SEC Documents Show Donald Trump Has Lied About How Much He Is Worth

By Ben Jacobs, Guardian UK

03 July 16

n the 2016 campaign trail, Donald Trump has insisted that he is worth more than $10bn. However, a statement filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission by Wells Fargo Securities on Trump’s behalf in 2012 indicated that the real estate developer was then worth less than half that, with comparatively few of the liquid assets that may now finance his campaign for president.

In the document, which concerned the securitization of commercial mortgages on properties including Trump Tower in New York City, Trump was described as being worth more than $4.2bn, with liquid assets of more than $250m.

A passage in the 132-page filing says: “The sponsor is Donald J Trump. Mr Trump has significant commercial real estate holdings worldwide including interests in office, retail, residential, golf-clubs and hospitality properties in markets including New York, San Francisco, Florida, Washington DC, and Scotland. As of 30 June 2011, Mr Trump reports a net worth in excess of $4.2bn and liquidity in excess of $250m.”

Jessica Ong, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, insisted the 2012 filing was correct.

She said: “Obviously, if it was inaccurate, we wouldn’t have filed it with the SEC.”

While $250m is a large amount of money, it is nowhere near enough to finance a modern presidential campaign. Trump has already loaned between $43m and $50m to his campaign, raising questions about how much he can afford to continue to spend without selling off assets or taking on significant loans.

Trump has insisted that he has far more than $250m in liquid assets, last year telling Fox News anchor Sean Hannity he had $400m, all of which he was prepared to use.

In sworn testimony for a 2007 lawsuit, deposition transcripts show, Trump was asked by a lawyer whether he had “ever exaggerated in statements about your properties?”

“I think everyone does,” Trump answered. The lawyer pressed: “Does that mean that sometimes you’ll inflate the value of your properties in your statements?”

“Not beyond reason,” Trump said.

Trump’s claim to be able to self-fund his campaign has been a foundation of his so-far successful claim to be independent of the Washington establishment. Although he is now frantically building a fundraising apparatus, he has insisted this is simply to help the Republican National Committee (RNC) raise money for the party as a whole. His campaign reported only $1.3m “cash on hand” to begin the month of June, in contrast to Hillary Clinton’s $42.5m.

The RNC has not seemed overly concerned. Speaking to CNN in June, the group’s chief strategist, Sean Spicer, said that if Trump “wanted to get that [fundraising] number up in two seconds, he just strokes a check and it’s up”.

The Trump campaign has insisted that the businessman has converted his loan into a donation. No such paperwork has yet been filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The 2012 SEC filing contradicts a claim made by Trump in November 2011, in which he said he had a net worth of more than $7bn and insisted that he derived almost $3bn from the value of his personal brand.

In May 2016, Trump filed a statement with the FEC in which he insisted his “net worth is in excess of $10bn”. The disclosure indicated that he had taken on at least $50m in debt and sold off assets in the past year.

While the statement from Wells Fargo indicates that Trump may be far less wealthy than he claims, it would also indicate that he is in better financial shape than many financial experts believe, unless he has suffered significant undisclosed financial losses in recent years.

Fortune magazine has estimated that Trump is currently worth $3.9bn; in 2015, Bloomberg News assessed Trump’s fortune at $2.9bn.

Another billionaire, Mark Cuban, has scoffed at Trump’s claims, suggesting the presumptive Republican nominee may not be a billionaire at all. Cuban’s reading of Trump’s most recent financial disclosure was that Trump may only have $165m available.