The White House released financial information for almost 200 Trump administration staff members late tonight. Taken as a whole, the disclosures paint a picture of a wealthy group that, despite the populist leanings of Donald Trump’s campaign, is firmly in the top 1% of Americans when it comes to income and assets.
There is a link on the White House website where anyone can request financial information for an employee by name (president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence are excluded) and then receive that information hours later by email. But a number of news outlets started posting the documents they had received directly online tonight. BuzzFeed’s are here, the New York Times’s here, and ProPublica’s are here. (The previous White House also made financial disclosures available by request only).
The documents don’t necessarily show what the individuals are worth now, just what they were worth when they entered the White House, and before they sold off any assets as recommended by the Office of Government Ethics.
Senior counselor to the president Stephen Bannon is one of the standouts. Bannon held assets worth between $8.2 million and $40.5 million when he entered the White House, most of it in Bannon Strategic Advisors, his consultancy, which paid him $493,836 last year.
He has four outstanding mortgages, worth between $1.1 million and $2.25 million, and took out a 3.5% interest rate loan from Cambridge Analytica worth between $50,000 and $100,000:
Much of Bannon’s income came from Cambridge Analytica, too. The data firm, which is owned by hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, and is credited with helping Trump win the 2016 election, paid him $125,333 last year, and Bannon is selling a stake in the firm. Glittering Steel, a production company Bannon chairs which at one point counted disgraced blogger Milo Yiannopoulos among its employees, paid him $167,500 last year.
Another document released tonight indicates that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor, held positions in 267 organizations when he entered the White House. He and his wife Ivanka Trump had assets valued between $240 million and $741 million.