Here’s Where Trump Got Hundreds Of Millions To Build A Golf Empire

Rumors of money laundering have circled Donald Trump’s golf business for years. Forbes uncovered the true source of the funds.

_{By Dan Alexander, Forbes Staff}

Within months of becoming president in 2017, Donald Trump faced questions about the money behind his golf empire. The intrigue started with a comment from a golf writer, who claimed that Trump’s son Eric said his father got all the funding he needed out of Russia. That story, which Eric denied, caught the attention of people scrutinizing Trump’s business, including the founder of the firm that helped produce the Steele dossier, who hinted at possible money laundering in November 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

Journalists swarmed. The Washington Post, New Yorker and New York Times all searched for answers, gawking at the hundreds of millions Trump spent on golf properties without uncovering the source of the funds. The resort investments—especially two acquired in 2014—particularly mystified Trump skeptics, who wondered why he would risk more than $175 million of his own cash on money-losing assets. Politicians in Scotland, home to two Trump golf resorts, called for something known as an Unexplained Wealth Order, intended to expose illicit money. Meanwhile, Forbes conducted its own investigation and, after combing through stacks of documents, believes it solved the mystery.

Much of the financing—roughly $250 million—came from members of Trump’s private clubs, who paid initiation deposits that they could theoretically get back if they tired of the place after 30 years. Unlike bank loans, these deposits came with no interest payments and no mortgage filings, keeping the liabilities both cheap and hidden. More money—over $450 million—landed via a series of windfalls, including loan repayments, tax refunds and property refinancings, that attracted little attention but provided tons of cash.

Trump, who failed to get additional financing from his go-to lender, Deutsche Bank, emptied his pockets, deploying almost all of his stockpile as he simultaneously remade the European golf resorts and bankrolled a presidential campaign. Although his member-financing now looks brilliant, his cash bets seem reckless, depleting Trump’s liquidity to such an extent that, after the 2016 election, he apparently had to secure an emergency loan, which he also kept under wraps. Trump survived, though, and today his golf-and-club portfolio is the fastest-growing part of his real-estate empire, worth an estimated $1 billion.

The Republican nominee, whose representatives did not respond to a list of questions about this story, opened his first club in 1995, when he converted Mar-a-Lago from a private mansion to a bustling social club. Records suggest that he collected membership deposits from the outset, ultimately accumulating about $40 million, or more than four times the $8 million he originally spent on the 18-acre property in Palm Beach, Florida. Next, he built a golf course, finding a patch of ground 15 minutes to the west of Mar-a-Lago and transforming into the Trump International Golf Club. It opened in 1999, and Trump generated over $40 million of deposits at the club.

Closer to his New York home, he purchased properties in Westchester County and Bedminster, New Jersey, opening courses in both locations and collecting more than $80 million of membership deposits. Trump also expanded his budding empire to southern California, reportedly paying $27 million for a landslide-damaged course, financing the purchase with a $20 million loan. He ended up generating more than $75 million of additional cash by selling residential lots around the course, according to an analysis of property records. It was the final deal in this initial burst of buying, leaving Trump with five properties and more than $150 million of membership liabilities.

Eventually, the golf industry started to sour on the concept of membership financing. Although investors liked taking deposits to raise money for themselves, they were less excited about taking on someone else’s liabilities, making it difficult to sell clubs with significant deposits on their balance sheets. While others backed away, Trump doubled down with another string of purchases. In September 2008, evidently flush with cash after selling a Florida mansion to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, Trump bought a golf club in Colts Neck, New Jersey for $28 million, plus the assumption of $12 million in membership liabilities. Days later, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, sending the already-faltering economy into a tailspin. Trump kept hunting. In 2009, he bought three properties for roughly $39 million, chipping in $11 million of his own cash, borrowing $10 million from a bank and assuming $18 million of other people’s membership liabilities.

One benefit of taking on such liabilities: Trump did not have to pay them back right away, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller, of all people, appears to have found out personally. Seven years before he became FBI director in 2001, Mueller paid an initial membership fee at Virginia’s Lowes Island Club. Trump bought in 2009 and renamed Trump National Golf Club. Mueller resigned in 2011, writing a letter to see whether he could get back some of his initiation fee. The controller of the club responded that he would put Mueller’s name on a waitlist. As Mueller explained in a footnote buried inside his report on Russian interference, he had not heard anything from the club eight years later.

Trump eventually pushed the limits too far. In 2012, he bought a course in Jupiter, Florida, assuming $41 million of membership liabilities. Shortly after the closing, he sent a letter to the existing members, telling those who were asking for their money back that they weren’t welcome at the club anymore, according to court documents. A couple of months after that, Trump started charging them dues anyway. Some members banded together and sued Trump’s club, which ultimately had to pay back the membership deposits, with interest.

Also in 2012, Trump bought a course outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, agreeing to pay $3 million in cash and assume $4.1 million of membership liabilities, a pittance for Trump. Yet it was at this course, in 2013, that golf writer James Dodson asked the question that launched a yearslong guessing game: “What are you using to pay for these courses?” Trump responded in a way that made Dodson ask more questions. “He just sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million,” Dodson recalled in a 2017 interview with Boston’s NPR station. Trump actually had access to more than $100 million—from membership deposits, the home he sold to Rybolovlev and other deals.

But Dodson pressed on. “So when I got into the cart with Eric, as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks—because of the recession, the Great Recession—have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.”

Eric, who called Dodson’s story “fabricated,” could have theoretically been referring to the Rybolovlev sale, or his father’s trip to Moscow around the time of the conversation, which generated $6 million in licensing fees via another Russian billionaire, Aras Agalarov. But when Dodson repeated the story amid the Russia-obsessed days of 2017, neither of those fairly plausible explanations stopped the spread of more far-flung theories.

While investigators, lawmakers and journalists wondered where Trump could have possibly come up with all his cash, the answers hid in bank records. Documents released in Trump’s fraud litigation with New York State show that in 2010, he received $85 million from an unknown debtor. Then, in 2010 and 2011, he got another $92 million of “non-operating” income, which bank records describe as including “tax refunds, insurance settlements, gains on sale and other one-time type items.” That appears to line up with a $73 million tax refund that, according to the New York Times, Trump started claiming in 2010, prompting a yearslong battle with the Internal Revenue Service.

The influx of liquidity put Trump in a strong position to gamble on golf again, this time with more of his own money. He bought Trump National Doral, a golf resort in Miami, for $150 million in June 2012, borrowing $125 million from Deutsche Bank. Cash kept coming from other parts of his empire, too. Trump refinanced Trump Tower in August 2012, replacing a $27 million loan with a $100 million one and collecting about $70 million in the process. A couple of months later, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, a property in which Trump held a 30% stake, also secured new financing, kicking off about $100 million to Trump. By mid-2013, Trump had $339 million in cash listed on his balance sheet—and an itch to spend it.

In 2014, he bought Scotland’s famed Turnberry, host of four British Opens, for $65 million and spent another $20 million on a property in Doonbeg, Ireland. He appears to have had the liquidity to cover both, but bank records show $50 million of cash flowing in from “debt refinancing” around the same time. Forbes could not figure out what Trump refinanced; a financial disclosure filed in 2015 offers no indication of loans that could have produced $50 million of cash.

Regardless, Trump dumped over $30 million into Doonbeg and Turnberry in 2015, then more than $40 million in 2016. Meanwhile, a smaller property in Aberdeenshire, Scotland continued to bleed money, working its way to about $10 million of losses by 2016. Those weren’t his only expenses. Trump put more than $40 million into his Washington, D.C. hotel and spent another $66 million running for president. Amid this spending spree, Ivanka Trump got in touch with her contact at Deutsche Bank, which was already financing the D.C. hotel deal, about another $50 million. A different Trump Organization executive said the proceeds would fund construction at Turnberry. Deutsche, adamant that no funds flowed to the presidential campaign, never handed over the cash.

Then money got tight, apparently causing liquidity concerns. Deutsche’s loan against the D.C. hotel required Trump to maintain at least $50 million while he was redeveloping the property. Days after the 2016 election, the president-elect agreed to settle fraud litigation involving Trump University for $25 million. The man in charge of Trump’s money, Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, started running numbers, according to court documents and testimony. He ended up turning to a friendly lender, Ladder Capital, where his son Jack worked. In sworn testimony, Jack explained that his firm wrote a short-term loan of $25 million to help Trump keep his head above water. Allen Weisselberg, who committed perjury during Trump’s fraud trial, could not quite bring himself to say that the Trump Organization took on the loan because of cash concerns. “It’s possible,” he testified.

The wild spending stopped after Trump entered the White House in January 2017, though rumors ramped up about how he could have financed the golf empire. News outlets across the country tried to solve the riddle, but none ever did, missing the existence of the membership liabilities and the extent of the windfalls. Meanwhile, Eric Trump and his brother, Don Jr., suddenly in charge of their father’s business, stemmed the bleeding inside the Trump Organization by slashing development expenses while selling off real estate. Business improved, particularly in 2021, as the country emerged from the pandemic. Amid Trump’s current presidential run, scrutiny of his funding sources continues, with a member of the Scottish parliament calling for an investigation as recently as this month.

The irony is that Trump’s financing techniques eventually left him with very little risk in his golf business. Now, as more members are finally able to refund their deposits about 30 years after Trump opened Mar-a-Lago, his clubs make more than enough to pay back the liabilities. Trump’s latest financial disclosure indicates that the only bank debt still around is a loan against Trump National Doral, which requires an estimated $6 million of interest payments a year, little concern for a property that appears to be producing about $25 million of operating income annually. Since Trump fronted the cash for the European golf resorts, he should not have much to worry about at those properties, especially since two of them—Doonbeg and Turnberry—are, finally, eking out operating profits.

The end result? Trump’s club and golf business is today the least likely segment in his portfolio to need a cash injection from, say, a nefarious foreign actor.

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