This film looks to shed light on the rigor behind journalism and why it's all worth it. It’s a piece of work about pursuing the truth wherever it may lead and bringing that truth back in word form for the world to read. This 30-second film shows the rigor of an 18-month investigation by three NYT journalists into Donald Trump’s dubious tax schemes during the 1990s. After following an unfathomable paper trail, they revealed he had taken part in possible fraud and other misdemeanors. The spot was released at a time of overwhelming information (and misinformation), making it even more critical to reiterate the importance of the truth and the value of NYT journalism.

The film launched after Trump said the press was the “enemy of the people” following a meeting between himself and The New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. The script had to put us in the reporters’ streams of consciousness, adopting their tones of voice while also maintaining The Times’s inimitable house style. The script, a connected thread of words that appears on screen, creating the effect of a continuously rewriting headline, was central to putting the viewer in the psyches of the journalists as they picked their way through an unfathomable amount of information, unravelling the financial history, decade by decade, of America’s largest real estate empire.

Trump

Fred Trump

Search Public Trump Documents

Documents Lead to Sources

Sources Lead to Documents

Unseen Documents (we flip through pages of documents at lightning speed)

Bank Statements

Trust Funds

Tax Returns

Return to

to Read All

Analyze All

All for 18 Months

Decipher All 10 > 100,000 (numbers cycle up) Documents

Connect All The

Puzzle Pieces

Puzzle Together Pieces

To Find

Find Possible Tax Fraud

Find Possible Federal Crime

Find $400 Million Dodged

Find Trump Not Self-Made

Trump Not Self-Made

Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes

as He Reaped Riches From His Father