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Salon
Salon
Politics
Sarah K. Burris

Trump has less money than he boasted

Donald Trump and Melania Trump step out of Marine One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on January 20, 2021. ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Forbes has reviewed campaign finance disclosures from former President Donald Trump and discovered that he apparently had far less cash in his final year of office than he claimed.

According to the documents, the self-described billionaire only had about $93 million in cash during the final year. They were part of the information released by New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of her civil probe into the Trump Organization.

The amount is significantly less than his 2015 claim that he had $793 million in the bank and $302 in "liquid assets." Until recently Trump's actual wealth has been difficult to discern because he so frequently misled the press about it. He's also lied about the extent to which his father contributed to his finances and his business ventures.

When Trump filed his financial statement he was required to submit as part of his presidential campaign put the sum lower, between $78 million and $232 million in mid-2015.


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"Because I sell stuff," Trump said in 2015, citing $30 million from the sale of the Miss Universe pageant. "'Here's your cash number here — or market value: 793."

He then wrote the number down on a piece of paper.

The New York AG documents showed the liquid holdings at closer to $114 million in 2016. They were then listed at $76 million in 2018 and $87 million in 2019. They then increased to $93 million in 2020.

Read the full report here.

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