Number of donald trump bancrupcies

1. The headline number: six corporate Chapter 11s is the dominant tally

Multiple timelines and legal analyses identify six separate Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings involving Trump-controlled businesses — principally his Atlantic City casinos, the Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts holding company, and related corporate entities — occurring between the early 1990s and the 2000s ^{[3] [2] [5]}. Prominent summaries and encyclopedic entries state that Trump’s hotels and casinos declared bankruptcy six times in that period, a figure repeated by bankruptcy practitioners and reporters who have catalogued each corporate filing ^{[2] [6]}.

2. Why some sources say “four”: counting, consolidation and political shorthand

A competing strand of reporting and political messaging counts four bankruptcies instead of six; those accounts typically aggregate multiple filings tied to the same Atlantic City casino businesses or treat later, related reorganizations as continuations of earlier proceedings ^{[4] [7]}. Campaign materials and some fact-checks have used the four-count as shorthand — a framing rooted less in a denial of individual filings than in a dispute over which corporate case numbers should be treated as distinct episodes ^{[8] [9]}.

3. The key legal distinction: corporate Chapter 11 vs. personal bankruptcy

Across every reviewed source the same legal distinction is emphasized: Donald Trump himself has not filed for personal bankruptcy protection; the bankruptcies were corporate Chapter 11s entered by companies he controlled or licensed, a strategy critics call risk-shifting and defenders call legal debt restructuring ^{[1] [9] [6]}. This distinction is central to understanding both the legal reality and the political rhetoric: corporate reorganizations can leave an individual’s personal finances intact while imposing losses on creditors and investors ^[6].

4. Specific, oft-cited cases and public memory

Reported examples that anchor the broader count include the Trump Taj Mahal’s early 1990s trouble, reorganizations of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts in the 2000s, and later filings by Trump Entertainment Resorts tied to the Atlantic City properties; these episodes are invoked repeatedly in timelines and congressional and media accounts of Trump’s business history ^{[8] [3] [6]}. Sources differ on whether a given corporate filing should be treated as a separate “bankruptcy” for purposes of political shorthand or journalistic summary, producing the variation between four and six in public discourse ^{[10] [11]}.

5. How to report the number responsibly: nuance over sloganeering

A responsible report therefore distinguishes three points: Donald Trump did not declare personal bankruptcy (a fact consistently affirmed in the sources), multiple Trump-controlled companies used Chapter 11 protection several times, and the varying counts (four versus six) reflect definitional choices about whether to aggregate related corporate cases or count each filing separately ^{[1] [9] [3]}. Analysts and fact-checkers who emphasize the six-count typically list each corporate case separately; those emphasizing four often summarize the pattern as repeated reorganizations of a single casino empire ^{[3] [4]}.

Conclusion: the concise, evidence-backed answer

The best-supported, commonly cited figure in legal timelines and encyclopedic summaries is six corporate Chapter 11 bankruptcies tied to Trump-controlled businesses between the early 1990s and the 2000s, while alternative framings report four based on different counting rules; in all accounts, Donald Trump personally never filed for bankruptcy ^{[3] [2] [5] [1]}.