Robert Mueller
For decades Donald Trump sought a deal in Russia, a country he once reportedly heralded as “one of the hottest places in the world for investment.” A new filing from special counsel Robert Mueller suggests just how lucrative a move into Moscow might have been for the Trump Organization.
“If the project was completed,” Mueller, who is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, wrote in a court filing released Friday, “the company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues.”
The deal never came to fruition. But hundreds of millions would have been a massive haul, even for a man worth an estimated $3.1 billion. Most of Trump’s wealth is tied up in skyscrapers, golf courses and other real estate projects that are hard to sell. Forbes estimates that the president only has about $150 million worth of cash and other liquid assets.
Trump Tower, the president’s most famous building, is worth an estimated $323 million before debt. It took in an estimated $33 million in revenue in 2017. But running a building means paying for taxes, utilities, insurance and maintenance. So Trump Tower’s 2017 profits, measured in net operating income, were just $13.9 million.
The president’s licensing business, however, does not have the same big overhead expenses, meaning a new tower in Moscow could have presumably been a cash cow. Sure, striking such a deal might require a few flights and some legal fees, but there don’t seem to be many hard costs to letting someone else use your name. The proposed deal, the details of which remain unclear, could theoretically have also included an agreement for Trump to manage the property or given him a cut of condo sales in the building, potentially worth millions of dollars.
“I was running my business while I was campaigning,” Trump said in late November. “There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?”
Neither the Trump Organization nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment from Forbes. “The government’s filings in Mr. Cohen’s case tell us nothing of value that wasn’t already known,” said the president’s spokesperson Sarah Sanders, according to a White House pool report.
If Mueller is right, and the deal could have yielded “hundreds of millions,” that would mean a single Moscow deal may have brought in more money than the president’s entire annual rent roll, which generates an estimated $175 million for the Trump Organization. And it would certainly seem to be enough to cover the $66 million Trump personally put into his 2016 presidential campaign.
