The ‘greatest con artist in American history’ cashes in on the presidency. How much has he made?

The ‘greatest con artist in American history’ cashes in on the presidency. How much has he made?

David D. Kirkpatrick writes:

At a press conference on January 11, 2017, President-elect Donald Trump explained for the first time how he would handle the many conflicts of interest that his business empire posed for his new role. His company, the Trump Organization, collected money from all over the world for luxury condos, hotel rentals, development projects, and club memberships, and he had made deals that put his name on everything from mail-order steaks to get-rich-quick courses. Could citizens trust him to put the common good ahead of personal profit? How would he assure Americans that payments to his business weren’t doubling as payoffs?

A journalist asked Trump if he would release his tax returns, as Presidents had done for decades. Trump said no, and then explained just how unconstrained he felt by such conventions. He’d recently learned that the President, being beholden only to the voters, is subject to none of the regulations that restrict subordinate officials from conducting private business on the side. He called the loophole “a no-conflict-of-interest provision,” as if it were a perk of his employment contract.

To illustrate just how glaring a conflict the law allowed him, Trump volunteered that, during the transition, he’d entertained a two-billion-dollar offer “to do a deal in Dubai.” The offer had come from Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati real-estate tycoon with close ties to his country’s rulers. Trump emphasized that he “didn’t have to turn it down.” Nevertheless, he’d passed, because he didn’t “want to take advantage of something”; he disliked “the way that looks.” Therefore, he continued, his eldest sons, Donald, Jr., and Eric, would assume daily management of his businesses until he left office.

Trump then turned things over to Sheri Dillon, one of his tax lawyers, who argued that he could hardly be expected to do more than the temporary handover. Trump would not “destroy the company he built.” Since Trump’s star turn on the NBC reality show “The Apprentice,” the Trump Organization had mainly sold the use of his name. Most of its profits came from developers who flew the Trump flag over buildings that he didn’t build or own, or from businesses that used his name to sell shirts, mattresses, or pizza. If Trump tried to off-load his whole company, Dillon explained, a buyer might overpay in order “to curry favor with the President,” or, just as worrisome, might demean the highest office in the land by crassly cashing in on the President’s name. Trump and his family, Dillon declared, would never do anything that might “be perceived to be exploitive of the office of the Presidency.”

That was a different era. Dillon’s firm stopped representing Trump in 2021, after the mob he stirred up attacked the U.S. Capitol. And in Trump’s second term the President and his family have paid no mind to their lawyer’s promise. During Trump’s first term, they pledged to abstain from any new deals overseas. That’s out the window. The Trumps are now cashing in on five major deals in the Persian Gulf alone. Donald, Jr., on a recent visit to Qatar, said that the family’s restraint during the first Trump Administration had not stopped his father’s critics from constantly accusing the family of “profiteering.” So the Trumps would no longer lock themselves in “a proverbial padded room, because it almost doesn’t matter—they’re going to hit you no matter what.” (A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization told me that it employs an outside ethics adviser—currently, Karina Lynch, a lawyer and a lobbyist who previously worked as a Republican Senate staffer and has represented Donald, Jr.—to “avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”)

Many payments now flowing to Trump, his wife, and his children and their spouses would be unimaginable without his Presidencies: a two-billion-dollar investment from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince; a luxury jet from the Emir of Qatar; profits from at least five different ventures peddling crypto; fees from an exclusive club stocked with Cabinet officials and named Executive Branch. Fred Wertheimer, the dean of ethics-reform advocates, told me that, “when it comes to using his public office to amass personal profits, Trump is a unicorn—no one else even comes close.” Yet the public has largely shrugged. In a recent article for the Times, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent, wrote that the Trumps “have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House.” But Baker noted that the brazenness of the Trump family’s “moneymaking schemes” appears to have made such transactions seem almost normal.

How much money does it all amount to? What’s the number? In March, Forbes, known for ranking the wealth of billionaires, estimated that Trump’s net worth had more than doubled in the previous year, surpassing five billion dollars. In July, the Times put Trump’s wealth at upward of ten billion. Yet both estimates included billions of dollars in paper profits that would almost certainly disintegrate if the Trumps pulled out of certain investments. (What’s Truth Social worth without him?) These estimates also included assets untainted by any obvious exploitation of the Presidency, such as properties that Trump owned before entering office, or fees paid by resort customers who simply want to play golf or book a hotel room.

Although the notion that Trump is making colossal sums off the Presidency has become commonplace, nobody could tell me how much he’s made. Norm Eisen, a government-ethics lawyer and a vocal Trump critic, said, “We don’t know the full amounts.” Robert Weissman, a co-president of the left-leaning advocacy group Public Citizen, said, “We will never really know.” Wertheimer noted that for decades Trump had boasted constantly, and in detail, about how rich he was. “He doesn’t talk about it anymore,” Wertheimer said. “He may be the greatest con artist in American history.”

A more considered accounting seemed in order. I decided to attempt to tally up just how much Trump and his immediate family have pocketed off his time in the White House. [Continue reading…]

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