Sen. Bernie Sanders with two staffers at Hero’s Welcome in North Hero. Photo taken on the day Sanders closed on the purchase of his lakefront home. Credit: Gabby Timms

Thanks in large part to his successful foray into authorship, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made more than $1 million in 2016. That’s according to his latest U.S. Senate financial disclosure, which he filed Sunday after receiving a 20-day extension.

The most notable source of income: book royalties. Sanders received a $795,000 advance for his best-selling book, Our Revolution. He got another $63,750 for his forthcoming Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, a book aimed at young readers coauthored with Kate Waters. And he took in $6,735 in royalties for his 1997 memoir Outsider in the House.

That’s more than $865,000 for peddling his working-class ideas. Not bad.

Then there’s the $2,521 Sanders earned last year in royalties for his 1987 spoken-word folk album, We Shall Overcome.

Senate rules do not require members to report their government salaries on their annual disclosures, but all rank-and-file members earn $174,000 a year. That, combined with the more than $878,000 Sanders reported in his filing, puts the democratic socialist’s 2016 payday at roughly $1,052,000.

In addition to his take-home pay, publisher St. Martin’s Press paid all expenses on Sanders’ national book tour last November and December, which took him to 12 states and the District of Columbia. Disclosure of the total was not required, and Sanders did not provide it.

Then there’s a batch of retirement mutual funds held in the name of his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders. The Senate only requires disclosure within broad dollar ranges — for instance, $15,001 to $50,000. So it’s impossible to ascertain the exact value of the retirement funds, but they are worth somewhere between $192,000 and $815,000.

In the “liabilities” category, Sanders lists two mortgages: one worth between $250,001 and $500,000, the other worth between $100,001 and $250,000.

Sanders’ most infamous real estate transaction — his 2016 purchase of a $575,000 lakefront home in North Hero — has been concealed behind an entity named the Islands Family Trust. In his Senate filing, Sanders discloses that he is “a co-trustee in a family trust created when we bought a summer home.”

Because the Senate’s disclosure standards are comfortably loose, we know much less about our junior senator’s finances than we would if he, say, released his tax returns.

But he doesn’t do that. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders released only a summary of his 2014 tax return. As the fact-checking website PolitiFact noted, of all the candidates for president last year, “Sanders’ releases are less extensive than anybody’s but Donald Trump.”

Good company.

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John Walters was the political columnist for Seven Days from 2017-2019. A longtime journalist, he spent many years as a news anchor and host for public radio stations in Michigan and New Hampshire. He’s the author of Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives, published by Plaidswede Press.

27 replies on “Walters: Bernie Sanders Made More Than $1 Million in 2016”

  1. I was looking for where he claimed the killary payoff. I suppose that went into a “foundation” or “trust,” so he doesn’t have to disclose it?

  2. He made over 1 million and paid 13% income tax; however he feels the rest of us should pay 90%. Is that the new math? I wonder if the “$600,000.00 payoff to get out of the election ” beach house was included in that salary?

  3. If only Bernie would just speak to Seven Days he could defend himself against the snarky undertones of this article but alas, he just won’t speak to poor Seven Days. I will organize a vigil for Seven Days. When is good for everyone?

  4. Seven Days, report the facts without the snark and speculation. You just fuel the crazies. Anyone lumping DT and Bernie together clearly doesn’t understand them or the issues.

  5. I’m glad that there is one news outlet in Vermont that is willing (sometimes) to treat Saint Bernard the same way Vermonters treat all other politicians, i.e., as the natural born hypocrites and liars that they are, and not merely repeat the Our-Dear-Leader-Can-Do-No-Wrong-And-Can-Never-Be-Criticized religion that substitutes for thinking in this state.

    It’s simply amazing to me that the same people will scream like stuck pigs (and rightly so) because Trump will not release his tax returns, and then scream like stuck pigs because one 7D columnist suggests that Bernie should release his. Absolutely ridiculous.

  7. Where does he disclose the pay off from the Clinton Fund for not resisting the DNC’s plot to fuck him out of a primary win. Enjoy your new house one the lake as long as possible Bernie. Before you and your crook wife end up in the big house. Sell out! #timetovotethebaldguysout

  8. Bernie and his family have worked tirelessly for the people of VT.Seven Days has been muck raking Bernie for years. I find this to be extremely weird.Why would the ‘alternative’ newspaper of VT pick on the only national and sane voice that an overwhelming majority of Vermonters elected? in this day of declining ad revenues,you would think that an intelligent publisher would know his/her audience!

  9. He and his wife are crooks and frauds! He’s nothing more than a Trump of a different color. Populism/nationalism is a danger to a real democracy and BS and Trump peddle this crap every day and they’re both complicit in the mess we’re in today. Please retire to one of your fraudulently acquired homes (looking at you Jane the embezzler) and fade away!

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