Donald Trump is cash poor, not close to the billionaire he claimed. The ex-president’s liquidity, cash and easily transferable assets, is somewhere between $30 and $100 million depending upon interest rates. Without the ex-president’s father to bail him out, Trump appears to be desperate.
As the man in the White House, he kept his $400,000 presidential salary, breaking his promise to donate it. According to the former president’s 2020 tax returns, most of his wealth comes from interest ($10.6 million) and lackluster dividends from his stocks. The range is due to a number of variables, such as interest rates.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit documents showed that the former president could only access around $65 million of his assets. According to the James’ lawsuit, “the real estate behemoth Vornado” controls most of Trump’s assets.
The former president burned his bridges with banks, so Trump had o offload his International Hotel located near the White House. The COVID pandemic cost the travel industry hard. It seems 45 lost $70 million on this hotel investment. And Trump only made about $100,000 profit from his beach club Mar-a-Lago, according to The Daily Beast:
Communications Director for government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Jordan Libowitz, said that Trump’s actions after leaving office tend to reflect a man with limited assets. The Republican National Committee (RNC) has footed the bill for the previous POTUS’ legal bills in part. But Trump will still be on the hook for many of them. Libowitz said:
‘2020 is an interesting year. He’s all-in on the hospitality industry, which was falling apart amid the pandemic, even with all the people trying to patronize his properties. And it would not surprise me if he’s struggling to access cash, especially as banks have become reticent to lend him money. It’s why he needs Truth Social to come through.’
Libowitz continued, citing Trump’s disdain for paying bills:
‘If you look at the history of Trump, the only thing he hates more than paying taxes is paying his bills. When he got fined for his giant Mar-a- Lago flagpole, he used nonprofit donations to pay it off. So if he can use someone else’s money, he will. Why jump through these hoops with the RNC when for a billionaire it’s comparatively very little money? Well, when it’s something like 5 percent of what you can access, that is a lot of money.’
After the release of Trump’s 2020 taxes, the former POTUS said, according to The New York Times:
‘[O]nce again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.’
The filing tapped into Trump’s internal records, which showed:
‘Internal Trump Organization records acknowledge that cash residing in the Vornado Partnership Interests was not Mr. Trump’s to access at his whim.’
The documents laid bare Trump’s real assets:
‘[D]istributions are at the discretion of Vornado [and] at this point we do not have all of the data that goes into Vornado’s decision making, thus we are attributing no distribution for these properties.’
Even though The Trump Organization claimed $92.7 million in profits most of that amount was tied up in restricted assets. That meant 45 could only access $28.25 million.
Forensic accountant and tax law expert in Manhattan Mark Gottlieb said that Trump has “phantom income.” Meaning that the previous president could not touch these funds:
‘As phantom income, he can’t touch it, feel it, smell it, or use it.’
Trump is a minority partner, and that was why the previous president was unable to reach the funds:
‘That headline $10.6 million is nice, but it appears to be mostly interest income from pass-through entities related to Vornado, not entities Trump actually controls and manages. The self-proclaimed billionaire only earned an actual income of around a million dollars. But for his wages as president and his dividends from those inaccessible partnerships, Trump’s actual income that year was more like $500,000 or $600,000. Not a lot of money for a billionaire.’
Tax law expert at the University of Las Vegas Nevada Francine Lipman agreed:
‘When you look at this tax return, the first impression is, boy that’s a lot of interest income! But then you do a deep dive and the vast majority is from pass-through entities, and some of these partnerships are more second- or third-degree partnerships where he’s not just going to be able to put money from left pocket to his right pocket.’
Trump placed most of his fungible income in Capital One Professional Bank in Florida, But the institution dumped him after the January 6 insurrection::
‘There appears to be very little in banks that is actually accessible. Between the banks that we can recognize—Professional Bank? What is that? I haven’t heard of it—it looks like he’s got around half a million in interest income that he can actually touch. Not $10 million.’
Forensic Accountant Bruce Dubinsky blew a hole in the previous president’s claims of vast wealth:
‘It appears from a review of Trump’s tax returns, based on the interest and dividends he was reporting, that a large portion of the interest income was coming from various partnerships in which he apparently was not the controlling partner. As a result, he would not have had ready access to the underlying funds generating that interest income from those partnerships. Accordingly, based upon my rough calculations taking that interest income out of the equation, his true liquid net worth was significantly less than the amount he has touted publicly.’
Gottlieb said that Trump’s legal fees could put a big dent in his finances: Plus the previous president’s “lavish lifestyle” and projected image are rapidly eating through his assets.
Gloria Christie is a political journalist for the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Find her here on Facebook. Or at Three White Lions, her book written in her own unique style with a twist of humor on Amazon Kindle Vella and the Gloria Christie Three White Lions podcast on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery (in progress).
