide disasters in the world under her watch!’

Despite the apparent extravagance of being paid in gold, there were times when Trump sailed close to the wind.

Trump once had to borrow millions of dollars from one of his own executives, George Ross, reports Haberman.

Ross would only tell the author that the point was to “cover a situation that was taken care of very quickly” and that the point was not to do payroll.

She also recounts a time when “there were reportedly threats to go public with rumors that Malcolm Forbes, the late owner of Forbes magazine, was gay,” when the magazine was preparing a report stating it , Trump’s wealth is far below his own claims.

That issue – the size of Trump’s net worth – was a key part of the allegations James made on Wednesday.

‘Indeed, Mr. Trump has prevailed [Trump Organization CFO Allen] Weisselberg that he wanted his net worth for the Statements to increase — a desire Mr. Weisselberg and others have carried out year after year in their fraudulent preparation of the Statements,” their 222-page lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit says these inflated statements were included in the financial reports Trump used to obtain loans.