New Filings Shed Light on How Much Money Donald Trump Really Has in the Bank
Brandon Bell/Getty Donald Trump
Donald Trump often says he's "really rich" — but is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to his exact net worth.
New filings released Tuesday by New York Attorney General Letitia James offer a window into how much the former president actually has in the bank, showing that Trump's liquid assets equaled $93 million in 2020.
Forbes was the first to report on documents, which were released as part of James' civil investigation into the Trump Organization's financial dealings. (The company and Trump deny wrongdoing, saying they're being politically targeted.)
While it's certainly no small chunk of change, Trump's 2020 assets are, as Forbes notes, a far cry from those of other real-estate magnates — and a very far cry from the assets he has claimed in the past.
RELATED: Donald Trump Is Not on Forbes' 400 Richest Americans List for the First Time in 25 Years
Forbes reports that in 1982, Trump's then-attorney Roy Cohn told the magazine: "I am sitting here looking at his current bank statement. It shows he's got more than $500 million in liquid assets, just cash."
For a 1990 Forbes cover story, Trump himself spoke to a reporter for the outlet, claiming: "I'm going to show you cash flow numbers I've never shown anyone before." He then showed the reporter a paper full of numbers "attesting to a wealth of cash and negotiable securities but folds the page so we can't see the next column over."
Balance sheets Trump supplied to potential lenders — some of which have been released in discovery due to various lawsuits — also paint a different picture. Forbes reports a 2004 balance sheet pegged Trump's his liquid assets at about $230 million, while 2011 and 2012 balance sheets submitted to Congress in 2019 by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen showed liquid assets of $259 million and $170 million, respectively.
Spencer Platt/Getty Donald Trump
In terms of net worth, Trump suffered somewhat during the COVID-19 pandemic — so much so that his name name did not appear among Forbes' annual list of the 400 richest Americans in 2021 (for the first time in 25 years).
The magazine previously reported that the real estate magnate's net worth — an estimated $2.5 billion — left him $400 million short of the cutoff to make last year's list.
That analysis echoed a March 2021 assessment by Bloomberg, which found that the former president's net worth stood at about $2.3 billion, having declined by some $700 million in the years since he became president and went on to lose his re-election bid.
Eric Trump — former President Trump's second-oldest son, who took over operations for the Trump Organization alongside older brother Donald Trump Jr. — shot back at Bloomberg in a statement to PEOPLE at the time.
"Bloomberg's valuation is a joke," Eric, 37, said then. "We have the best assets in the world, have extremely low debt relative to our holdings and have [an] incredible strong cash flow."
RELATED: New York Attorney General Claims She Has Evidence of Fraud by Trump, Don Jr. and Ivanka
New York Attorney General James has in recent weeks been increasing pressure on both Trump and his children to cooperate in an investigation into the company finances.
In a statement issued earlier this month, James' office said it filed paperwork to request a judge to force Trump, 75, his son Donald Trump Jr., 44, and daughter Ivanka Trump, 40, to testify.
The family says the probe is baseless and Trump himself has criticized James and a House Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots as going after his kids.
"It's a disgrace, what's going on," Trump told the conservative Washington Examiner last week. "They're using these things to try and get people's minds off how incompetently our country is being run. And they don't care. They'll go after children."
