Donald Trump’s rainy-day fund was looking scarce before he ran for a second presidential term, according to The New York Times.
During his civil fraud trial in New York in late 2023, Trump boasted that he kept between $300 million and $400 million in the bank. “I’ve had a lot of cash for a long time,” he said in court.
But financial records filed as part of that case showed that his cash wealth gyrated wildly, getting as low as just $50 million in 2018. He later sold properties and received dividends from investments to bolster his war chest.
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Selling properties reduced his asset wealth, though, as the real estate development company he owns hadn’t built anything lucrative in over a decade, the Times reported. The money from his illustrious TV career, mainly as the star of reality show The Apprentice, had all but dried up, too.
Therefore, the outstanding legal bills Trump faces might have eaten up all of his cash. In Feb. 2024, the culmination of his fraud case saw the judge declare that the then-former president lied about his wealth for years.
He was ordered to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, that judgment and the $88.3 million he owes from the sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits brought by E. Jean Carroll means he owes the eye-watering sum of over $600 million with interest.
He has not yet paid out on either case, but did fork out $175 million in the fraud case, and $97 million in Ms. Carroll’s cases, for appeals. He also faces a tax bill of $100 million, but it is unclear if the Internal Revenue Service will pursue this.
It was only when Trump retook the White House in Jan. 2025 that he looked to have acquired the means of making a dent in this figure, be it from flogging gaudy Trump-branded merch or lucrative crypto deals.
His sons, Eric and Don Jr., have been busy securing lucrative deals for the Trump Organization, the president’s business portfolio. The president himself has been flogging merch, from MAGA hats to colognes, and recently announced a Trump-branded mobile phone and network provider.
However, the real financial boon has been the deals he has been able to strike, via his sons, with worldwide elites since his re-election.
Last month, the United Arab Emirates invested $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company.
The family’s crypto holdings have actually come to rival its real estate portfolio, according to the Financial Times. The Trump Media & Technology Group has raised $2.5 billion to buy bitcoin.
Then there’s the president’s $TRUMP memecoin—a type of cryptocurrency named after internet memes that tends to be extremely volatile, which earned $350 million in the first few weeks after it launched.
Trump has not forgotten his brick-and-mortar roots, though. In December, Eric Trump revealed that a new Trump Tower was being built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in May, plans were announced for a Trump-branded luxury golf course in Qatar that will be part of a $5.5 billion development project and a $1 billion Trump Hotel and residence was announced in Dubai.
“His approach to almost everything at this point now seems to be that he’s going to get away with whatever he can get away with, and sort of dare people to try to find legal or political ways to stop him,” Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Times.
