While President Donald Trump just “had the most lucrative year of his life,” his immediate family, says Forbes, made even more money.
“Percentage-wise, members of his immediate family, including sons Eric, Don Jr. and Barron, did even better,” Forbes says.
And while “It’s not that the Trumps are the first to leverage the presidency for profit, Forbes says, pointing to Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy and Hunter Biden, “no first family has used the office to make as much money as Donald Trump’s.”
This fortune, Forbes explains, runs in the hundreds of millions of dollars and comes primarily from crypto.
“Family members who never had significant fortunes of their own — Eric, Don Jr., Barron and Melania — have accumulated tens, then hundreds of millions of dollars,” Forbes says.
“All told, the family (including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner) is now worth an estimated $10 billion, having nearly doubled its net worth since last year’s election."
As for the president himself, Forbes reports, "Trump’s fortune jumped $3 billion in one year," with "His move into crypto account[ing] for $2 billion of that." His total networth is now $7.3 billion. His wife Melania, they say, is now worth over $20 million.
Eric Trump has "made more money on crypto than any of his siblings," with a net worth of $750 million, up from $40 million last year, while brother Donald Jr., " a big player in the anti-woke economy," has seen his fortune rise from an estimated $50 million last year to $500 million today, according to Forbes.
Trump's youngest son, Barron, a 19 year-old college sophomore, is now worth $150 million and, says Forbes, and "has pocketed an estimated $80 million from token sales and still holds an estimated 2.3 billion locked-up tokens, which Forbes heavily discounts because they can’t yet be traded."
But it's Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who have profited the most next to the president, worth $100 million and $1 billion respectively.
"Thanks in part to Affinity’s war chest, plus his 20 percent stake (worth $560 million) in his family’s real estate firm, Kushner Companies, Kushner is now a billionaire," Forbes says.
As for the legality or lack thereof, The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick told NPR in August, "In general, the remedy that our political system requires of elected officials is that they disclose their outside businesses. And in Trump's defense, he certainly discloses it."