The former president’s fortune has swelled by billions of dollars this year, as mom-and-pop investors bet big on his super-small social media business.
AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps
In March, Donald Trump was facing a cash crunch so severe that he called on his supporters to “chip in” and help him save Trump Tower from seizure. But after a bond reduction in his New York fraud case, some help from a friendly fellow billionaire and the stock market debut of his social media company, he has some breathing room—enough that he seems to have dipped into his cash reserves to pay off a $12 million loan on an Upper East Side property.
Trump doesn’t actually own most of the real estate in Trump Plaza, a 36-story mixed-use development four blocks from Central Park. Instead, he controls the retail space, parking garage and two brownstones through a leasehold, which allows him to operate the property until 2083 but requires him to pay rent to the landowners. In June 2014, Trump took out a $15 million mortgage on his asset from Ladder Capital, a publicly traded lender that employed the son of Trump’s former chief financial officer, the now-jailed Allen Weisselberg.
Trump’s loan was set to mature on July 6, 2024, meaning he’d have to cough up whatever principal was left at that point in a lump sum. Records indicate the loan had about $12 million outstanding as of March. At that time, Trump had just been handed a fraud judgment of upwards of $450 million, bringing his legal penalties to more than $540 million, and his lawyers were protesting in court that he could not possibly pay the full amount without a “fire sale” of his real estate assets.
But in April—after an appeals court lowered his bond amount to $175 million pending his appeal of the case, California auto services billionaire Don Hankey helped him cover the bond and Truth Social proved to be a hit with public investors—the loan’s balance suddenly dropped to zero, suggesting the former president paid it all off, either with his own cash or another loan.
The move, which has not been previously reported, does not mean that all is well at Trump Plaza. The property has seen some tenant turnover in recent years: When American Apparel went bankrupt, the Trump Organization filled its anchor location with a nut shop. A GNC turned into an eyeglasses store.
The property’s financials have been inconsistent as well. When Trump took out the loan, Trump Plaza was throwing off about $1.4 million a year in average profit. That figure grew through 2016, when profits peaked at over $2.2 million, then fell to around $1.7 million for most of Trump’s presidency. Some self-dealing helped bolster the business a tad—Trump’s campaign funneled almost $240,000 to Trump Plaza for “rent” between 2015 and 2019, according to FEC records, though visits to the site in 2018 showed found little sign of a campaign presence there. Since the pandemic, profits have only broken $1.5 million once, in 2022.
There’s more uncertainty on the horizon. Trump has been paying a flat $1.35 million of rent in accordance with his ground lease, but this year, that payment was set to change to 8% of the whole parcel’s appraised value, potentially increasing Trump’s expenses and cutting into his profits. At least he no longer has to worry about the old loan.
With additional reporting by Dan Alexander and Giacomo Tognini.