The issues with covering Trump and his net worth

Timothy O’Brien of Bloomberg View, who wrote a book about Donald Trump, writes about the difficulties in covering the net worth of the Republican presidential candidate’s net worth, which Trump pegged at $10 billion.

O’Brien writes, “But Donald had no idea how hard it was to get this right! On a single day in August 2004, he told me his net worth was $4 billion to $5 billion, then revised that later the same day to $1.7 billion. Forbes said at the time he was worth $2.6 billion. A year later Donald told me he was worth $5 billion to $6 billion, but a brochure left on my nightstand at his Palm Beach resort said he was worth $9.5 billion. When I interviewed Donald’s chief financial officer in a Trump Organization conference room in 2005 to discuss the range of numbers, the figure shared with me was $5 billion, not $6 billion. ‘I’m going to go to my office and find that other billion,’ the CFO advised.

“My sources at the time – all of whom had worked closely with Donald and had direct knowledge of his finances – believed that his net worth was $150 million to $250 million. Donald attributed those figures to naysayers.

“‘You can go ahead and speak to guys who have four-hundred-pound wives at home who are jealous of me,’ he told me, ‘but the guys who really know me know I’m a great builder.’

“When the net worth confusion appeared in my book, Donald sued, saying that low-balling his riches had damaged his reputation. My attorneys proceeded to get Donald’s tax, bank and property records. We stood our ground, and the suit was dismissed in 2009. Donald appealed, and in 2011 an appellate court affirmed the earlier ruling.”

Read more here.