Tag: Trump organization

Trump (the Company) Asks Trump (the Administration) for Hotel Relief

New York Times logoThe president’s family business pays at least $3 million a year to the federal government for the lease on its D.C. hotel, which is all but empty because of the virus. The next monthly payment is coming due.

President Trump’s signature hotel in the nation’s capital wants a break on the terms of its lease. The landlord determining the fate of the request is Mr. Trump’s own administration.

Trump International Hotel, just a few blocks from the White House, had been a favored gathering place for lobbyists, foreign dignitaries and others hoping to score points with the president. But like most hotels, it is now nearly empty and looking to cut costs because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In recent weeks, the president’s family business has inquired about changing its lease payments, according to people familiar with the matter, which the federal government has reported amount to nearly $268,000 per month. Continue reading.

Trump Organization Seeking Loan Deferments From Deutsche Bank

The coronavirus pandemic has forced countless businesses in the United States to suspend or slow down their brick-and-mortar operations, including some owned by the Trump Organization. And the New York Times reports that President Donald Trump’s company is asking Deutsche Bank about possibly postponing payments on loans it has received.

Times journalists David Enrich, Ben Protess and Eric Lipton report, “With some of its golf courses and hotels closed amid the economic lockdown, the Trump Organization has been exploring whether it can delay payments on some of its loans and other financial obligations.”

It has been widely reported that Deutsche Bank is, hands down, the Trump Organization’s largest lender. And the Times journalists report that the company’s representatives have recently spoken with Deutsche “about the possibility of postponing payments on at least some of its loans from the bank.” Continue reading.

Mar-a-Lago forced to shut down for coronavirus ‘deep cleaning’ after multiple guests test positive

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s beloved Mar-a-Lago resort won’t be open to the public Monday. The nearly one-hundred year-old Florida mansion and members-only club will be shut down for a deep cleaning after several guests of the President later tested positive for the coronavirus. Among them, several members of the Brazilian president’s administration.

“Members were notified via email that the club will be closed Monday for cleaning,” CNN reports.

But after the deep cleaning, details of which were not made public, is complete, it will be business as usual. Continue reading.

GOP Group Targets Trump’s Children With ‘Grifters’ Attack Ads On Fox News

“It’s time someone held them accountable,” said The Lincoln Project after launching its new anti-Trump campaign.

The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans whose principal objective is to defeat the president in the 2020 election, is targeting his adult children with its new campaign.

A voiceover pretending to be Ivanka Trump explains why “daddy being president is the best thing ever” in the first episode of the group’s “Grifters” series, released Friday.

Fake Ivanka explains how the Trump family has financially benefited from being in office while news stories appear in the theme. Continue reading.

Trump Organization Paid Bribes To Reduce Property Taxes, Assessors Say

The Trump Organization paid bribes, through middlemen, to New York City tax assessors to lower its property tax bills for several Manhattan buildings in the 1980s and 1990s, according to five former tax assessors and city employees as well as a former Trump Organization employee.

Two of the five city employees said they personally took bribes to lower the assessment on a Trump property; the other three said they had indirect knowledge of the payments.

The city employees were among 18 indicted in 2002 for taking bribes in exchange for lowering the valuations of properties, which in turn reduced the taxes owed for the buildings. All of the 18 eventually pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan except for one, who died before his case was resolved. Continue reading.

Trump Pushed for a Sweetheart Tax Deal on His First Hotel. It’s Cost New York City $410,068,399 and Counting.

Our latest episode of “Trump, Inc.” looks at how the Trump family has learned “how to turn politics into money.”

In 1975, New York City was run-down and on the verge of bankruptcy. Twenty-nine-year-old Donald Trump saw an opportunity. He wanted to acquire and redevelop the dilapidated Commodore Hotel in midtown Manhattan next to Grand Central Terminal.

Trump had bragged to the executive controlling the sale that he could use his political connections to get tax breaks for the deal.

The executive was skeptical. But the next day, the executive was invited into Trump’s limousine, which ushered him to City Hall. There, he met with Donald’s father Fred and Mayor Abe Beame, to whom the Trumps had given lavishly.

Season Over, Eric Trump Fires Undocumented Workers At Trump Winery

Railing against illegal immigration and promising to build a U.S./Mexico border wall are two of the ways in which President Donald Trump fires up his base at MAGA rallies, yet media outlets ranging from the Washington Post to the Spanish-language Univision network have reported that the Trump Organization has continued to use undocumented workers in 2019 — and some of the workers who were fired from the Trump Winery in Virginia this week are alleging that they weren’t fired until extensive use had already been made of their labor.

According to Post reporters Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold, supervisors at the Trump Winery fired seven employees on Monday because they lacked legal immigration status. And two of the seven are asserting that they weren’t fired until it became convenient for the Winery, which the president’s son, Eric Trump, oversees.

One of the fired workers, Honduras native and tractor driver Omar Miranda, told the Post, “They didn’t make this decision in the summer because they needed us a lot then.” And another worker, who was interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Post, “I think they wanted to get their product out well, the grapes, to make sure that was taken care of — and once things were slow, they could fire us all.” Continue reading

Here’s why Congress wants to look inside the bank that fronted Donald Trump $2 billion

AlterNet logoJust try phoning Trump’s private banker Rosemary T. Vrablic at Deutsche Bank’s U.S. headquarters in Manhattan. Back in 2017, before too many bankers involved with Deutsche Bank started turning up dead, Trump once dared reporters to call her, saying she was the “the head” of the bank and “the boss.”

The good news is that Vrablic, 58, is alive. That is not something to take for granted when you look at two dead Deutsche Bank executives with ties to Trump, Russia and possibly at dead pedophile money man Jeffrey Epstein. One banker was found hanged in 2014 and one in November.

Vrablic’s office picked up right away when this reporter called following the Supreme Court’s decision on Dec. 13 to take up Trump’s argument that he be allowed to shield disclosure of his financial information from Congress and the New York attorney general. Continue reading

DOJ says Congress can’t stop Trump Org from taking foreign payments — despite Constitution’s emoluments clause

AlterNet logoThe so-called emoluments clause has been the center of a case that many legal scholars have been making that President Donald Trump is regularly violating the Constitution by continuing to accept payments from foreign governments via his businesses.

The Washington Post reports that an attorney from the Trump Department of Justice argued on Monday that the emoluments clause doesn’t actually prevent Trump from accepting payments from foreign governments, even though the clause specifically states that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

The only role that the Constitution gives Congress with respect to the foreign emoluments clause is to allow them,” DOJ attorney Hashim Mooppan argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Continue reading

Deutsche Bank executive who signed off on Trump loans commits suicide

AlterNet logoThe boss of Donald Trump’s personal banker at Deutsche Bank died by suicide last week on Tuesday.

Our servers are having a hard time. Here’s a backup.

1/ Thomas Bowers, a former Deutsche Bank who was the head of the American wealth-management division, killed himself in Malibu, California on Tuesday, November 19th according to the coronor’s initial report.

View the complete November 28 article from the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.