Beyond The $1 Million Loan From His Father, Donald Trump Used His Family’s Wealth As A “Backstop” During Hard Financial Times, Including An Illegal $3.5 Million Loan From His Father. “Wherever the truth lies, it's clear that Trump got more than a $1 million loan (paid back with interest) from his father. He got control of his company and, ultimately, a large inheritance (although the where, when and how much on this is murky). And when he was in financial trouble in the early 1990s — being dropped from the Forbes 400 in 1990 — he had his family's wealth as a backstop. Update: So much so that, as our Glenn Kessler pointed out, Fred Trump bought $3.5 million in Trump Castle Casino Resort chips, which he never used to bet. (The purchase was determined to be illegal; the casino had to pay a fine.)” [New York Times, 10/26/15] TRUMP DESCRIBED HIS $9.6 MILLION INHERITANCE AS “A VERY SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY.” 2007: During A Deposition, Donald Trump Admitted To Taking $9.6 Million From His Father’s Estate, Which Trump Characterized As A Loan, For “A Very Small Amount Of Money.” “In a 2007 deposition, the Donald admitted to taking about $9.6 million from his father’s estate, calling the sum ‘a very small amount of money.’ Trump was being deposed by the lawyer of journalist Timothy L. O’Brien, who Trump sued for defamation after the writer estimated in his 2005 book TrumpNation that Trump’s net worth was a mere $150 to $250 million, compared to Donald’s own $6 billion personal valuation. Trump was asked in the December 2007 deposition if he had ever borrowed money from the deceased Fred Trump’s estate. ‘I think a small amount a long time ago,’ Donald Trump replied. ‘I think it was like in the $9 million range.’ Asked when this happened, Trump said, ‘I don’t know. Years ago.’” [BuzzFeed, 11/515] • Donald Trump Would Have Made More Money By Simply Investing His 8-Figure Inheritance In A Mutual Fund Indexed To The Stock Market Than He Made Through His Real Estate And Other Business Ventures. “As ‘really rich’ as Donald Trump is today, he might have been even richer if, instead of dabbling in skyscrapers and casinos, he’d simply taken his eight-figure inheritance decades ago and sunk it into the stock market. Had the celebrity businessman and Republican presidential candidate invested his eventual share of father’s real estate company into a mutual fund of S&P 500 stocks in 1974, it would be worth nearly $3 billion today, thanks to the market’s performance over the past four decades. If he’d invested the $200 million that Forbes magazine determined he was worth in 1982 into that index fund, it would have grown to more than $8 billion today.” [National Journal, 9/2/15] DODGING PERSONAL BANKRUPTCY TRUMP NARROWLY AVOIDED PERSONAL BANKRUPTCY Donald Trump Took Two Of The Trump Casinos Public In 1995 And 1996, Enabling Him To Unload Personal Debt Onto The New Company. “In a tribute to the sucker-born-every-minute theorem, Donald managed to take two of the Trump casinos public in 1995 and 1996, at a time when he was unable to make his bank payments and was heading toward personal bankruptcy. The stock sales allowed Donald to buy the casinos back from the banks and to unload huge amounts of debt. The offering also yanked Donald out of the financial graveyard and left him with a 25 percent stake in a company he once owned entirely. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts traded at $14 a share initially and, along with a fresh bond offering, the new company raised about $295 million.” [New York Times, 10/23/05] Confidential Page 212