President Donald Trump has purchased at least $103 million worth of corporate and municipal bonds since he took office in January, according to new filings from the Office of Government Ethics.
The documents, released late Tuesday, show that Trump began the bond-buying spree one day after he was sworn in on Jan. 20 and that it includes debt sold by companies, local governments and entities that could be directly affected by his sweeping agenda. All told, Trump made about 690 purchases from Jan. 21 through Aug. 1.
The active trading by a president of the United States is unprecedented, and it puts Trump in a direct position to benefit — or lose out — if any of the entities that own the bonds he has purchased succeed or fail. It’s also another example of Trump’s pursuing business endeavors and transactions to increase his wealth in office.
"Ultimately, the president is not involved in these transactions," a senior administration official told NBC News. "They’re managed completely independently of him."
On Jan. 21, Trump purchased a bond belonging to the New York Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. A week later, he purchased another handful of bonds over consecutive days. Those bonds belong to various municipal hospital facilities, airports, regional development funds and school districts from Florida to Alaska.
The filings do not provide exact purchase amounts but instead show a broad dollar range for each transaction. The filings did not show any sales by Trump.
Trump’s buying continued at a steady clip for months, including bonds from megabanks Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Citigroup worth at least $100,000 apiece.
Trump’s direct ownership of bonds from three of the country’s banking giants also comes as he considers an eventual replacement of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and weeks after he nominated one of his top aides, Stephen Miran, to a seat on the Fed’s board. The Fed can directly affect a bank’s profit by lowering or raising interest rates, along with myriad regulatory actions. As a Fed governor, Miran would have a direct say in many of those actions.
Trump purchases also included at least $500,000 of bonds apiece from chipmaker Qualcomm, mobile provider T-Mobile USA, Home Depot and UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest private health insurance company.
The filings also show that Trump bought at least $250,001 of Meta’s bonds. CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended Trump’s inauguration and donated $1 million to the event.
Likewise, Trump’s ownership in hundreds of municipal bonds puts him in line to benefit when those municipal entities pay back the debt, and it comes when the administration has been tightly controlling the distribution of funds from the federal government to local and regional governments.
Trump’s net worth is around $5.5 billion, according to the Forbes Billionaires List, up a staggering $3.2 billion since last year.
Typically, presidents divest their financial assets before or shortly after they enter office, but Trump has rejected that precedent and retained most of his empire since his first term.
