By Chantal Da Silva
Chief Correspondent
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Fox News host Neil Cavuto appeared to praise President Donald Trump over the U.S. leader's reported tax schemes, which allegedly helped him accrue millions of dollars in wealth from his father's real estate empire.
Reporting on the alleged tax strategies used by Trump in the 1990s, Cavuto said the president's schemes were "pretty clever" since they managed to have "out-dodged" the Internal Revenue Service.
The New York Times broke the story on Tuesday, reporting that Trump and his siblings set up a "sham" corporation to disguise taxable income handed to them as "gifts" from their parents.
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The president's parents left more than $1 billion to their children, which would have required the family to pay a $550 million tax bill at the time, the Times said.
However, the Trumps reportedly only paid a sum of $52.2 million on the funds.
"We are learning a little bit more about some of the revelations made in this New York Times report that takes a look at the wealth acquired by team Trump dating back to the son Donald Trump and his dad who of course was a real estate magnate back in the '50s and '60s," Cavuto said on Fox News.
The host said that the Trump family's tactics resulted in "frequent run-ins with the IRS," but said none of them were deemed "ultimately illegal."
"They might have played fast and loose to acquire the wealth they did, and did, in fact, have had run-ins with the IRS, but none that resulted in the IRS aggressively going after them," Cavuto said.
"They were just pretty clever and out-dodged them," the host said of the Trump family.
In its report, The Times pointed to records that showed how Trump worked to undervalue his father's real estate holdings, which resulted in a lower tax bill for him and his siblings when they inherited the family's properties.
In total, the president ultimately received the equivalent of around $413 million from his father's real estate empire, according to the report.
If true, the allegations run counter to Trump's long-running claim of being a self-made billionaire.
The Times report involved an analysis of more than 100,000 pages of documents connected to the Trump family business, including bank statements, financial audits and confidential records, including tax returns from Trump's father.
The White House has responded the newspaper's report, calling for an apology over the allegations.
"Fred Trump has been gone for nearly twenty years and it's sad to witness this misleading attack against the Trump family by the failing New York Times," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
Read more: Donald Trump Tax Fraud Allegations Being 'Vigorously' Pursued by New York Authorities
"Many decades ago the IRS reviewed and signed off on these transactions. The New York Times and other media outlets' credibility with the American people is at an all-time low because they are consumed with attacking the president and his family 24/7 instead of reporting the news," she said.
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, however, has announced that it is "vigorously pursuing" an investigation into the newspaper's findings.
In a statement to Newsweek, James Gazzale, a spokesperson for the department, said "the Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation."
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