The Trump Organization

The Trump Organization is an American private real estate conglomerate owned by business magnate and US President Donald J. Trump. Trump's grandmother and father founded the enterprise as Elizabeth Trump & Son in New York City in 1923. Initially an apartment construction and rental business, the profits eventually made Trump's family extremely wealthy. Donald Trump took control of Elizabeth Trump & Son in 1971 and later renamed the business the Trump Organization.

Under Trump's leadership, the Trump Organization expanded its business scope to include a range of luxury real estate ventures such as hotels, condominiums, resorts, casinos, golf courses, and restaurants. Trump later established the conglomerate's headquarters at Trump Tower in New York's Midtown Manhattan. The business was one of the largest private companies in the United States by the mid-2010s, earning revenues of about $9.5 billion in 2015. Trump stepped down from active management of the Trump Organization in early 2017, just before he was sworn in as president of the United States. However, his connections to the group's various businesses attracted considerable controversy over potential conflicts of interest during his time in office. In late 2020, the Trump Organization came under multiple investigations for bank and insurance fraud. In 2021, New York state authorities indicted the Trump Organization on several charges of tax-related crimes, and in December 2022, the organization was convicted on seventeen counts.

Background

The Trump Organization was founded in New York City in 1923 as Elizabeth Trump & Son. The "son" stood for Fred Trump, the son of Friedrich and Elizabeth Trump, German immigrants who settled in the United States in the early 1900s. Friedrich Trump had already lived in the United States for a period in the late 1800s, during which time he opened numerous restaurants and hotels in the Northwest region. Friedrich Trump died suddenly in New York in 1918, leaving Elizabeth Trump and Fred Trump to continue his real estate ambition as Elizabeth Trump & Son.

Fred Trump became successful in his own right during and after World War II (1939–45), when he constructed, rented, and sold housing complexes for US soldiers and their families in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. By the 1970s, he was one of the wealthiest people in the United States.

Fred Trump's fourth child, Donald J. Trump, born in 1946, became interested in his father's business as a young man. In 1968, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious business institution, the Wharton School. Trump began working at Elizabeth Trump & Son and eventually became the likely candidate to take control of the family business from his father. Fred Trump initially loaned his son $1 million, so he could oversee some of Elizabeth Trump & Son's real estate projects on his own before taking an active executive role in the company. Trump supervised some of his father's housing projects in New York's boroughs before taking over the company in 1971. He eventually renamed the enterprise the Trump Organization.

Overview

Throughout the 1970s, Trump continued to focus on developing New York real estate, including apartment buildings, public housing projects, and condominiums. During this time, the organization faced a civil rights lawsuit alleging that it discriminated against African American potential tenants. The Trumps countersued, and ultimately settled the case without admitting guilt. Trump began expanding the Trump Organization's scope in 1980, when he collaborated with the Holiday Inn chain of hotels to construct a hotel and casino complex in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump eventually named the $250 million property the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.

The Trump Organization also started building luxury properties in New York, where it was based. The company renovated the dilapidated Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt New York and later built the sixty-eight-story Trump Tower on Midtown Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. This skyscraper was composed of luxury offices, restaurants, retailers, condominiums, and the headquarters of the Trump Organization itself. Other real estate projects eventually developed by the Trump Organization in New York included Trump Place, Trump World Tower, and Trump International Hotel and Tower, the latter of which was one of an entire line of luxury hotels with various locations around the world.

After experiencing great financial success throughout the 1980s, the Trump Organization reported in 1990 that it was $5 billion in debt. This was due in part to a struggling national economy, which in turn slowed New York City's economy and reduced the number of customers using Trump real estate. The Trump Organization had also purchased the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City in 1988, renaming it the Trump Taj Mahal. In the early 1990s, the Trump Organization's financial difficulties forced the Trump Plaza Hotel and Trump Taj Mahal to declare bankruptcy.

The Trump Organization began reversing its financial troubles in the mid-1990s, when Trump founded the ultimately successful public company Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, Inc. This new wave of success helped the Trump Organization expand its reach into even more industries in numerous locations throughout the United States and worldwide.

In the twenty-first century, the Trump Organization was a conglomerate that managed all the individual companies established under the Trump brand. Real estate remained the organization's main business, with Trump properties located in US states from New York to Florida to Nevada and in countries such as Canada, Turkey, South Korea, and India. Luxury hotels were also a lucrative industry for the Trump Organization. Like other Trump real estate, the conglomerate's line of Trump International Hotels were located in the United States and several other countries.

The Trump Organization gradually added golf courses to its list of holdings. These included the Trump Turnberry in Scotland, a renowned golf course that hosted numerous Professional Golfers Association (PGA) competitions and other golfing events. Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., the Trump Organization's casino management company, was valued at about $1 billion in the mid-1990s, but over the next several decades, the entity suffered debt and bankruptcy problems as its once-profitable casinos started closing. Trump Entertainment Resorts' repeated bankruptcies led to the closing of the Trump Taj Mahal in 2016. Other industries the Trump Organization entered included private jet operation, television production (including the popular show The Apprentice [2004-2017]), beauty pageants, and winemaking.

Trump was elected president of the United States in November 2016. The day before he took office the following January, he resigned from his executive positions in more than four hundred companies within the Trump Organization. Trump left management of the conglomerate to two of his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Trump retained his ownership stake in the Trump Organization.

In late 2016, CNN reported that the Trump Organization was one of the largest private companies in the United States. The source claimed that the entity employed more than twenty-two thousand people worldwide and earned revenues of $9.5 billion in 2015. However, amid other controversies during Trump's presidency, some critics suggested that Trump often misrepresented his own net worth and that of the Trump Organization in order to inflate his perceived wealth. The fact that the organization kept its financial information private and Trump refused to release his personal tax returns complicated efforts to provide an accurate valuation. One financial report released in early 2019 did suggest that revenues across the Trump Organization declined slightly in 2018, despite a surging economy.

The Trump Organization came under much legal scrutiny during Trump's presidency, including several official investigations into its operations. For example, in 2018 New York authorities examined the organization's role in a hush money payment made to an adult film star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. State and city regulators also opened an investigation into longstanding methods used by the organization to artificially lower tax payments, following a report published in the New York Times in October 2018 suggesting such schemes amounted to fraud. The same newspaper also released an exposé in December 2018 documenting the Trump Organization's employment of undocumented workers, clashing with Trump's own immigration policies. Critics of Trump also noted instances of the Saudi Arabian government channeling money into Trump Organization businesses, raising questions of potential violation of the US Constitution's emoluments clause.

In early 2019, Trump's former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, testified before Congress that the Trump Organization overstated its valuation to insurance companies, and further investigation of the organization's insurance practices soon followed. Later that year, additional ethical debate arose around reports that traveling US officials and military personnel were at times booked at Trump properties rather than at more convenient or less expensive options. Trump, his family members, and Trump Organization representatives consistently denied wrongdoing in these controversies. However, in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York state attorney general, Trump did admit to the misuse of funds from his personal foundation to pay business debts and fund his political campaign, and agreed to pay $2 million to various charities as part of the settlement in late 2019.

Like other companies involved in the hotel business, the Trump Organization struggled with the decline in bookings and general economic turmoil due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. In April 2020, it was reported that the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, sought relief in its lease deal with the federal government's General Services Administration. Further details also emerged that year on the New York attorney general's investigation into the Trump Organization over the issue of potential asset inflation. Eric Trump prominently resisted that investigation, refusing subpoenas and seeking to delay a deposition until after his father's reelection bid had concluded, but was ordered by a judge to appear in a deposition in early October 2020. By that time, public interest in Donald Trump's business dealings was further stoked by a New York Times report that the president had paid just $750 in federal income tax in both 2017 and 2016, while paying zero income taxes in ten of fifteen previous years. That October, a federal appeals panel ruled that the Manhattan district attorney was allowed to obtain Trump's personal and corporate tax returns as part of the ongoing investigations into the president's finances.

The first criminal charges related to the investigations of the Trump Organization emerged after a New York state grand jury indictment in late June 2021. The Manhattan District Attorney's office unveiled its specific charges that July, alleging that the organization had used secret benefits to help its top executives evade taxes over a period of fifteen years dating back to 2005. Trump Organization CFO Allen H. Weisselberg also faced individual charges himself, including tax fraud and grand larceny, and pleaded not guilty. Weisselberg was subsequently dismissed from his various leadership roles at Trump Organization subsidiaries, though he remained connected to the main company. Further investigations into the organization also remained ongoing. In late September, it was reported that a New York state judge had issued an order mandating that the Trump Organization provide proof, in the form of a report detailing any collecting, preserving, and producing of related documents, of its efforts to sufficiently comply with earlier subpoenas from the state's attorney general.

In October 2021 it was reported that the Trump Organization was subject to another criminal investigation, this one by the office of the Westchester County, New York, district attorney. The case was said to involve the finances of the Trump National Golf Club Westchester, and particularly the club's real estate taxes. Meanwhile, the following month it was announced that the Manhattan district attorney had convened another special grand jury to further investigate the company's financial practices. In late December, both Trump and the Trump Organization filed a lawsuit accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James, who declared an intent to secure a deposition from Trump, of violating their constitutional rights through an allegedly politically motivated investigation. In mid-January 2022, James made a court filing in which her office presented the argument that the Trump Organization had fraudulently given the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), as well as insurers and lenders, misstated property valuations so that Trump's net worth would appear greater.

These court filings, in particular the claim that the Trump Organization inflated the values of its properties, soon had further repercussions on the Trump Organization's operations. In February 2022, Mazars USA, the accounting firm that had long handled Trump's personal finances in addition to those of the Trump Organization, ordered the Trump Organization to withdraw the financial statements it had submitted for the years 2011–20 due to concerns over their reliability. The firm also severed its business relationships with both Trump and the Trump Organization. February also saw another major development in the New York case against the Trump Organization; after disagreeing with new Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg as to whether enough evidence existed to indict Trump himself, two New York state prosecutors resigned. At that time, Bragg said there was not enough evidence against Trump to warrant an indictment.

Despite this development, the case against the Trump Organization continued. In August 2022, Weisselberg plead guilty to numerous felonies, including grand larceny and falsifying business records; he agreed to serve five months in prison with five years of probation and pay $1.9 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties. In exchange for this plea deal, Weisselberg agreed to testify in the Trump Organization's trial, which began in October 2022. The company faced several felony charges, including conspiracy, grand larceny, and fraud. The Trump family's oversight of the company was also threatened by a civil fraud suit from the New York Attorney General's office against Trump and three of his children; this suit focused in part on Trump's alleged exaggeration of his and the company's net worth.

In the Manhattan district attorney's criminal tax fraud case, a jury convicted the Trump Organization on all charges in early December 2022. Specifically, the Trump Corporation was found guilty of nine counts of criminal tax fraud, and the Trump Payroll Corporation was found guilty on eight counts. While Trump continued to criticize the case as politically motivated, the Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million in January 2023 as a result of this conviction.

As the New York Attorney General's civil fraud case progressed, in late September 2023, a New York judge ruled that the Trump Organization—along with Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and several of their associates—had indeed committed fraud by overvaluing assets. The court ordered their state business certifications canceled and the dissolution of various properties, seriously threatening the continued operation of the Trump Organization. That October, the case went to trial to determine damages. In February 2024, the court ordered Donald Trump and his companies to pay over $350 million in penalties for fraudulent activities, and Trump was barred from leading any New York company for three years. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were each fined over $4 million and prohibited from leading any New York firm for two years. Despite legal setbacks, the organization's Florida golf resorts became significant revenue sources, accounting for about 80 percent of the company's estimated $80 million cash flow in 2024. In early 2025, Donald Trump launched a meme coin named $TRUMP and announced plans to establish Truth.Fi, a financial company.

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