- Massad Boulos helped Trump win Arab voters in Michigan. He’s additionally Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law.
- News shops have referred to as him a “billionaire” and repeated Trump’s description of him as a “lawyer.”
- But he would not seem to have a legislation license, and his firm has a market cap of $865,000.
Massad Boulos, who has been extensively described as a billionaire and a lawyer and was just lately named as one among Donald Trump’s advisors on Middle East affairs, seems to be neither a billionaire nor a licensed lawyer, based on public information 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 father-in-law. He was credited in information tales with taking part in a key position in Donald Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, serving to peel Arab American voters away from Democrats in battlegrounds like Michigan.
Earlier this month, Trump stated Boulos could be a “senior advisor” on Middle Eastern affairs, becoming a member of a group that features Trump’s longtime good friend and supporter Steven Witkoff, his decide for ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and Marco Rubio, his nominee for secretary of state, who will form US coverage within the area. At the time, Trump described Boulos as an “achieved lawyer” and a “extremely revered chief within the enterprise world.”
But Trump apparently inflated Boulos’s résumé. Business Insider discovered no proof of Boulos’s supposed billions. And whereas he might have attended legislation faculty, he hasn’t handed a bar examination and may’t follow legislation.
No connection to an organization that shares his final title — however he does management a truck dealership price lower than $1 million in Nigeria
Claims of the Boulos household’s wealth first began circulating in English-language media in 2018, when Tiffany Trump’s relationship with Michael Boulos turned public. The New York Post stated his household “owns a multibillion-dollar conglomerate” and later talked about Boulos Enterprises. Vanity Fair echoed the outline of the Boulos companies as “price billions,” an outline that was picked up by the Times.
On December 2, the New York Times stated Massad Boulos constructed “his wealth in West Africa” and runs two corporations, SCOA Nigeria and Boulos Enterprises. The Financial Times referred to as him an “auto tycoon” who leads each corporations, whereas ABC referred to as him a “billionaire businessman” who “runs Boulos Enterprises.”
But Massad Boulos would not run Boulos Enterprises, based on a number of former workers and its precise boss, Boulos Boulos. Boulos Enterprises is a part of the Boulos Group, a holding firm owned by a distinct group of Lebanese Nigerians with the identical final title.
A due-diligence report for Boulos Enterprises Ltd. created by Moody’s Orbis database would not point out Massad Boulos. Archived copies of the Boulos Group web site from 2016 and 2018 did not point out him, both. And Elephant Africa Holding, a Mauritius firm created by the Boulos Group to carry its paper companies, additionally would not point out Massad in its company filings.
On Thursday, the Times referred to as Boulos’s wealth and backstory into query and stated he beforehand misled one among its reporters by answering “yeah” when requested if it was correct to name his firm a multi-billion greenback enterprise.
Beyond headlines in information shops, BI could not discover any proof to counsel Massad Boulos is a billionaire. The firm Massad Boulos truly does run, SCOA Nigeria, which has a subsidiary referred to as SCOA Motors, is a penny inventory. Its shares commerce for about two Nigerian naira, roughly a tenth of a US cent, making your entire enterprise price about $865,000. That’s not Billionaire’s Row cash, however it may purchase you a 957-square-foot apartment in Queens.
The firm’s newest annual report, which is partly printed in Comic Sans, is in keeping with such a valuation. For its monetary 12 months ending September 30, SCOA reported about 5.9 billion naira, or $3.7 million, in income and about 25 million naira, or $15,562, in post-tax income. The 12 months earlier than, when gross sales have been weaker, SCOA misplaced about 715 million naira, or $444,000.
In interviews with the New York Times, Boulos has stated he did not right the document as a result of he would not talk about his companies. He additionally stated it was exhausting to worth his household’s companies.
It’s potential that Massad Boulos’s household may produce other sources of wealth. His spouse, Sarah Fadoul Boulos, is the daughter of one other Lebanese businessman in Africa, Michel Zouhair Fadoul, whose firm boasts of a presence in “greater than 10 nations” and has been listed among the many most profitable Lebanese companies in Africa.
On social media, Massad and his household appear to dwell giant, posting content material from a yacht floating off the southern coast of France and a ski run within the Alps. While Massad Boulos has just about no historical past of political giving, his son Michael made $200,000 in political contributions in two days in 2020. Michael was additionally reported to have proposed to Tiffany with a $1.2 million ring — which he “upgraded” to a fair pricier piece by their wedding ceremony day.
Phone numbers listed for Massad Boulos and his spouse have been disconnected. Efforts to succeed in him by relations and political associates weren’t profitable. The Trump transition group didn’t reply to a request for remark.
‘Is not now, and by no means has been, an lawyer licensed to follow legislation’
It’s additionally not clear that Massad Boulos is a “lawyer,” as Donald Trump has described him.
Some information shops say that Boulos has a legislation diploma from the University of Houston. But a spokesman for the University of Houston system stated that is not right; Boulos has a bachelor’s diploma in “normal enterprise” from one among its smaller colleges, the University of Houston-Downtown.
In a 2015 interview on Nigerian TV, Sarah Boulos stated her husband “graduated as a lawyer from Thurgood Marshall School,” a part of Texas Southern University, earlier than they moved to Nigeria. Massad Boulos additionally listed a legislation diploma from the varsity on his LinkedIn profile earlier than the profile went offline, based on info saved within the contact database Rocketreach.
Texas Southern officers did not reply to a number of requests for touch upon Wednesday and Thursday.
But graduating from legislation faculty would not make somebody a lawyer. Nahdiah Hoang, the chief director of the Texas Board of Law Examiners, stated in an e-mail that Boulos utilized to take the July 1996 bar examination, however he both did not take it or did not move.
A spokeswoman for the Texas Bar stated Boulos “isn’t now, and by no means has been, an lawyer licensed to follow legislation in Texas.”
BI additionally checked bar information for DC and 47 different states — protecting 99% of the US inhabitants — and located Boulos wasn’t registered as a lawyer in any of these states, both. (BI was unable to substantiate if Boulos was registered to follow legislation in Alaska or South Dakota.)
L’Orient Le Jour, a Lebanese newspaper, reported that Boulos can be a citizen of Lebanon, Nigeria, and France. There’s no public proof that Boulos is licensed as a lawyer in any of these locations.
He was not listed within the directories for the 11 largest French bar associations, which cowl two-thirds of French legal professionals. Lawyers in Lebanon should be registered with one among two bar associations; one among them, the Beirut Bar Association, stated Boulos wasn’t in its database, and the opposite did not reply to repeated inquiries. The Nigerian Bar Association and the nation’s Supreme Court, which maintains its registry of legal professionals, didn’t reply to emails about whether or not Boulos was an lawyer.
Narimes Parakul contributed reporting.
