You may or may not be surprised to find out that Donald Trump was not completely honest about his financial status, as it has emerged that he had almost $20M in undisclosed debt when he first ran for president back in 2016!
Donald Trump had millions in unreported debt to a company with ties to North Korea while serving as President. What else might we not know?
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— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) December 6, 2022
Trump’s Hidden Debt
We are only just now finding out that the 76-year-old twice-impeached former president had $19.8M in previously undisclosed debt to a company historically linked to North Korea during his campaign, and continuing shortly after his inauguration. Candidates running for president are formally required to disclose their financial holdings, sources of income, and debt, so that the public can identify any potential conflicts of interest that may arise, and there was no sign of this debt on the forms submitted by Trump.
Technically, Trump and Trump supporters could argue that the debt was owed by Trump’s family business – the Trump Organization – which he famously announced he would not divest from while serving as commander-in-chief.
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Dan Alexander from Forbes reported that "although officials have to list personal loans on their financial disclosures, the law does not require them to include loans to their companies, unless they are personally liable for the loans." This does leave an open question over whether he did personally guarantee these loans, and therefore break the law, however the fact remains that Trump "owned 100% of the entities responsible for the debt," and this would no doubt have affected his public image in the run up to the election.
Who Did Trump Owe Money To?
The $19.8M debt – which was only revealed after New York Attorney General Letitia James obtained documents from the Trump Organization this year – was to Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate that had worked with Trump on a project in New York City. This may not sound so bad, however, once you learn that Daewoo has had links in the past to North Korea (they were the only company allowed to operate a business in the country in the mid-1990s), things become a bit less straightforward. A president owing money to a company linked to North Korea sounds downright shady! Trump obviously knew how this would look, and so efforts were made to swiftly wipe out this debt once he came to office, according to Alexander.
"He seems to have acted with some urgency to wipe the liability off his balance sheet. From 2011 to 2016, the documents show that the balance stayed static at $19.8 million. Paperwork capturing Trump’s financial picture as of June 30, 2017, five months into his presidency, appears to show that the balance had dropped to $4.3M, $15.5M less than it had been a year earlier. Trump got rid of the debt altogether shortly after that."
It is important to remember that this wasn’t a new relationship between Trump and Daewoo – they had been doing business together since 1997 and Daewoo actually used Trump’s name on six properties built in South Korea between 1999 and 2007. Nevertheless, questions will likely be asked as to exactly how this debt was written off and if there were any consequences which followed during Trump’s time in the White House.
I'm only shocked that the amount is as low as $20M. I'm betting this will be only the first such debt to come to light, now that his tax returns are in the hands of investigators.
— Michael J. Sheridan (@MSheridan62) December 5, 2022
Criticism On Social Media
As expected, this latest revelation hasn’t gone down well with Twitter users! "Anyone who thinks that [expletive] wouldn’t have sold the United States out at every possible turn in order to settle his own personal debt is a [expletive] fool," one angry Twitter user wrote. "I'm only shocked that the amount is as low as $20M," quipped another. "I'm betting this will be only the first such debt to come to light, now that his tax returns are in the hands of investigators," they continued, while another speculated, "He used taxpayers' money to pay that debt." "How is this not illegal?" asked another confused Twitter user.
"Um, I'm not defending Trump by any stretch but 'ties to North Korea' is pretty tenuous since Daewoo is a South Korean company and the article states that he'd had business dealings with them for 20 years," someone else wrote, which another Twitter user directly replied to, saying: "All he had to do was disclose it like everyone does."
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