Washington: The White House released financial disclosures for many of its senior officials Friday — a group of some of the wealthiest people ever to join a presidential administration.
The documents provide a snapshot of what the employees' finances looked like when they joined government service in January, but they do not give a full account of how those people are disentangling from business assets that could pose possible conflicts of interest.
President Donald Trump, a billionaire New York businessman, and Vice President Mike Pence, the former Indiana governor, are not legally required to file new financial disclosures until next year. Here are some findings from The Associated Press review of thousands of pages of documents:
JARED KUSHNER AND IVANKA TRUMP
Kushner, the president's senior adviser, and Ivanka Trump, Kushner's wife and the president's daughter, resigned from all of their business entities and sold off 58 assets. But the couple held onto much of what they have built into a global and real estate-focused empire. The documents show that have at least $240 million in assets.
Kushner began selling off the most problematic pieces of his portfolio shortly after Trump won the election, and some of those business deals predate what is required to be captured in the financial disclosure forms. For example, Kushner sold his stake in a Manhattan skyscraper to a trust his mother oversees. Kushner organized much of his holdings into trusts for which he is the sole primary beneficiary.
GARY COHN
One of the wealthiest members of the Trump administration — aside from the president himself — is Gary Cohn, who left a top position at Goldman Sachs to become Trump's chief economic adviser. His financial disclosure shows he received at least $40 million in income from Goldman Sachs-related dividends, interest, salary and bonuses, about half of which was in some form of stock compensation.
His investments range from prestigious venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz to self-storages units in Ohio. Cohn also reported more than $1 million in income from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China — something the White House has said he is in the process of divesting along with his Goldman holdings.
STEVE BANNON
Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, disclosed assets between $13 million and $56 million, including his influential political consultancy, Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., worth as much as $25 million. Bannon also disclosed that he earned slightly less than $200,000 last year as executive director of Breitbart News Network LLC, before he resigned to join Trump's campaign last August.
The documents show he was vice president of the data firm Cambridge Analytica for more than two years, before resigning in August 2016 to help run Trump's campaign. Cambridge was the main data provider for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who waged a bitter battle with Trump for the Republican nomination. Bannon's consulting firm pulled in more than $125,000 from Cambridge last year. He has stake in Cambridge somewhere between $1 million and $5 million, but the disclosure says he has an "agreement in principle" to sell his investment.
Bannon also disclosed his ownership stake worth up to $5 million in Bannon Film Industries Inc., the entertainment company that veered into political-themed documentaries, including last year's anti-Hillary Clinton documentary "Clinton Cash." He retains that investment even while selling off other arrangements, according to the filing.
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