‘Forbes’ Catches Trump Blatantly Lying About Net Wealth

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It’s no surprise to anyone familiar with Donald Trump when he’s caught in a lie. His inauguration crowd was not the most well-attended in history, he didn’t win in 2016 by the largest margin in history, and he’s not the world’s most successful businessman. Some of his lies, though, may be criminal, and recent court filings by investigators have a lot to say about Trump and his company, the Trump Organization.

One of the most surprising revelations that have come from the financial records filed as evidence from Attorney General Letitia James, who is in charge of the civil case against Trump and his organization, is the amount of wealth the professed billionaire actually has. Former attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen said in court that Trump often inflated his assets in loan documents and devalued them on his tax documents, a practice that constitutes both tax and bank fraud. Some of his lies about his wealth, however, were told solely to get into Forbes magazine.

From those recent filings, Trump’s professed wealth in liquid assets – he’s said over the years that he’s a billionaire, and at other times that he has $500 million in assets, and other amounts at other times – is $93 million.

According to the latest from Forbes:

‘That makes Trump far from cash poor. But he has less in the bank than many of his fellow real estate billionaires. And he has far less than the fanciful sums he’s tried to sell Forbes—and, according to the attorney general, his own lenders and insurers—over the years.’

Trump’s lies about his wealth are coming back to haunt him. In recent statements and filings by AG James, news that Trump lied on financial statements about everything from the price of his real estate properties per square foot but the square feet themselves in a number of pieces of real estate that he owns.

In a statement about the most recent filing, the attorney general’s office said that:

‘The OAG has determined that the Statements of Financial Condition described Mr. Trump’s (or the Trustees of the Revocable Trust’s) valuation process in broad terms and in ways which were often inaccurate or misleading when compared with the supporting data and documentation that the Trump Organization submitted to its accounting firm.’

 

The $93 million evaluation shows a sharp drop in wealth from earlier years. When running for president, Trump filed a financial disclosure rather than release his taxes, and it listed cash and securities worth between $78 million and $232 million as 2015. That number is quite different from earlier estimates he’s given over the years.

‘His 2004 balance sheet, released years later as part of a lawsuit, put his liquid assets at about $230 million in June of that year. Balance sheets for 2011 and 2012, submitted to Congress in 2019 by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, show cash of $259 million and $170 million, respectively. His 2013 balance sheet, also submitted by Cohen, listed cash of $346 million in 2013. A few months later, Trump told Forbes he had $500 million. (Our estimate at the time: $300 million.)’