It’s a little surprising that it took this long after the election for someone new to power in the Republican Party to be exposed as an alleged fraud, like disgraced former Representative George Santos after the 2022 midterms. But on Thursday, the New York Times delivered with a story on President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East adviser Massad Boulos, who has been exaggerating his wealth and résumé.
If you’re not familiar, Boulos is a Lebanese American businessman who claims to be worth billions from his car-manufacturing company in Nigeria. His primary qualification for his current role on the president-elect’s team is that he is the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany. But the Times found that Boulos is worth nowhere near what he claims. He is not the owner of a Nigerian manufacturing company. He is working for his own father-in-law at a manufacturing company that made a profit of less than $66,000 last year, according to its corporate filings. The same filings determined that the company is worth about $865,000 — making Boulos’s stake just $1.53. There are no missing zeros on that number.
Maybe Boulos’s investments are wrapped up in another firm? The Financial Times, for example, has cited a company called Boulos Enterprises as his family business. But when the Times checked in with Boulos Enterprises, a company officer said it was owned by an unrelated family with the same name.
Trump did not appear to be aware of any of this. In his announcement on Truth Social that Boulos would be his Middle East adviser, the president-elect described Boulos as a “highly respected leader in the business world with extensive experience on the international scene.” He also called him a “dealmaker” and touted his experience as a lawyer. But the school Boulos claimed was his alma matter, the University of Houson, has no record of his degree.
Boulos, who moved from Lebanon to Texas when he was a teenager in the 1980s, has spent little time in recent years in the region he is supposed to be an expert on. Until now, his business dealings have been murky. In October, a Times reporter asked him if he was a billionaire. He said he did not like to call himself that.
“It’s accurate to describe the company as a multibillion-dollar?” the reporter asked
“Yeah,” Boulos said. “It’s a big company. Long history.”
In an interview with the Times this week, Boulos said that the real wealth in his family comes from his wife’s father.
