00:00 Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes breaking news. Joining me now is my colleague,
00:07 Forbes staff writer, Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for joining me.
00:10 Thanks for having me, Brittany.
00:13 Of course, over the past year, you along with your other colleague, Kyle Mullins, and I
00:18 have been talking about former President Donald Trump's wealth, his legal challenges, and
00:23 how that is impacting his fortune. You posed this question for Forbes recently, why Trump
00:29 will need a lot more than 540 million dollars. So first, can you remind us how we got to
00:34 the 540 million dollars number in the first place?
00:38 Sure. That is the result of two lawsuits, one of which was filed by E. Jean Carroll
00:44 regarding the sexual assault. And that was she won eighty three point three million dollars.
00:50 I think it was in that suit. The remainder comes from the New York attorney general's
00:54 civil civil fraud suit against the former president.
00:57 Clearly, this is an expensive problem when you're talking about anything that costs over
01:02 half a billion dollars. Can he afford it?
01:07 It's going to be tight. You know, I think he can move some things around, but and maybe
01:12 sell some things or take out some loans somehow. There's the possibility of him being able
01:17 to offload some of the shares that he has in some of his ownership stake rather in Trump
01:22 media after that merger goes through. But it's it's not going to be life as usual for
01:27 the former president.
01:29 You wrote this in your piece for Forbes, quote, he's still going to be scrambling for cash
01:34 for years to come. Why is that?
01:36 Well, on top of the five hundred forty million dollars that he owes and fines, he has another
01:42 seven hundred and eighty million dollars in loans coming due next five years. So that
01:47 would take us till the end of the next presidential term.
01:52 Huge amount of numbers, short span of time. Let's break it down a little further. Who
01:56 does he owe the money to? What are these properties? Break it down for us.
02:01 Sure. It's a variety of banks for the most part. The first one is due in July. So not
02:08 all that much time. It's twelve million dollars for Trump Plaza, which is not to be confused
02:13 with the Trump Plaza casino that went under and went bankrupt or the Plaza Hotel that
02:18 Trump owns that also went bankrupt. This rather is a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
02:24 And what property does he owe the most to?
02:28 There are two properties that he is a minority owner to, along with a group called Vornado.
02:36 And they are have pretty heavily leveraged on one of them out in San Francisco. He owed
02:42 his share of their debt is three hundred sixty million and another one in New York. His share
02:46 of the debt is two hundred and eighty four million. And he's a little bit handcuffed
02:50 in these because he is largely needs to follow on whatever Vornado's wishes are, has to how
02:57 to handle that debt. So that's that's not something he has a lot of flexibility with.
03:01 He has some properties in New York, but what other areas are these properties in?
03:06 Well, you've got the New York City, you've got the one I just mentioned in California.
03:12 You have Durao, the golf course down in Miami, and you also have Seven Springs, which is
03:17 the estates that he owns in upstate New York.
03:22 Who are the creditors or lenders? Are they all the same bank? What does that look like?
03:27 Well, it gets a little complicated here because a lot of these loans were collateralized in
03:33 terms of after they were made, they were chopped up, packaged together with other mortgages
03:38 and sold off to investors. So in some instances, it appears that it's, you know, if something
03:43 were if we were to default on these, it would be the individual investors who would be on
03:48 the hook. Some of the loans originated with the latter capital. That is a Jack Weisselberg,
03:55 the son of Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump CFO who recently pleaded guilty to perjury.
04:01 His son worked there at the time. You know, famously, we're not seeing Deutsche Bank in
04:05 any of these. That's obviously one of the big lenders that comes to mind when people
04:09 think Trump. But they have washed their hands of him by this point.
04:13 Talk about that a little bit for us. Refresh our minds. Why is Deutsche Bank top of mind
04:18 when people think about Trump?
04:21 They famously loaned him a lot of money, and that was even after he had stiffed them and
04:25 sued them. And then they continued to lend money to him and gave him favorable rates
04:29 and a favorable treatment. You know, his personal banker there really seemed to go out of her
04:33 way to argue that the bank should continue to do business with Trump. And, you know,
04:38 at the end, it didn't seem to be like a great business decision on their part. And it certainly
04:42 wasn't great for their reputation either.
04:45 So are you surprised that Deutsche Bank isn't listed here when you lay out his debt like
04:49 this?
04:50 No, it was just a little bit of a reminder as I was going through this reporting this
04:55 article out when I saw their name as one of the previous lenders for for Durao before
05:02 he renegotiated that mortgage that they popped up. They were like, oh, yeah, Deutsche Bank.
05:08 I remember them. So it was just kind of a little flash from the past. In that case,
05:12 Durao and Trump Tower are both been refinanced two years ago with Axos Bank, which started
05:19 off with the name something along the lines of the Bank of the Internet. So that's that's
05:23 who he's been doing business with most recently.
05:26 And when does he have to pay? I know you said one payment starts in July. What does that
05:31 schedule look like?
05:33 So the first payment is, yes, in July. And it's twelve million dollars. So it's either
05:37 pay or refinance or come up with some other way to satisfy that debt. Then he has another
05:42 year where he's going to owe one hundred twenty one million dollars on his 40 Wall Street
05:48 bill business, our building. And then the last one, I mean, they go all the way out
05:51 to twenty forty eight, which is one of his properties in Palm Beach residence. So, you
05:57 know, at that point, Donald Trump would be one hundred and two when that mortgage comes
06:00 due. So I don't suspect he's really worried to move to worry about it.
06:06 When you added this up, you got the number seven hundred and eighty million dollars.
06:10 How is he going to afford this?
06:13 Well, that's and that's just in the next five years. Overall, it totals a billion dollars.
06:18 He's been in this hole before. We ran an article previously about how he had all this debt
06:22 coming due shortly after he left office and he took care of it. You know, he was able
06:28 to get some money from selling the D.C. hotel, able to refinance some buildings. So, I mean,
06:34 that's probably what he's looking to. We reached out. They did not respond to our request
06:39 for comment in your reporting. And when you laid out his debt in this way, were there
06:44 any trends that stood out to you?
06:48 You know, the fact that a few of them have been collateralized, that's nothing on his
06:51 part. That was the decision of the lenders to do that. So it was interesting seeing a
06:55 few of those chopped up. The reliance on Axios Bank for his last two for Trump Tower and
07:02 Durao, which is a bank that's not all that widely known. You know, certainly not up there
07:07 with Deutsche Bank or JP Morgan Chase, who had also done business with him previously.
07:12 And their CEO, as we reported a couple of years back, had been a Republican donor, even
07:17 donating money to Trump's reelection efforts.
07:21 When you're laying this all out and you're seeing debt reach a billion dollars, did anything
07:25 surprise you?
07:28 Not really. Trump has called himself in the past the king of debt. It hasn't really been
07:33 true for a while. But the fact that he is this leveraged isn't that much. Isn't that
07:37 too surprising? We have his net net worth. I think it's like two point six billion dollars.
07:41 So it makes sense that he would have a substantial amount of debt, you know, leveraging his his
07:47 real estate empire.
07:49 Was he proud of being called the king of debt? That doesn't exactly sound like a compliment
07:53 to bestow on oneself.
07:55 Well, he he called himself that. And I can't imagine Donald Trump doing anything but complimenting
08:01 himself. So, yes, I imagine he took it as a compliment.
08:05 When it comes to Donald Trump, his legal challenges and the finances surrounding them. What's
08:10 next on your radar? What should we be looking out for?
08:13 I'm really interested in the true social merger. That is the social media company, their social
08:19 media platform that he founded. It's owned by Trump Media. And they have a merger that's
08:24 been going through with a company called Digital World Acquisition Corp. And that that merger
08:29 has been going. They've been trying to get that through for over a year. But the vote
08:32 on that, the SEC recently gave OK for the go ahead and shareholders are voting on that,
08:37 which is most likely going to be a yes.
08:39 So I think we're going to see that in a few months. The former president has a substantial
08:44 share in what the resulting company would be, although it sounds like he's tied up and
08:48 not going to be able to offload those shares for a year. But there might be a way he could
08:52 do it if the board of directors approve. So I think that's one of the biggest things we're
08:55 looking at in the near future regarding Trump's finances.
08:58 Well, you and I talked about the truth social merger before. I'm sure we will talk about
09:03 it again. Zach Everson, per usual. Thank you so much for joining me.
09:08 Thanks for having me, Brittany.
09:09 Thanks, Brittany.
09:10 Thanks, Zach.
09:11 Thanks, Brittany.
09:11 Thanks, Brittany.
09:12 Thanks, Zach.
09:13 Thanks, Brittany.
09:13 Thanks, Zach.
09:14 Thanks, Brittany.
09:14 Thanks, Zach.
09:15 Thanks, Brittany.
09:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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