Reading News for You: Trump reports hundreds of millions in income
Friday, June 16, 2017
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http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/16/news/trump-financial-disclosure-form/index.html
Trump reports hundreds
of millions in income
by Jill Disis and
Cristina Alesci @CNNMoney
June 16, 2017: 7:20 PM ET
President Trump reported
hundreds of millions of dollars in income Friday in financial disclosure forms
that shed more light on his vast business holdings.
At his golf courses
alone, Trump reported $288 million in income in the past year. That includes
$19.8 million from his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he has spent some
weekends as president.
Trump reported $37.2
million in income in the past year from Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida resort
where Trump hosted the president of China and ordered missile strikes against
Syria. The club has doubled its membership fee in the past year.
The Mar-a-Lago income
figure was $7.4 million higher than on his previous financial disclosure
filing, in May 2016.
Trump reported $19.7
million in income through mid-April at his luxury Washington hotel, which has
been a center of concerns about conflict of interest because of the possibility
that foreign governments can curry favor with the president by booking rooms there.
The hotel opened in September.
The president reported
up to $7 million in book royalties, including $1 million to $5 million from his
book "Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America." He reported
nearly $11 million from the Miss Universe pageant and an $84,000 pension from
the Screen Actors Guild.
Trump has said that he
sold all his stock holdings in June 2016 to avoid conflicts of interest. He
later said he did so because it was improper to own stocks "when I'm
making deals for this country that maybe will affect one company positively and
one company negatively."
The disclosure form
appeared to confirm that he had sold those stock holdings. It did include
income from capital gains and dividends, presumably before the stock sales.
The document makes
reference to a sizable loan, between $5 million and $25 million, from UBS Real
Estate Investments. The loan had an interest rate of 6.18%. Trump refinanced it
with Ladder Capital at a much lower rate of 4.05%.
Overall, Trump reported
liabilities of at least $311 million -- mortgages and loans. But the number
could be much higher because he was required only to report a range in value
for each loan.
Of the 16 loans he
reported, five were worth more than $50 million each; one is worth between $25
million and $50 million; and seven were worth between $5 million and $25
million apiece. Another three loans combined were worth less than $1 million.
The form, released by
the Office of Government Ethics, reflects the president's investments, other
assets, income, retirement accounts and other holdings.
It is different from a
federal tax return, which Trump has refused to make public and which would
reveal much more about his business and financial dealings, including foreign
business ties, both direct and indirect.
Federal law did not
require Trump to file a new financial disclosure until next year, said Ken
Gross, a Washington lawyer who has advised business executives and political
appointees on finances and ethics.
"It's particularly
important that he made the voluntary filing in view of the fact we don't have
tax returns," Gross said.
The White House said in
a statement that Trump "welcomed the opportunity" to file the form
"voluntarily."
Norman Eisen, a
Brookings Institution visiting fellow and former ethics lawyer for President
Barack Obama, said the document is missing a great deal of valuable
information.
"We still don't
know the extent or sources of foreign emoluments, the identity of all his
investors, partners and financial actors involved in his businesses, the
purchasers, including possibly foreign ones of his condos and other
properties," Eisen said.
Eisen is chairman of an
organization involved in two lawsuits against Trump over foreign payments to
his businesses, which the plaintiffs say violate a constitutional clause
prohibiting the president from accepting foreign gifts, or emoluments.
Trump last released
information about his finances in May 2016, as a candidate. It showed Trump was
worth at least $1 billion.
Trump refused to sell
his business holdings as president, as experts in government ethics urged him
to do. Instead, he transferred them into a trust in his name. Any business
profits will ultimately accrue to him when he leaves office.
oOo
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