Trump now holds as much as $1 billion in municipal bonds, and the cities, hospitals and power plants that owe him the money answer to his government.
CNBC counted the positions Tuesday morning from Trump's own financial disclosures: more than 1,000 bonds worth between $300 million and $1 billion. He has bought at least 243 of them this year, 48 disclosed on Sept. 22, and he has never reported a sale. The University of Chicago's municipal-finance director told CNBC that a portfolio near $1 billion "functions more like an institutional fund."
In February 2025 Trump's accounts bought up to $100,000 in pollution-control bonds tied to Georgia Power's Plant Bowen. Fifty-seven days later Trump signed a proclamation exempting Bowen's four units, and dozens of other coal plants, from stricter EPA limits on toxic air pollution. His accounts then bought up to $200,000 more in debt tied to two other exempted plants, Plant Scherer in Georgia and the Barry plant in Alabama. Richard Painter, George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer, said a pollution-control bond's credit depends on the rules governing the plant, and Trump's order "swings the economics of the facility." Trump's own energy secretary could not hold that bond, Painter said. The president can, because presidents are exempt from the conflict-of-interest laws.
The White House says independent managers run the accounts and Trump cannot "direct, influence, or provide input." CNBC found no evidence he did. Nobody would explain why the accounts pick individual borrowers when index funds exist for that reason.
