16 August 2024 , 18:36
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Financial disclosure shows presidential nominee owes $500m in civil penalties but sheds little light on solvency
Donald Trump made hundred of thousands from his branded Bible and millions from his properties – but also owes millions for defamation and fraud cases, according to his latest financial disclosures that shed little light on the perennial question of whether the Republican presidential nominee is, in fact, solvent.
Voluminous disclosure documents to the US Office of Government Ethics to comply with election campaign laws show that, in addition to Trump’s US real estate holdings, he has global financial interests, including registered trademarks in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ukraine and Israel.
He also owns millions in cryptocurrency and has a six-figure investment in gold bars.
But the disclosures also hint at Trump’s substantial personal outgoings, including more than $500m owed to both the writer E Jean Carroll and the New York attorney general resulting from civil judgments involving defamation and accounting fraud.
Both judgments – $83m to Carroll and $454m to New York state – are subject to bonds while Trump appeals the decisions, a process that could take years.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club in Florida, which formed part of a case against the Trump Organization involving inflated asset valuations, produced about $57m in income from the club, down about $8m from a previous disclosure.
The disclosures are not a profit-and-loss balance sheet – they only give broad ranges of income and assets – so alone they cannot determine whether Trump is in the red or the black. He has consistently resisted efforts to force the release of his tax returns, although two years ago a Democrat-controlled Congress released six years of Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.
Earlier this year, Trump joined Bloomberg Billionaires Index of 500 richest people, with a fortune of $6.5bn – a $4bn increase, resulting from a Spac merger of his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social site where the former president posts most of his public messages. But the value of the media group has declined significantly in recent months by as much as $1.3bn.
The disclosure comes as US voters are asked to weigh the relative fortunes of candidates and their running partners ahead of November’s presidential vote. The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, is estimated to be worth $8m, while her running mate and Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, made headlines for being worth a modest $330,000.
The net worth of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who worked as a venture capitalist and wrote a successful memoir, is placed at $4m, including $250,000 in bitcoin. Joe Biden and Jill Biden’s wealth is placed at $10m, including the $400,000 annual salary he earns as president.
The particularities of Trump’s financial disclosures show that he earned $12m through licensing and royalty deals. Those include about $7m he earned from a NFT licensing deal that sells digital “trading cards”.
The former president also reported earning about $5m in royalties for his recent books Letters to Trump and Our Journey Together. A Bible, published in association with the country singer Lee Greenwood, earned $300,000.
There was no income reported from his gold high-top sneaker line.
Trump, who recently signaled his support for cryptocurrencies at a global crypto convention in Nashville, Tennessee, declares between $1 and $5m in Ethereum. His son Eric Trump, who currently runs the Trump Organization, recently posted on X that he had “truly fallen in love with Crypto” and alerted to an unspecified “big announcement”.
Alongside the former president’s disclosures, the former first lady Melania Trump said she had earned $237,500 from a booking to speak to Republicans in Florida, and about $330,000 from NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which have recently included digital portraits of her celebrating Women’s History Month.
The documents also hint at changes in direction at Trump’s real estate empire. Three Chinese companies that may be related to real estate deals were dissolved, though he still owns trademarks in the country. He also paid off a Deutsche Bank mortgage of between $25m to $50m on his Chicago Trump International hotel.