Trump’s commerce secretary Wilbur Ross has been lying about being a billionaire for years: report

Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been lying about his net worth for well over a decade now, a bombshell Forbes report alleges.

Forbes says that it first started having suspicions about Ross's net worth after it examined the financial-disclosure forms he filed after being nominated by Trump to lead the Department of Commerce. In all, the forms showed he had assets with a net worth of just $700 million, which was far below the $3.7 billion he had claimed to be worth, and below the $2.9 billion that Forbes had believed he was worth.

Ross initially told Forbes that he had shifted $2 billion into family trusts prior to being nominated for commerce secretary by Trump, which meant that he did not have to disclose it.

However, Forbes investigated the matter further and concluded that the $2 billion "never existed."

"It seems clear that Ross lied to us, the latest in an apparent sequence of fibs, exaggerations, omissions, fabrications and whoppers that have been going on with Forbes since 2004," the publication writes.

In fact, the Department of Commerce itself, in response to Forbes's questions about the $2 billion money transfer, flatly denied that any such transfer had ever happened -- despite the fact that Ross himself was the publication's primary source for the claim.

Forbes went on to interview ten former employees at Ross's private equity firm, and they all painted a picture of a man who is serially dishonest about his net worth.

"He's lied to a lot of people," said David Wax, who was a top executive at WL Ross & Co., and who worked alongside Ross for decades.

The entire report is worth reading and can be found here.