Donald Trump Almost Too Good at Hiding His Billions of Dollars
This week Donald Trump submitted his personal financial disclosure forms to the FEC, a fascinating 104-page document that, more than anything else, illustrates how good the self-proclaimed billionaire is at hiding those billions. We don’t know how he did it, but they show up nowhere in the entire disclosure.
Trump’s 104-page report lists him as a director, chairman, president or member of some 564 companies collectively worth somewhere north of one-and-a-half billion, though Trump has publicly stated he’s worth more than 10 billion. (Forbes peg his net worth at less than five billion.)
This year, Trump declared a self-reported income of $615 million. (The Wall Street Journal estimates he’s really earning something more like $160 million, pre-tax.)
Because candidates report the dollar amounts of each of their sources of income not as specific amounts but as within a range set by the FEC—for example, between $1,001 and $100,000 or $100,001 and $1,000,001—it’s hard to say exactly how much he actually makes and holds from year to year.
Between his checking, savings, and money market accounts, Trump has somewhere between $6 and $30 million in cash on hand—couch money, so-to-speak. He reports another few dozen million invested with several funds.
He also appears to be carrying, at the very least, $315 million in debt.
Trump, in character as fake publicist John Miller, once observed that he’d intentionally hid evidence of his financial success during his divorce from his first ex-wife, Ivana.
“I don’t know if you heard that, but that Trump became poor until he got his divorce. And then all of the sudden he’s been doing very well,” Trump said, pretending to be someone else.
With that in mind, this billionaire’s understated disclosure can only be interpreted as a hostile move against Melania.