Last year, President Donald Trump reported assets of at least $1.4 billion and income of at least $596.3 million in the 2016 calendar year and the early months of 2017. | Yuri Gripas-Pool/Getty Images Trump files ethics disclosure, which could shed light on Stormy Daniels payment

President Donald Trump met a deadline to file his annual ethics statement on Tuesday, a document that could shed light on his net worth and his financial relationship with an adult film actress.

Last year, Trump reported assets of at least $1.4 billion and income of at least $596.3 million in the 2016 calendar year and the early months of 2017. He reported owing at least $310 million to various financial institutions, including at least $130 million to Deutsche Bank.


That report made no mention of a $130,000 payment from Trump’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who has claimed she was paid to keep quiet about a relationship with Trump.

The paperwork filed on Tuesday with the Office of Government Ethics could force Trump to reconcile, in writing, months of conflicting accounts from the president and his lawyers about what he knew about money changing hands with Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford. Details of the filing might not be publicly known for several weeks.

Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket, and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who recently joined the president’s legal team, has said Trump reimbursed Cohen for that payment through a monthly retainer that totaled as much as $460,000 last year. Trump this month validated that narrative in a series of tweets , saying Cohen received a monthly retainer, “not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign.”

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Any payment from Trump, either to Daniels directly or through an intermediary such as Cohen, would probably have to be disclosed in the president’s 2017 ethics filing, according to government watchdogs.

Under the Ethics in Government Act , the president must disclose outstanding debts of $10,000 owed during 2017, even if those loans were repaid the same year. That would include money he owed to Cohen, who has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket in October 2016 in return for her silence about a relationship with Trump a decade earlier. The president has denied the relationship.

Calling the payment a legal retainer isn’t enough to insulate Trump from disclosing it, according to Walter Shaub, senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center and a former director of the Office of Government Ethics.

“The law comprehensively requires disclosure of ‘the total liabilities owed to any creditor,’” Shaub wrote in a USA Today op-ed. “Bundling the Daniels payment with Cohen’s legal fees doesn’t make that payment a legal fee. The Daniels payment remains a reportable liability regardless of the billing arrangement.”

Reporting a payment now could also expose Trump to penalties for an omission in 2016 if he knew about the payment then, said Norm Eisen, chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a nonpartisan watchdog seeking a criminal investigation into the matter.

“This is as big a danger to Trump, maybe even a bigger danger to Trump, than the campaign finance issue,” Eisen said. “Lying on a form that he signed under penalties of making a false statement, that is a very big deal if it’s a knowing omission.”

Trump and his administration have been tripped up by routine paperwork before. The president has refused to release his tax returns, breaking with decades of practice by candidates and holders of the office. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, has amended his own financial disclosures dozens of times. And several presidential nominees have failed to complete ethics agreements before winning confirmation to office. On Twitter, Shaub noted on Thursday that past presidents had filed their ethics reports in advance so the documents could be released to the public quickly.

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog, said: “Donald Trump has set the tone for the rest of his administration.”

