In an interview on Today on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump was asked why he sold his stocks in June, and why he kept the fact that he had unloaded his account a secret.
Lauer: Why did you sell all your holdings in June?
Trump: Because I felt that I was very much going to be winning and I think that I would have a tremendous—a really, a conflict of interest owning all of those different companies.
That’s a switch. Previously Trump has claimed that the president can't have a conflict of interest.
Lauer: So why not announce it back in June when you were under fire for a lack of financial transparency?
Trump: Oh, I let everybody know. I let everybody know.
“Everybody” apparently means Trump’s brokers. Or perhaps Ivanka, because otherwise everybody simply means nobody.
Trump’s financial disclosure form for 2015 shows him being at the top of an incredible 516 companies as well as having revenue from 168 sources. It notes Trump as having more than $100 million in stock funds and hedge funds (with BlackRock’s Obsidian Fund at the top of the list). That 2015 statement also includes five brokerage accounts with stock in over 280 individual companies.
Trump’s 2016 statement shows ownership in many of the same stocks, but rather than being issued in July, the 2016 statement was put out in May—just one month before Trump says he quietly unloaded all his stock.
There are also hints in the 2016 form that Trump wasn’t simply hush-hush about his actions then: he might not be telling everything now.
Trump’s 2015 form straightforwardly lists his brokerage accounts and the stocks held under each.
But the 2016 form has a little something extra at the end of the list of accounts.
The May 2016 form shows three “family trusts” not present on the 2015 form. In May those forms seem to have been completely populated with relatively small investments in stock funds rather than individual stocks, and it’s unclear whether those funds represented new investments, or movement of funds from Trump’s individual brokerage accounts.
Did Trump actually sell in June the shares in hundreds of companies he listed in May, or did he move these assets into the newly-created “family trusts?” The two forms show that Trump was in the process of moving his money around over the last year, but they’re—conveniently enough—just days too early from letting us know.
They don’t give any clear indication that Trump sold anything at all.
There’s no way to know for sure. Candidates may be required to complete a financial disclosure form, but presidents are not. And while it has been tradition for presidents to release their tax forms, it’s only tradition. Donald Trump already demonstrated that he could get away with an unprecedented level of secrecy in the campaign. Don’t expect that to change.
Trump will almost certainly continue to say things about his finances. The public will have no way of knowing if any of it is true.
Trump will also continue to try and rewrite history, such as saying that he told “everybody” about his stock moves months before he actually mentioned it. Because why not?