As a shock to no one ever, Donald Trump is inflating his Scottish golf resorts’ value by $165 million, possibly violating federal laws that are punishable by jail time, according to a scoop by the Huffington Post. This isn’t too surprising coming from an alleged billionaire who has filed for bankruptcy on numerous occasions and has also failed to disclose his tax returns even though that was one of his campaign promises.
Trump told British authorities that the properties are a combined $65 million in the red — however, the former reality show star’s U.S. disclosures say they’re worth at least $100 million.
According to the report:
Trump claimed in his 2018 U.S. filing that his Turnberry and Aberdeen resorts were each worth more than $50 million. For that same time period, he filed balance sheets with the United Kingdom government showing that their combined debt exceeded their assets by 47.9 million British pounds ― the equivalent of $64.8 million at the exchange rate on Dec. 31, 2017, the date of the last U.K. filing available.”
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The president’s (and you see how he was the president during this period of time, right?) 2018 “public financial disclosure” filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics also claims that the aforementioned resorts earned him “income” of $23.8 million. Trump’s filings with the U.K. Companies House office in Edinburgh for that period showed the resorts had actually lost 4.6 million pounds ― equal to $6.3 million, according to the report.
And that’s what’s called inflating your worth.
Trump also managed to fail to disclose $199.5 million in loans the president made to those resorts: $54.9 million from him personally to Trump International, Scotland in Aberdeenshire; $144.6 million from his trust to Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire, HuffPo reports.
That’s really interesting since Trump has claimed recently that he doesn’t “need money.” That was to counter a report saying anti-money laundering specialists with Deutsche Bank flagged transactions involving himself and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
“The numbers don’t appear to add up,” said Virginia Canter, an ethics law expert with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Actually, nothing with Trump seems to add up, but he could clear up this matter by disclosing his taxes, as promised.
If someone knowingly provided false or incomplete information on that form, it would be in violation of the Ethics in Government Act punishable by up to a year in jail.
Neighbors of Trump’s Scottish golf course have no love for the U.S. ‘president.’ Trump opened the links on near Aberdeen in 2012 after promising to create 6,000 jobs and vowed to invest £1 billion. But, as of April, Trump’s company has only spent around £100 million on the course — known as Trump International Golf Links — and employed around 650 temporary and permanent staff, and that’s a far cry from 6,000 jobs. It’s almost as if this Trump guy isn’t on the up and up.
Trump has a long history of lying about his wealth, but conservatives thought that giving a reality show star the keys to the White House would be a nifty idea.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
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