The Trump
Files.

Queens, the military academy and Wharton

Donald John Trump was born on 14 June 1946 in Queens, New York, the fourth of five children of Fred C. Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. Fred built and managed middle-class rental housing across Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island; Mary Anne had emigrated from the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, in 1930. The family lived in Jamaica Estates, a relatively affluent Queens neighborhood, and the children grew up inside a business that treated apartment buildings as both livelihood and identity. [1] [2]

At thirteen his parents sent him to the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson, a boarding school chosen after discipline problems in public school. Contemporaneous and later biographical accounts describe a competitive cadet career there—sports, drill, and a public persona already oriented toward winning—before he returned to civilian college. He enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School in 1968. [1] [2]

During the Vietnam War he received student deferments and, after graduation, a medical deferment classified as bone spurs in his heels. His 1969 draft-lottery number was 356, high enough that he was not called. How the bone-spur diagnosis was obtained, what it meant for service, and how later inheritance disputes with siblings intersect the family story are treated in a separate file rather than settled here. Family, draft and inheritance. [1] [2]

Building the Trump name

He joined Fred Trump’s company full time after Wharton, took operational control in 1971, and in 1973 renamed the firm the Trump Organization. That same year the Justice Department sued Trump Management for racial discrimination in rentals; the company settled without admitting wrongdoing and agreed to rent more apartments to Black applicants and advertise more widely. The case is the first major federal civil-rights collision on the Trump record. Housing discrimination (full guide). [2]

His first signature Manhattan project remade the bankrupt Penn Central’s Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt, aided by a long city tax abatement negotiated with New York officials. Through the 1980s he opened Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, pursued Atlantic City casinos, and in 1990 opened the Trump Taj Mahal at a reported cost near one billion dollars. With ghostwriters he published The Art of the Deal (1987) and a string of business-advice books that marketed him as a master builder and negotiator. [1] [2]

Debt caught up with the casino complex. The Taj Mahal entered bankruptcy in 1991; Trump Plaza Hotel followed in 1992; the publicly traded casino company later reorganized in 2004, 2009 and 2014. He did not file personal bankruptcy. The brand survived by licensing the Trump name onto buildings, golf courses and consumer products, and from 1996 to 2015 he co-owned the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants. Contractor nonpayment disputes and the bankruptcy cycle have their own file. Bankruptcies and unpaid contractors. [2]

“You’re fired”

From 2004 to 2015 Trump hosted and executive-produced NBC’s The Apprentice and later Celebrity Apprentice. The weekly boardroom ritual—“You’re fired”—fixed a national image of decisive, wealthy competence that polling and campaign reporting later treated as a major asset when he entered politics. Ratings and syndication made him a household figure far beyond New York real-estate pages. NBC ended the relationship after his June 2015 campaign launch speech, which described Mexico as sending drugs, crime and “rapists.” [1] [2] [6]

In the same television decade he marketed Trump University, a for-profit real-estate seminar business that sold multi-day courses and mentorship packages. Customers sued for fraud; he settled for $25 million without admitting wrongdoing. Separately, New York’s attorney general sued the Trump Foundation over self-dealing and political use of charity funds; a 2019 judgment ordered him to pay $2 million to other charities and dissolved the foundation under court supervision. Those commercial and charity fights are dated case files, not campaign slogans. Trump University · Trump Foundation. [2] [20]

Pageants sat beside television: from 1996 to 2015 he co-owned Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA, vehicles that mixed brand licensing, international travel and tabloid coverage. The entertainment years are context for how a developer without prior elective office entered a presidential primary with name recognition most senators never accumulate. [1] [2]

Family

He married Ivana Zelníčková in 1977; their children are Donald Jr. (1978), Ivanka (1981) and Eric (1984). They divorced in 1992 after a highly publicized separation. He married Marla Maples in 1993, months after their daughter Tiffany was born; they divorced in 1999. He married Melania Knauss in January 2005; their son Barron was born in 2006. He is the only U.S. president to have been divorced twice. Biographical handbooks and White House Historical Association timelines fix the marriage and birth dates used here. [3]

He purchased Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach in 1985 and later made Florida his legal residence (2019). His older brother, Fred Trump Jr., died in 1981 after struggles with alcoholism—a family fact Trump has repeatedly cited when explaining why he does not drink. Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric became executives in the Trump Organization; in the first term Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, held White House adviser commissions with public ethics disclosures. Family business entanglement with the presidency is tracked in separate files rather than collapsed into this paragraph. Presidential business · Kushner collection. [3]

From birtherism to the White House

Before 2015 Trump’s party registration moved among Democrat, Independence Party / Reform-adjacent experiments and Republican affiliation. In 1999–2000 he explored a Reform Party presidential bid and withdrew. From 2011 he became the most prominent national promoter of the false claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States—a conspiracy campaign he eventually abandoned in 2016 after years of primary-source rebuttal (Hawaii vital records and contemporaneous birth announcements). Distorted claims. [6]

He announced a Republican presidential bid on 16 June 2015 from Trump Tower and won the 2016 election on 8 November, losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by about 2.8 million ballots while winning the Electoral College 304–227. He was the first person elected president with no prior elective office or senior military commission. [1] [4] [6]

The first term (2017–2021) included the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, renegotiated trade arrangements, three Supreme Court appointments (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett), and the COVID-19 pandemic. It also included the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference and Trump campaign contacts, and a December 2019 House impeachment over pressure on Ukraine; the Senate acquitted him on 5 February 2020. Those episodes are not summarized as verdicts here. Russiagate · Ukraine impeachment. [1] [4] [17]

2020, January 6 and the second impeachment

Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by about seven million popular votes and 306–232 in the Electoral College. Trump refused to concede, asserting a stolen election. His campaign and allies filed dozens of state and federal suits; nearly all were dismissed or withdrawn for lack of evidence or standing. Parallel tracks included pressure on state officials and a fake-elector paperwork scheme—documented in dedicated files rather than collapsed into a single adjective. 2020 election (full guide) · Fake electors. [4] [5]

On 6 January 2021, after an Ellipse rally speech urging supporters to march to the Capitol, a mob breached the building while Congress counted electoral votes. Lawmakers evacuated; the count resumed overnight and Biden’s victory was certified. The House impeached Trump a second time on 13 January 2021 for “incitement of insurrection,” making him the first president impeached twice. The Senate vote on 13 February 2021 was 57–43 to convict—ten votes short of the two-thirds required. He did not attend Biden’s inauguration. Criminal referrals, congressional findings and later pardons belong to the January 6 deep guide. January 6 (full guide). [5] [18] [21]

Four prosecutions and a comeback

In 2023 Trump was indicted in four jurisdictions: Southern District of Florida (classified documents at Mar-a-Lago), District of Columbia (federal election-subversion case), Fulton County, Georgia (state racketeering case over 2020), and Manhattan (falsifying business records tied to a hush-money payment). On 1 July 2024 the Supreme Court held in Trump v. United States that presidents have immunity for core constitutional acts and presumptive immunity for other official acts—narrowing what could be tried as to official conduct. The Florida, D.C. and Georgia criminal cases did not reach a completed trial on the merits before later dismissals or procedural collapse; indictments remain allegations, not verdicts. Classified documents · Federal election case · Georgia election case. [8] [9] [10] [11]

The Manhattan case did go to trial. On 30 May 2024 a jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to reimbursing Michael Cohen for a payment to Stormy Daniels. In January 2025 Justice Juan Merchan imposed an unconditional discharge—no jail, fine or probation—while the conviction remained on the docket pending appeal. Hush-money conviction (full guide). [5] [7]

Civil juries found him liable to E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation; appellate courts upheld large judgments. A New York civil-fraud judgment found years of inflated financial statements; an appellate court later vacated a nine-figure disgorgement penalty while leaving fraud findings in place. Those are civil adjudications with their own files. Carroll · Civil fraud. [22] [23]

On 13 July 2024 a gunman’s bullet grazed his ear at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally; in September another man was arrested at his Florida golf club. On 5 November 2024 he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, 312–226 in the Electoral College and about 49.9% to 48.4% in the popular vote—the second president, after Grover Cleveland, elected to non-consecutive terms. Assassination attempts. [1] [4] [6]

The second term, through October 2026

He was inaugurated on 20 January 2025 at 78, the oldest president ever sworn in, with JD Vance as vice president. On his first day he pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly everyone convicted over January 6. Pardons and clemency. [1][4][12]

Since then: emergency tariffs on most of the world, struck down by the Supreme Court in February 2026; strikes on Iran in 2025 and a war with it in 2026; lethal strikes on boats and the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January 2026; mass deportations and CECOT; prosecutions of critics, two of them dismissed by a judge (Comey, James and Bolton); the East Wing demolition; and the release of millions of pages of Epstein files under a law he first resisted and then signed. [13][14][15][16][19][24]

Supporters credit him with border enforcement, trade leverage and a peace-dealmaker’s record; critics see an assault on courts, watchdogs and norms. The files below take the claims one at a time, with the evidence. A biography supplies context. It does not decide the cases.