Massad Boulos helped Trump win Arab electorate in Michigan. He is additionally Tiffany Trump’s partner’s father.Information retailers have known as him a “billionaire” and repeated Trump’s description of him as a “legal professional.”However he does not seem to have a legislation license, and his corporate has a marketplace cap of $865,000.Massad Boulos, who has been broadly described as a billionaire and a legal professional and used to be not too long ago named as certainly one of Donald Trump’s advisors on Center East affairs, seems to be neither a billionaire nor a certified lawyer, in step with public data and interviews.Boulos first entered the general public eye in 2018, when his son Michael met Tiffany Trump at a membership in Greece and the pair started courting. The couple married at Mar-A-Lago in 2022, making Massad Boulos Tiffany’s partner’s father. He used to be credited in information tales with taking part in a key function in Donald Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, serving to peel Arab American electorate clear of Democrats in battlegrounds like Michigan.Previous this month, Trump mentioned Boulos can be a “senior consultant” on Center Japanese affairs, becoming a member of a workforce that comes with Trump’s longtime good friend and supporter Steven Witkoff, his pick out for ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and Marco Rubio, his nominee for secretary of state, who will form US coverage within the area. On the time, Trump described Boulos as an “completed legal professional” and a “extremely revered chief within the trade global.”However Trump it appears inflated Boulos’s résumé. Trade Insider discovered no evidence of Boulos’s intended billions. And whilst he will have attended legislation college, he hasn’t handed a bar examination and can not apply legislation.No connection to an organization that stocks his ultimate identify — however he does regulate a truck dealership price not up to $1 million in NigeriaClaims of the Boulos circle of relatives’s wealth first began circulating in English-language media in 2018, when Tiffany Trump’s courting with Michael Boulos turned into public. The New York Publish mentioned his circle of relatives “owns a multibillion-dollar conglomerate” and later discussed Boulos Enterprises. Vainness Honest echoed the outline of the Boulos companies as “price billions,” an outline that used to be picked up by way of the Occasions.On December 2, the New York Occasions mentioned Massad Boulos constructed “his wealth in West Africa” and runs two firms, SCOA Nigeria and Boulos Enterprises. The Monetary Occasions known as him an “auto multi-millionaire” who leads each firms, whilst ABC known as him a “billionaire businessman” who “runs Boulos Enterprises.”However Massad Boulos does not run Boulos Enterprises, in step with a number of former workers and its exact boss, Boulos Boulos. Boulos Enterprises is a part of the Boulos Staff, a keeping corporate owned by way of a unique workforce of Lebanese Nigerians with the similar ultimate identify.A due-diligence record for Boulos Enterprises Ltd. created by way of Moody’s Orbis database does not point out Massad Boulos. Archived copies of the Boulos Staff web page from 2016 and 2018 did not point out him, both. And Elephant Africa Conserving, a Mauritius corporate created by way of the Boulos Staff to carry its paper companies, additionally does not point out Massad in its company filings.On Thursday, the Occasions known as Boulos’s wealth and backstory into query and mentioned he up to now misled certainly one of its newshounds by way of answering “yeah” when requested if it used to be correct to name his corporate a multi-billion greenback trade.Past headlines in information retailers, BI could not to find any proof to indicate Massad Boulos is a billionaire. The corporate Massad Boulos if truth be told does run, SCOA Nigeria, which has a subsidiary known as SCOA Motors, is a penny inventory. Its stocks industry for roughly two Nigerian naira, kind of a 10th of a US cent, making all of the trade price about $865,000. That isn’t Billionaire’s Row cash, however it will purchase you a 957-square-foot apartment in Queens.The corporate’s newest annual record, which is partially published in Comedian Sans, is in step with the sort of valuation. For its monetary yr finishing September 30, SCOA reported about 5.9 billion naira, or $3.7 million, in earnings and about 25 million naira, or $15,562, in post-tax earnings. The yr earlier than, when gross sales have been weaker, SCOA misplaced about 715 million naira, or $444,000.In interviews with the New York Occasions, Boulos has mentioned he did not right kind the file as a result of he does not speak about his companies. He additionally mentioned it used to be onerous to worth his circle of relatives’s companies.It is imaginable that Massad Boulos’s circle of relatives will have different resources of wealth. His spouse, Sarah Fadoul Boulos, is the daughter of any other Lebanese businessman in Africa, Michel Zouhair Fadoul, whose corporate boasts of a presence in “greater than 10 nations” and has been indexed a few of the maximum a hit Lebanese companies in Africa.On social media, Massad and his circle of relatives appear to reside huge, posting content material from a yacht floating off the southern coast of France and a ski run within the Alps. Whilst Massad Boulos has nearly no historical past of political giving, his son Michael made $200,000 in political contributions in two days in 2020. Michael used to be additionally reported to have proposed to Tiffany with a $1.2 million ring — which he “upgraded” to a fair pricier piece by way of their marriage ceremony day.Telephone numbers indexed for Massad Boulos and his spouse have been disconnected. Efforts to achieve him thru members of the family and political pals were not a hit. The Trump transition workforce didn’t reply to a request for remark.’Isn’t now, and not has been, an lawyer approved to apply legislation’Additionally it is no longer transparent that Massad Boulos is a “legal professional,” as Donald Trump has described him.
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Some information retailers say that Boulos has a legislation stage from the College of Houston. However a spokesman for the College of Houston gadget mentioned that isn’t right kind; Boulos has a bachelor’s stage in “basic trade” from certainly one of its smaller colleges, the College of Houston-Downtown.In a 2015 interview on Nigerian TV, Sarah Boulos mentioned her husband “graduated as a legal professional from Thurgood Marshall Faculty,” a part of Texas Southern College, earlier than they moved to Nigeria. Massad Boulos additionally indexed a legislation stage from the college on his LinkedIn profile earlier than the profile went offline, in step with data stored within the touch database Rocketreach.Texas Southern officers did not reply to a number of requests for touch upon Wednesday and Thursday.However graduating from legislation college does not make any individual a legal professional. Nahdiah Hoang, the chief director of the Texas Board of Regulation Examiners, mentioned in an e mail that Boulos carried out to take the July 1996 bar examination, however he both did not take it or did not cross.A spokeswoman for the Texas Bar mentioned Boulos “isn’t now, and not has been, an lawyer approved to apply legislation in Texas.”BI additionally checked bar data for DC and 47 different states — masking 99% of america inhabitants — and located Boulos wasn’t registered as a legal professional in any of the ones states, both. (BI used to be not able to substantiate if Boulos used to be registered to apply legislation in Alaska or South Dakota.)L’Orient Le Jour, a Lebanese newspaper, reported that Boulos may be a citizen of Lebanon, Nigeria, and France. There is not any public proof that Boulos is approved as a legal professional in any of the ones puts.He used to be no longer indexed within the directories for the 11 biggest French bar associations, which quilt two-thirds of French attorneys. Legal professionals in Lebanon should be registered with certainly one of two bar associations; certainly one of them, the Beirut Bar Affiliation, mentioned Boulos wasn’t in its database, and the opposite did not reply to repeated inquiries. The Nigerian Bar Affiliation and the rustic’s Ideal Court docket, which maintains its registry of attorneys, didn’t reply to emails about whether or not Boulos used to be an lawyer.Narimes Parakul contributed reporting.
