Mother Jones illustration; Evan Vucci/AP
Donald Trump filed his latest financial disclosure on Thursday, revealing how parts of his business empire have benefitted from his time in politics—and how other parts have frayed. Trump reported high revenues at many of his American properties, but his commercial real estate sales, which helped rebuild his wealth in the early 2000s, have all but disappeared. One standby for Trump has been revenue from partnering with foreign investors to build properties in far-flung locations—last year, he reported having earned $8 million from partners in Dubai, Oman, and Turkey.
Those overseas deals do not include an announced deal to build a Trump-branded tower in Saudi Arabia. In the past, Trump has maintained close relationships with his foreign business partners, even while in office. Some received VIP treatment at his first inauguration or even vacationed with his adult children. Trump already has a pre-existing business relationship with the Saudis through his golf courses’ participation in the Saudi-owned LIV Golf tour, which has brought several events to Trump properties, despite protests from 9/11 families over the kingdom’s alleged connections to the attack.
The former president reported income from merchandise sales, adding up to somewhere in the single-digit millions. His other attempts to cash in on his political fame have shown some success—he reported having earned $7.1 million from the sale of Trump-themed NFTs.
By far Trump’s most valuable asset, on paper at least, is his ownership of 114 million shares in the company behind his Truth Social app. But in an example of how precarious his finances might be, those shares were worth just $2.5 billion on Monday morning, down dramatically from a peak of $7.5 billion in late March, shortly after the stock went public. That’s also a roughly $2 billion decline from a jump in the share price after Trump was wounded in mid-July in an assassination attempt.
Under the rules of the public offering, Trump can’t sell any of those shares until next month, meaning their value to him remains entirely theoretical. But even after Trump is able to sell them, he faces challenges in turning the shares into real money. As the owner of 65 percent of the company—and by far the platform’s most significant user—any attempt by Trump to sell large quantities of stock will likely trigger a further slide in the price.
The financial disclosure documents, required of all presidential candidates, are an inexact way to measure Trump’s wealth for several reasons. While this year’s filing, which appears to cover the 2023 calendar year, shows high revenues at some of Trump’s properties—for example, revenues at his Mar-a-Lago club topped $56 million—it’s had to compare the numbers to previous reports that Trump filed, because they didn’t necessarily cover full calendar years. Regardless, his resort revenue does seem to be up; his golf courses in the US alone brought in nearly $200 million last year. And his resorts in Ireland and Scotland had more than $62 million in revenues.
But these filings don’t show the expenses the properties incurred, so it’s impossible to know whether they are actually profitable. In past years, his Scottish golf courses, for example, were spectacularly unprofitable, despite some years of decent revenue.
The filings also give an inexact measure of how much Trump’s various properties are worth—asset values are given only in broad ranges, with the highest range encompassing anything worth more than $50 million. What’s more, Trump has a history of making inaccurate claims about what his properties are worth. Last fall, he lost a massive civil fraud case in which the New York attorney general’s office successfully argued that he’d misled banks and insurance companies about his property values. Trump is currently appealing the $450 million judgment in that case.
Trump’s latest filing includes a relatively new property—a house abutting Mar-a-Lago that he bought from his sister in 2018. Trump claims this house is worth a whopping $50 million or more, which would represent a remarkable increase from the $18.2 million he paid for it just six years ago. On the Palm Beach County property appraisers website, the house was valued at just $23 million last year. Even on commercial real estate websites, which tend to use more generous formulas, the estimated value is significantly less than $50 million.
Some hint of why Trump may think the property is worth so much comes from a deposition he gave last year in the New York fraud case. Trump bragged to prosecutors that he had received lucrative offers from potential buyers he refused to name for various properties—including the house he’d bought from his sister. In that case, Trump said that someone had offered him $50 million, more than two-and-a-half times what he paid for it, but that he had turned it down. Trump said he wouldn’t name the person. Last year, I wrote about Trump’s claim and the mysterious potential buyer:
Trump said he was not willing to tell [Attorney General Letitia] James’ office who the potential buyer was because he didn’t want “to have this man deposed.” James’ attorney, Kevin Wallace, pressed for more details, and Trump’s attorneys stepped in to offer several reasons not to name this person, including that there possibly was a confidentiality clause involved. One of Trump’s attorneys said he believed that the offer had come from an LLC. When Wallace turned to Trump and asked if he was aware of who the person behind the LLC was, Trump was much more confident than in his recollections of potential buyers for his other properties.
The personal financial disclosure also lists Trump’s debts—and he still has quite a few longstanding ones, such as mortgages on Trump Tower and the 40 Wall Street commercial building in New York City. At least two loans—including the mortgage on 40 Wall Street, which at the end of 2023 had Trump on the hook for about $122 million—are slated to come due during the next’s presidential term.
Trump also lists new debts stemming from his voluminous legal problems. He is appealing the fraud case, and in the meantime has posted a bond of $175 million. He is similarly appealing two jury decisions that found he owes writer E. Jean Carroll $88.5 million for defaming her by calling her a liar and denying he had sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
