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Trump staffers disclose assets

Ethics officials to review filings

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump’s White House began releasing personal financial information for scores of his staff members Friday night, offering the clearest view yet into the financial backgrounds of the wealthiest administration in modern history.

Reports made available via the White House website detailed some of the sprawling real estate holdings of the family of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and at least $254 million in assets belonging to Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs Group president who’s now Trump’s top economic adviser.

Other disclosures shed light on the amounts earned by some political operatives during Trump’s campaign, including White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, senior counsel Kellyanne Conway, and chief strategist Steve Bannon, the leading architect of the president’s surprise victory.

With a combined net worth of more than $12 billion, Trump’s senior staff members, including his Cabinet, came to government with a far more expansive range of investments than prior administrations. Federal ethics officials are charged with reviewing their disclosures and helping to develop plans for how to avoid financial conflicts of interest. In many cases, those plans involve divestiture — and Cohn and Kushner have previously revealed their plans to sell substantial holdings.

Trump himself has retained ownership in his real estate and licensing businesses. And while he has handed their management over to his adult sons, he has been criticized by the head of the federal Office of Government Ethics and Democratic lawmakers who say he hasn’t gone far enough to distance himself from the businesses.

“The president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very successful by this country,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Friday. The appointees “have given up a lot to come into government by setting aside a lot of assets.”

The disclosures show the assets the officials held at the time they began employment in the White House, and may include certain investments that they have since sold to avoid conflicts of interest, a senior White House official said Friday in a briefing with reporters. Asset values on the forms are self-reported, and methodologies for determining the figures aren’t included.

Filings for Kushner show he has divested from 58 businesses, but is still connected to his family’s real estate empire. The disclosure lists assets, mostly real estate, with a value between $241 million and $741 million. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, reported income of as much as $195 million in the filing, which covers 2016 and part of this year, though much of that amount resulted from divesting assets.

Kushner held personal lines of credit of as much as $90 million to 10 financial institutions as of his Jan. 22 appointment to the White House, the filing shows. Six of the lines were held jointly with his parents. Among the lenders are Bank of America Corp.; Citigroup, Israel-based IDB Bank, and Deutsche Bank AG, a German company that is also Trump’s largest lender.

Cohn’s 41-page disclosure showed that he collected income of at least $48.3 million in 2016 and part of 2017. The report contains various estimates of wealth for Cohn, who worked at Goldman Sachs for more than 25 years, including the last decade as its president. According to earlier estimates compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he’s worth about $600 million.

The document released Friday provides a much fuller picture of Cohn’s wealth than did a two-page form released by the federal ethics agency on March 17. That filing showed Cohn owned almost 23.4 million shares of Beijing-based Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. The stake, probably acquired in a 2006 investment made by Goldman Sachs and its private-equity funds, was valued at more than $15 million at the time of the earlier disclosure.

The March 17 filing also showed that Cohn planned to divest more than $216 million in Goldman Sachs shares, 18 other publicly traded stocks and investments in eight company-managed funds.

Bannon holds assets worth between $11.9 million and $53.9 million, according to his report. Those assets include multiple rental real estate properties and stakes in entertainment companies, according to the 12-page disclosure.

Conway disclosed earning more than $800,000 last year via her business The Polling Company/Woman Trend, which she valued at as much as $5 million. Together with her husband, she disclosed assets worth between $10 million and $39.3 million.

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