Dump Trump? Kicking him off NYC golf course may not be easy
Donald Trump has a rich history of fighting back when he’s down and making others pay, and that’s exactly how he intends to deal with New York City over its plans to fire his company from running a city golf course in the Bronx
May 14, 2021, 2:17 PM
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Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, discusses his reaction to former President Trump’s Facebook ban being upheld and his possible return to the platform.
The Associated PressNEW YORK -- Donald Trump has a rich history of fighting back when he’s down and making others pay, and that's exactly how he intends to deal with New York City over its plans to fire his company from running a windswept city golf course in the Bronx.
That abrupt firing was part of the backlash against Trump’s businesses over his role in whipping up the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. But experts who have reviewed the city’s 566-page contract with the ex-president say kicking him off the course may not be so easy.
Trump’s son Eric sees the fight as nothing less than a stand against “cancel culture,” demanding a payout of more than $30 million from the city to get out of the deal in what could turn into a potentially costly legal battle dragging on for years.
“They can’t throw him out so easily,” says John Ray, a lawyer with experience in public contract disputes who noted that the Bronx deal gives the famously litigious Trump plenty of room to protest. ’’It protects his rights to stay there and run the place.”
Geoffrey Croft, president of watchdog NYC Park Advocates, predicts: “The taxpayers are going to get screwed.”
In response to questions from The Associated Press, the city referred to legal filings insisting Trump's actions leading up to the riot caused a “plain and irrefutable” breach of the contract and that the Trump Organization's last day running the course will be Nov. 14.
Area landscaper and sometime Trump course golfer Sean DeBartolo, who often drives past the hillside sign spelling out “TRUMP LINKS" in giant stones, says he could offer a temporary solution: Fill in those letters with sod and wait for tempers to cool.
“Worst-case scenario, it’s only going to cost a couple of thousand,” says the owner of DeBartolo Landscaping in nearby New Rochelle. “It’d be three guys and it’d be done in a day.”
The Trump Organization has been reeling after the Capitol riots, with the PGA of America canceling a tournament at one of his New Jersey courses, banks refusing to lend to him and brokers refusing to help find companies to fill retail and office space in his buildings. The hits come as prosecutors pore over his tax returns and big debts loom.
But Trump likes a good fight. And anyone doubting that he can’t emerge victorious when he seems washed up should talk to junk bond investors and shareholders in his Atlantic City, New Jersey, casinos, who lost hundreds of millions as he drove them into bankruptcy several times starting in the early 1990s and yet managed to pull out an estimated $80 million for himself.
In 2008, Trump defaulted on a giant Deutsche Bank loan for his Chicago skyscraper, but then sued the bank for “predatory lending” and got it to forgive much of that loan and hand over more than $300 million in a series of new loans.
And after getting blocked from building dozens of homes on golf courses in New York’s Westchester County and outside Los Angeles, Trump somehow managed to win more than $40 million in tax breaks for agreeing not to develop the properties despite claiming in separate documents to tax authorities that they were worth a fraction of that. The New York attorney general is investigating whether Trump illegally manipulated the values to gain breaks.
The city isn’t the only Trump partner who might be forced to pay up.
Real estate giant Vornado wants to sell two office buildings it owns with Trump — one in New York, another in San Francisco — but finds itself scrambling after potential buyers who didn’t want to be seen enriching the ex-president balked at a deal. One solution Vornado has considered: Buy Trump out of his stake, according to The Wall Street Journal, handing the weaker of the two partners a potential cash infusion of more than $700 million as he faces a series of deadlines to pay off debt over the next few years.
