Examine Donald Trump’s financial statements and you’ll find he’s in charge of an incredible 516 companies, almost all of them traditional “class-C” corporations or limited liability corporations (LLCs). That’s just the start of the complexity. Some of these corporations own all or part of other corporations on the list. Some of them own all or part of corporations not on the list. Just look at the labyrinth involved in tracking down how Donald Trump owns a single helicopter.
President-elect Donald Trump owns a helicopter in Scotland.
To be more precise, he has a revocable trust that owns 99% of a Delaware limited liability company that owns 99% of another Delaware LLC that owns a Scottish limited company that owns another Scottish company that owns the 26-year-old Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, emblazoned with a red “TRUMP” on the side of its fuselage.
A trust that owns a company, that owns a company, that owns a company that owns a helicopter. That’s one asset down, who knows how many more to go.
As Trump continues to make misleading statements about how he will handle his organization, the truth of the matter is that the public has only a vague idea of what that organization is, what it owns, or who it owes. Some of that comes because Trump has taken advantage of America’s own little corporate Switzerland.
Unlike publicly traded companies, Delaware LLCs don't have to publish any financial information or even disclose the identity of the owner.
Trump’s finances are not just complex, they’re deliberately complex. And deliberately obscure.
None of the 96 LLCs examined by the Journal appear to regularly release audited financial statements. That opacity—compounded by Mr. Trump’s decision to break with decades of precedent by declining to release his tax returns—makes it impossible to gauge the full extent of potential conflicts between his business interests and presidential role.
Trump has built up a convoluted web of companies that allows him to pay no taxes and provide no visibility into his assets or obligations. It makes it impossible to know how any particular policy would affect Trump.
Would driving down the value of the dollar overseas create a gain or loss for Trump? We don’t know. Would Trump benefit if Russia had greater control of areas in Ukraine or the Balkans? We don’t know. How much would Trump make from his tax proposals? We don’t know.
How can we know? We can’t. Trump is under no obligation to provide either his tax returns or a financial statement. Those things are just tradition, and Trump has already demonstrated his disdain for the openness of previous candidates or presidents.
We can’t know if Trump has actually sold all his stocks. We won’t know if Trump actually steps back from his company. We’ll probably never know just how much Trump’s policies are being distorted by the desire to line his own pockets—or pay off a particularly awkward debt.
Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer in President George W. Bush’s White House, said Mr. Trump’s network of LLCs also could conceal loans that haven’t been publicly disclosed. “There may or may not be much more leverage than we know about,” he said.
If one of those debtors would rather be paid in a way other than money, say by having American regulators—or American soldiers—look the other way, odds are we’ll never just how much of our future Donald Trump put up as collateral.