SCOOP: Lutnick’s $5 Billion in Gold Card Sales Has Gone Missing
Trump’s commerce chief bragged of selling 1,000 Gold Cards in a day. Treasury can’t find the money.
WASHINGTON — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick bragged this spring that he had already raked in $5 billion for the Trump administration’s new “Gold Card” program, a $5 million fast-track for green cards and citizenship for wealthy migrants.
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On March 20, Lutnick told the All In podcast he had sold 1,000 Gold Cards in a single day — March 19 — an eye-popping claim that, if true, would make it the most lucrative day in U.S. immigration history.
But seven months later, no one can find the money. The Treasury Department tells Migrant Insider that the money has never been deposited. Trump’s September executive order requires all Gold Card application fees, previously handled as discretionary “gifts” to Commerce, to be deposited into the Treasury.
Investor visa attorneys and offshore wealth managers doubt Lutnick ever moved that many cards. “A thousand in one day? It’s never happened before, not even close,” one told Migrant Insider on condition of anonymity.
The Gold Card, which exists as a direct compteitor to the EB-5 investor visa, is already under legal challenge and economic scrutiny. At $5 million a slot, experts question whether the market is deep enough to support Lutnick’s boast.
That leaves a simple question hanging over the administration: Where is the $5 billion Lutnick promised?
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It Smells like a huge fib to me!!!! Seems rather fishy that this kind of mint just DISAPPEARS!!!!! Someone’s their hands and fetin the COOKIE JAR!!!!! Wow!!
Anything anyone in the administration says should be considered to have a likelihood of being a lie in the double digits percentage (with the likelihood going up the closer they are to the president).