Donald Trump is no stranger to the “richest in America” lists. But just how accurate is his reported wealth, especially given his dubious history of claiming great riches. Former Forbes writer Jonathan Greenberg, currently a contributing writer to the Washington Post says Trump lied to him about his net worth to get on the Forbes 400 list back in 1984 and he says he recently uncovered the tapes to prove it. His audio recordings are with someone who said they were Trump’s Vice President of Finance, “John Barron.” That’s a name that has been revealed to be the alter-ego of Trump himself. At the time “Barron” tried to convince Greenberg that Trump was much richer than he actually was. In a story for the Washington Post today Greenberg says:
“Over time I have learned that he should not have been on the first three Forbes 400 lists at all. In our first-ever list, in 1982, we included him at $100 million, but Trump was actually worth roughly $5 million — a paltry sum by the standards of his super-monied peers — as a spate of government reports and books showed only much later.”
Hear some of the audio recordings and what else Greenberg has to say about the call and Trump’s inflated wealth above.