It’s not just “an office building”, it’s a 71 story skyscraper. Even setting aside its highly desirable location a $1M price makes no sense.

The thing is, though, that the only source I can find for the $1M purchase price is Trump’s own mouth, while bragging about its real value (hundreds of millions), and we know he lies and exaggerates all the time.

Ok, so either way my point stands. There is no evidence whatsoever that something illegal is taking place ? The op posted this article

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is...

So apparently he bought it roughly for market price ?

>There is no evidence whatsoever that something illegal is taking place ?

Why would you want evidence that something illegal was taking place if something illegal was taking place? Sure in the absence of evidence I do believe we cannot declare anyone guilty, but the presumption of innocence doesn't mean we can't cast suspicion.

How is 1/8th of the price "market price"? Quite the opposite. You seem to have trouble addressing facts here.

EDIT: Responding to your answer below. You are materially misreporting the substance of the NYT article, which I find to be telling. It says that the building was sold for $8 million two years before, and that Trump paid "less than" that.

Did you read the article you posted ? Where does it say he bought it for 1/8th the price ? It doesn't say that anywhere in your article

Bloomberg claims Trump bought the right to lease the building for the next 60 years or so. Trump does not own the property at 40 Wall Street. He is paying something like $1.5 million per year in rent. He bought the rights to lease the building from someone who previously bought those rights for the mostly empty building for $8 million but were having trouble getting tenants. It isn't clear if Trump bought all of the same rights or if they retained some.

The people who previously had the rights to lease out the building paid $8 million, but along with that came the responsibility of paying rent to the landowner. If they hadn't been able to make progress in two years, it doesn't seem outlandish that they would be willing to sell for much less than they paid. Their big expense wasn't going to be the cost of the rights to lease the tower, but the actual cost of leasing the tower (or maybe it is better to say the land the tower sits on) over time.

Further, they may have retained some rights that they found valuable so I wouldn't assume that what they bought for $8 million was the same thing Trump says he bought for $1 million.

So was the deal "shady"? Not from any information presented in this thread nor from anything that is readily available from a quick search. It could be of course, but the actual facts that are available don't appear to support such a claim.

He bought it for 1/8th of the price it sold for two years earlier. During those two years, the US economy was on an upswing.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is...

And the building looks like this: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-trump-40-wall-street...

It's a shady price, and a shady building, because he now rents it out to crooks like himself. (See Bloomberg piece.)

In the future, do your own research. It's just a Google away.

I bring up your Facebook comment because this is the second time you've come down on the side of the Kremlin and the conman they helped plant in the White House. It's an interesting pattern.

Edit: Responding to your comment below due to limits on nested comments on HN.

40 Wall is a well known center of criminal activity.

"Since Donald Trump took over 40 Wall St. in 1995, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people connected to 12 alleged scams tied to the building. Nine other firms have faced serious regulatory claims. Authorities prevailed in most but not all of the cases."

Trump also housed Trump University there, as well as Trump Mortgage, which shuttered the year before the 2008 crash. Trump paid $25 million to settle charges of fraud against Trump U.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-university-sett...

This isn't the only Trump property associated with large-scale crime. Trump's Taj Mahal casino was fined a record amount in 2015 for violations of anti-money laundering regulations, because it claimed to have lost records of all transactions for years.

http://fortune.com/2015/02/11/trump-taj-mahal-casino-settles...

Trump has effectively led and profited from an international money-laundering syndicate for years. He is the leader of an organized crime family. He became president of the US with the help of dirty money and dirty tricks. Much coming from Russia.

It's very shady looking into anyone's comment history and bring up other supposed dirt and use it like that.

Smear tactic. Now you don't look so good either.

Disagree. There's nothing wrong with looking at somebody else's previous comments, nor anything wrong with pointing out to the reader that there might (rightly or wrongly) be something of interest there. Comments are public, and a user's comment history is public too.

I agree. It's just dumb to bring in irrelevant comments and even dumber to call someone a kremlin troll for defending Facebook.

I would say it's not shady, it's just kinda dumb because it's irrelevant

DELETED based on moderator feedback.

This breaks both the HN guideline against personal attacks ('be civil') and the one against insinuations of astroturfing and shillage without evidence. Someone having an opposing opinion is not evidence. Please don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The rest of the internet may be losing its mind; that doesn't mean we need to. Commenters here can do better than this.

Ad hominem attacks do not change the fact that your original point turned out to be false

You are changing the argument. I'm not defending trump and I am not saying he is or isn't a crook. I'm saying your original statement and argument is false.

And yet the comment you just replied to gives evidence that you are the one actually incorrect, as it backs up his original statement and strongly counters your assertion.

To paraphrase for you:

vonnik: $1m purchase price is shady

vasilipupkin: No its not it is the real estate game, unless you can show me $1m in mid 90's is shady for a 71 story office building in premium location on Wall Street

vonnik: OK here is source: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is...

vasilipupkin: <comment I am replying to>

My advice is it would help to have evidence, instead of seeding conversations with comments that cast doubt with very little evidence.

I'm not changing the argument. I answered your question precisely, and added new information about criminal activity at the building in question. You have not given a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancy between what the market pays, and what Trump pays. Lacking subpoenas, it's unlikely that we can know what the other side of the trade was. But Mueller's team surely knows. That's why Mueller hired a team of financial crimes experts with Enron experience. They were able to nail Paul Manafort for money laundering, tax evasion and failure to report his status as a foreign agent. Trump is guilt of all that by 100x. The coming months will bring it all out.

Where did you get the number that he paid 1/8th the market price ? You provided zero evidence to this effect. If he did pay 1/8th the market price, I'll concede that something shady was taking place

8 million dollars in 1993. 1 million dollars when Trump purchased it.

1 million / 8 million = 1/8.

your whataboutism is a classic kremlin maneuver. What about this and what about that ? The fact that I defended Facebook's handling of Russian ads in an unrelated online discussion has nothing to do with the fact that your specific argument about details of a specific deal is bullshit.

You said he bought it for 1 million and he bought it for 8. Apparently the same price as previous buyer paid ? So we can dispense with this line of reasoning ?