Mazars, former President Donald Trump’s longtime CPA firm, sent a resignation letter to Alan Garten, his chief legal officer, dated Feb. 9, 2022. For those not familiar with accounting terminology, The Palm Beach Post provides a translation of that letter below, by retired Palm Beach CPA Richard Rampell. Executive summary: They were shocked! Shocked! to learn that Trump and his minions may have mislead them when they prepared his personal financial statements.
Mazars: We quit! The Statements of Financial Condition (all of which I have not seen) should not be relied on for the past 10 years and Trump should so inform anyone who may have relied upon them.
Translation: Your balance sheets showing assets, liabilities and net worth each year are probably wildly inaccurate (but wink, wink, we don’t know for sure, since we didn’t do a full-blown audit), so tell everyone you sent them to, to disregard them so that they don’t sue us for abetting fraudulent misrepresentations.
Mazars: “We have come to this conclusion based…upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General…our own investigation, and information received from internal and external sources.”
Translation: Even though we have been doing his work for these 10 years, we had no idea any information we got from Trump may have been inaccurate until the New York attorney general told us. This completely caught us off guard. Really!
Mazars: “While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based on the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice [not to rely on the statements] is appropriate.”
Translation: We’re not saying the financial statements we signed off on are complete B***S***, because then your bankers, insurers, tax collectors might sue us too.
Mazars: “As we have stated in the Statements of Financial Condition (accountant-speak for balance sheets), Mazars has performed its work in accordance with professional standards. A subsequent review of those workpapers confirms this.”
Translation: To cover our own asses, our opinion letter accompanying the financial statements disclaimed any responsibility for the accuracy of the statements since they were based on information given to us by your own people without verification, no matter how preposterous the estimates of value may have been. Even though CPA firms, under their code of professional conduct, are supposed to do background checks on the integrity of management before accepting a client (which of course we did and were satisfied). So, we filled out all the appropriate questionnaires before taking on Trump as a client and each year thereafter (or if we didn’t, we sure did our documentation later and before we handed over our files to the AG!). Indeed we have plausible deniability of any fraud. Plus, we don’t want to have our licenses suspended by the board of accountancy.
Mazars: “There is a non-waivable conflict of interest with the Trump Organization.”
Translation: If it comes down to whether we will take a bullet for Trump (as Michael Cohen once said), forget it, we’re not going to jail for you now that you can’t pardon us. It’s every man for himself from here on. We have already incurred more in legal fees than Trump ever paid us. When shall we expect a reimbursement check from you?
Mazars: “As of this writing, the…tax returns [of] Donald J. Trump and Melania Trump…remain to be filed…. The due date…is Feb. 15, 2022…. [Our colleague] Donald Bender has been asking for [missing] information for several months but has not received it.”
Translation: Karma. You always string us along until the last minute for filing and make us work around the clock to complete your returns before the deadline. Our letter is dated 6 days before the deadline. The joke’s on you now, buddy. Good luck finding another CPA to do this by the deadline! (Note: the translator does not know why the Trumps’ deadline is Feb. 15, while the rest of us have April 15. Is he on a fiscal year?)
Mazars: “if those returns are filed late, there may be a late filing penalty of $10,000 per return, which will likely be subject to abatement.”
Translation: You skated on paying taxes for a long time, let’s see you get out of this one, pal!
Post Script: Good luck refinancing your loans after your old CPAs have said your financial statements can’t be trusted.
RIchard Rampell is a retired Palm Beach CPA.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism