Marjorie Taylor Greene has not disclosed her money for the book “Trumpworld”

MAGA agitator Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently recently failed to report any income from the book she published late last year, thus entering an ethical gray area.

The memoirs entitled MTG-2, describes the congresswoman’s time in Washington and was published by Winning Team Publishing, a company founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Sergio Gor, known to insiders as the “Mayor of Mar-a-Lago.”

The company distributes books by right-wing influencers like Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and even former President Donald Trump. Winning Team is currently selling a package that includes Trump’s coffee table book and other signed freebies for $999 apiece.

Greene’s book is much more affordable — $30 for the regular edition, $49.99 for signed copies. But the personal financial disclosure Greene filed with the House this spring makes no mention of the book, “Winning Team” or a licensing agreement.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Greene’s office indicated that everything was above board.

“The book deal with Congresswoman Greene was reviewed and approved by the House Ethics Committee, and there were no reportable financial activities in 2023,” Greene’s office wrote.

That could only be true if Greene received virtually no royalties from book sales in 2023, since the ethics committee’s guidelines require members to disclose ownership interests in intellectual property valued at more than $1,000 or with income exceeding $200.

It’s entirely possible that Greene’s memoir didn’t sell well enough last year to make money. Members of Congress aren’t allowed to receive advances on royalties, so they rely on profits from copies sold. Greene’s book came out in late November and has only a handful of reviews on Amazon from before the new year.

But even then, congressional ethics experts expect more transparency.

“Even if she has not received royalties, to my knowledge she is required to disclose the royalties she expects in some form,” Robert Maguire, vice president of research and ethics at the Washington-based watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, told The Daily Beast.

The House Ethics Committee has previously issued confusing guidelines about whether members of Congress must disclose licensing agreements in addition to royalties paid, which can leave members confused about how to comply with the rules.

When The Daily Beast reported last year that Rep. Lauren Boebert had failed to disclose royalties from her books, Boebert’s spokeswoman said she had not yet made any money from her deal and presented evidence that the committee had advised her not to disclose more, advice that contradicted other Ethics Committee guidelines.

“Part of the problem may be conflicting messages from ethics officials in Congress,” Maguire said. “But based on the rules alone, it seems pretty clear that all royalties, whether received by the member or not, should be reported in some way on the financial statement.”

In particular, one line in the instructions for this year’s disclosures states that members of Congress must disclose book deals even if they have not yet made a profit from their work.

“This includes all advances and contract payments in the form of earned income not yet received for the transfer of the intellectual property to the publisher, as well as all royalties currently owed by the publisher for completed sales,” says a paragraph on the guide’s disclosure requirements. “If a claim to future royalties cannot be determined, it is acceptable to report the value as ‘indeterminate.'”

Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit organization, told The Daily Beast that the sentence suggests that members of Congress need to reveal more than Greene has.

“I think there’s a good argument that if you have a book deal where you’re supposed to get royalties, you should say it’s not a given, even if there’s a possibility that there won’t be royalties,” he said.

Other lawmakers have taken different approaches to disclosure. Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan listed his book, published in November 2021, as an asset of “undetermined” value in his 2021 personal financial disclosure, though he also said he had not yet earned any income from it. By 2022, it had brought in somewhere between $100,000 and $1 million. Rep. Steve Scalise, on the other hand, left his 2018 book out of that year’s disclosure, but then added it as an asset that earned him five figures in 2019.

No other member of Congress is listed among the authors on Winning Team’s website. However, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, who published a book with Winning Team a few months before Greene, said she received $100,000 in royalties from the company. That amount could be money Lake has already pocketed in the form of an advance, which she could accept since she is not currently a member of Congress.

Payne stressed that it is the responsibility of members to be transparent about their book deals. “Anyone would expect the proceeds from a book sale to be disclosed here, and it is up to members to explain if there are small exceptions that preclude disclosure,” he said.

The public can at least look forward to learning more about how much money Greene is making from her book next year, as a Federal Election Commission report indicates that Greene sold several thousand dollars’ worth of copies in January.

The Tarrant County Republican Victory Fund said it paid Winning Team Publishing nearly $13,000 for a “1/27 MTG event, 400 books.”

An online registration form shows that the county party was hosting a fundraiser with Greene in Fort Worth that day and that tickets to the event, which raised more than $33,000, included copies of her book.