Trump reports hundreds of millions in income
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President Trump reported hundreds of millions of dollars in income Friday in financial disclosure forms that shed more light on his vast business holdings.
At his golf courses alone, Trump reported $288 million in income in the past year. That includes $19.8 million from his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he has spent some weekends as president.
Trump reported $37.2 million in income in the past year from Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida resort where Trump hosted the president of China and ordered missile strikes against Syria. The club has doubled its membership fee in the past year.
The Mar-a-Lago income figure was $7.4 million higher than on his previous financial disclosure filing, in May 2016.
Trump reported $19.7 million in income through mid-April at his luxury Washington hotel, which has been a center of concerns about conflict of interest because of the possibility that foreign government can curry favor with the president by booking rooms there. The hotel opened in September.
The president reported up to $7 million in book royalties, including $1 million to $5 million from his book "Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America." He reported nearly $11 million from the Miss Universe pageant and an $84,000 pension from the Screen Actors Guild.
Related: Read the full disclosure report
Trump has said that he sold all his stock holdings in June 2016 to avoid conflicts of interest. He later said he did so because it was improper to own stocks "when I'm making deals for this country that maybe will affect one company positively and one company negatively."
The disclosure form appeared to confirm that he had sold those stock holdings. It did include income from capital gains and dividends, presumably before the stock sales.
The form, released by the Office of Government Ethics, reflects the president's investments, other assets, income, retirement accounts and other holdings. It is different from a federal tax return, which Trump has refused to make public and which would reveal much more about his business entanglements.
Federal law did not require Trump to file a new financial disclosure until next year, said Ken Gross, a Washington lawyer who has advised business executives and political appointees on finances and ethics.
"It's particularly important that he made the voluntary filing in view of the fact we don't have tax returns," Gross said.
Trump last released information about his finances in May 2016, as a candidate. It showed Trump was worth at least $1 billion.
Trump refused to sell his business holdings as president, as experts in government ethics urged him to do. Instead, he transferred them into a trust in his name. Any business profits will ultimately accrue to him when he leaves office.
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