By Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
On Thursday, Donald Trump released the financial disclosure forms required of candidates to comply with election campaign laws to the Office of Government Ethics. Those forms show that Trump drew his income from a number of sources—from peddling Bibles to putting his image on trading cards to the hefty fees charged by his golf facilities. They also show that Trump still owes a large amount from legal settlements that he has been in no hurry to pay.
These documents are not as detailed as the tax forms that Trump promised to release, then refused to release, and which were finally released in part by the House Ways and Means Committee. Still, at over 250 pages, there’s a lot of information and it may take days before analysts and accountants have put together everything revealed in this document.
What can be seen from even a casual glance is that, while Trump might not be as wealthy as he claims, he has more than enough income to pay his legal bills, donate to his campaign, and keep up even the most lavish lifestyle. In other words, all the begging he did to get other people to fund his legal expenses was a flat-out scam.
A few highlights from Trump’s disclosure include:
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Trump made $300,000 for his part in selling those Lee Greenwood Bibles. This seems significant, but if Trump is worth $6.5 billion as he claims, then this is the equivalent of Gov. Tim Walz (whose net worth happens to be just over $300,000) embarrassing himself for about $14.
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Trump got $12 million in licensing fees, $7 million of which came from putting a version of his face, and scraps of a suit, on those pricey (and ridiculous) NFT trading cards. He may be the only one to come out of this investment a winner.
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Melania was also paid $330,609 in license fees for NFTs, so she must have made some appearance on those cards.
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Trump owns between $1 million and $5 million worth of cryptocurrency, despite having frequently declared that it's a scam.
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Showing that he’s a true watcher of late-night Fox broadcasts, Trump also owns somewhere over $100,000 in gold bars.
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A book called “Letters to Trump”—which is exactly that, a collection of notes that celebrities have written to Trump, mostly before his first run for office—brought in $4.5 million. That book also contains the story of Trump and Willie Brown being on a helicopter ride. But Brown’s actual letter to Trump makes no mention of a helicopter.
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Trump set the value of the company behind Truth Social at “over $50 million” even though the company just posted a $16 million loss in the second quarter.
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The big money came from Trump’s properties at a monster $513 million: that includes $56.9 million from Mar-a-Lago and a whopping $160.7 million from the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort.
In addition to the income, Trump has outstanding debts. In particular, there are three line items related to legal decisions over the last two years.
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Trump still owes writer E. Jean Carroll between $1 million and $5 million for his loss in the first case she filed against him. Since the settlement in that case was for $5 million, it seems like a good bet that Trump has paid her nothing.
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Trump also owes E. Jean Carroll another $83 million for his loss in the second trial after he repeatedly called her a liar even after a jury held him accountable for sexual assault and a judge claimed that what Trump did to Carroll was rape. The disclosure form only ranks this item as “greater than $50 million,” but again, it’s a good bet that Trump hasn’t begun to pay Carroll what he owes.
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Also in the over $50 million category is a debt where Trump lists New York Attorney General Letitia James as the creditor. This appears to be the $355 million Trump owes after losing his New York trial on real estate fraud. Clearly the people who made “over $50 million” the top category didn’t anticipate someone like Trump filling out these forms.
Trump has income and he could pay off what he owes to Carroll. He could put more of his own funds into his campaign. He could certainly afford to pay his own attorneys.
He just doesn’t want to pay. And why should he, so long as there is a stream of suckers and losers who will sign up to cover his bills?
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