"best negotiators" source materials

8/20/2019 "Best Negotiators" source materials

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3/1/2016 UPPER WEST SIDE BUST KOS ‘ECSTASY’ DRUG RING: FEDS | New York Post


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NEWS

UPPER WEST SIDE BUST KOS ‘ECSTASY’ DRUG

RING: FEDS

Case 1:13-cr-00645-CM Document 20-5 Filed 03/05/14 Page 1 of 5


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Case 1:13-cr-00645-CM Document 20-5 F e 03 05 14 Page 4 o 5


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3/1/2016 Donald Trump's former advisor has ties to the Mafia - NY Daily News


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"Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,"

rump said, referring questions about Sater to

his staff. "I'm not that familiar with him."

According to Trump lawyer Alan Garten, Sater's

role was to prospect for high-end real estate

deals for the Trump Organization. The

arrangement lasted six months, Garten said.

he revelation about Sater's role is significant

because of its timing and directness, and

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After his 1998 racketeering conviction, Sater

spent more than a decade as an informant on


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spent more than a decade as an informant on

the Mafia and on national security-related

matters. Federal prosecutors kept even the

existence of Sater's racketeering case out of

publicly available court records for 14 years.

During that time, Sater launched a luxury real

estate development career. Sealed court

records prevented potential customers or

partners from learning about his past

association with organized crime. Sater alteredhis name, to Satter, and became a top

executive in Bayrock, a development firm that

partnered with Trump on the Trump Soho high-

rise hotel in Manhattan and other branded

luxury real estate deals.

Civil lawsuits — including a sealed case filed in

U.S. District Court in the Southern District of

New York that was obtained by the AP — have

alleged that Bayrock engaged in a pattern of

In the article, Trump distanced himself from

Sater saying: "I didn't really know him very


45/80

Sater, saying: I didn t really know him very

well."

Garten said Trump had no further interactions

with Sater at Bayrock following the revelations

of his criminal history. But a new relationship

was formed in 2010 when Trump offered Sater

office space and a chance to round up new

business possibilities for the Trump

Organization.

"The guy's been in business a long time, he's

got a lot of contacts," Garten said of Sater.

___

Read the now-superseded 2010 U.S. District

Court complaint against Sater and others:http://apne.ws/1NrYEDo

(http://apne.ws/1NrYEDo)

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•

Pretty much the same way a


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• •

Pretty much the same way a

hack grade Z movie star did

35 years ago and set in

motion the total mess we're

faced with today.

• •

Cynthia Campbell

•

But apparently your 'alarm'

didn't make a peep when youwere voting for Clinton,

Obama, and no doubt Clinton

again in 2016. Morons never

learn.

Captain VXR

•

The only good thing about Trump

potentially winning the Republican

nomination would be a landslide

victory for the Dems. Even some

• •

t at


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• •

Sting McCoy •

What did he advise Trump to do

that?

1. That Trump then went ahead and

did.

2. That the AP is opposed to.

Or is it the AP's opinion that ex-cons

should be unseen and unheard

except when they're voting forDemocrats?

• •

Huge_Heffner •

AP going to disclose the Clinton

Foundation 'contacts'?.... how about'HUMA' and her 'contacts'?.... How

about Sidney Blumenthal and his

'contacts'?


52/80

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3/1/2016 Memory Lapse? Trump Seeks Distance From 'Advisor' With Past Ties to Mafia - ABC News

Mennes he would call in a relative to “electrically shock Mr. Mennes' testicles, cut off Mr.

Mennes' legs, and leave Mr. Mennes dead in the trunk of his car.”


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Sater’s lawyer calls the allegation “an outright fabrication” made as part of a lawsuit

demanding a financial settlement.

Reached in Arizona, Mennes said the matter had been settled out of court and he could not

discuss it. Mennes said he reflects proudly on the time he worked on the Trump project, and

considers Trump a masterful businessman. Trump’s lawyer said he was unaware of theallegations in the Arizona lawsuit.

Trump’s attorney says the real estate mogul had minimal interaction with Sater on the various

joint ventures with Bayrock, and so had no reason to probe deeply into his background.

“To be clear,” Garten told ABC News, “Mr. Sater's involvement in the projects, the projects that

went forward, SoHo and Fort Lauderdale, may have existed in the beginning, but long term

there was very little involvement.”

Sater's alleged ties to organized crime were more widely publicized in December 2007 whenThe New York Times published an article featuring Sater’s ties to Trump and describing his

“tangled past.” The article reported that Sater “had been an ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ and a

key figure in a $40 million scheme involving 19 stockbrokers and organized crime figures from

four Mafia families.”

Sater told the Times that activity was in the past. “I’m trying to lead an exemplary existence,”

he said then. “Old, bad luggage is not something anyone wants to remember.”

While Sater’s criminal conviction had been publicized, much of his role in the racketeering

case had until that point been kept secret -- sealed by the government because Sater hadbecome a “cooperator” on a range of matters.

Sater’s attorney provided ABC News with a copy of a public statement from Attorney General

Loretta Lynch, whose New York office had enlisted cooperation from Sater when she was

serving as a U.S. Attorney.

“The defendant in question, Felix Sater, provided valuable and sensitive information to the


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well-known crime family.

21 Questions For Donald Trump http://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump


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well known crime family.

If you did not know of their ownership,

what does that tell voters about your

management skills?

8. You later used S&A Concrete on other

Manhattan buildings bearing your name.

Why?

9. In demolishing the Bonwit Teller

building to make way for Trump Tower,

you had no labor troubles, even though

only about 15 unionists worked at the site

alongside 150 Polish men, most of whomentered the country illegally, lacked hard

hats, and slept on the site.

How did you manage to avoid labor

What should voters make of your failure



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y

or inability to notice 150 men demolishing

a multi-story building without hard hats?

11. You sent your top lieutenant, lawyer

Harvey I. Freeman, to negotiate with Ken

Shapiro, the “investment banker” for

Nicky Scarfo, the especially vicious killer

who was Atlantic City’s mob boss,

according to federal prosecutors and the

New Jersey State Commission on

Investigation.

Since you emphasize your negotiating

skills, why didn’t you negotiate yourself?

12. You later paid a Scarfo associate twice

the value of a lot, officials determined.

Since you boast that you always negotiate

14. You were the target of a 1979 bribery



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4 g 979 y

investigation. No charges were filed, but

New Jersey law mandates denial of a

license to anyone omitting any salient fact

from their casino application.

Why did you omit the 1979 bribery

investigation?

15. The prevailing legal case on licensedenials involved a woman, seeking a

blackjack dealer license, who failed to

disclose that as a retail store clerk she had

given unauthorized discounts to friends.

In light of the standard set for low-level

license holders like blackjack dealers, how

did you manage to keep your casino

license?

conviction?



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17. Your first major deal was converting

the decrepit Commodore Hotel next to

Grand Central Station into a Grand Hyatt.

Mayor Abe Beame, a close ally of your

father Fred, gave you the first-ever

property tax abatement on a New York

City hotel, worth at least $400 million

over 40 years.

Since you boast that you are a self-made

billionaire, how do you rationalize

soliciting and accepting $400 million of

welfare from the taxpayers?

18. You say that your experience as a

manager will allow you to run the federal

government much better than President

curry favor with gambler Robert Libutti,



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who lost $12 million, and who insisted he

never asked that blacks and women be

replaced.

Why should we believe you “love” what

you call “the blacks” and the enterprise

you seek to lead would not discriminate

again in the future if doing so appeared to

be lucrative?

20. Public records (cited in my book

Temples of Chance) show that as your

career took off, you legally reported a

negative income and paid no income taxes

as summarized below:

1975

Income: $76,210

Tax Paid: $0



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Will you release your tax returns? And if

not, why not?

21. In your first bestselling book, The Ar t of

the Deal, you told how you had not gotten

much work done on your first casino, so

you had crews dig and fill holes to create a

show. You said one director of yourpartner, Holiday Inns, asked what was

going on. “This was difficult for me to

answer, but fortunately this board

member was more curious than he was

skeptical,” you wrote.

Given your admission that you used

deception to hide your failure to

accomplish the work, why should we

What These 31 Bond Girls Look Like Now Is Incredible



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and Belgium, becoming fluent in Dutch andEnglish, attending Cardozo Law School and

eventually getting into real estate.

It was in early 2005, he says, that he set

his sights on Northern Liberties. Philadel-

phia had in recent years become a target for

investment from Israeli real estate develop-

ers wary of the astronomical valuations on

land in more cosmopolitan cities. The most

notable of these was a well-connected multi-

billion-dollar firm called Isle of Capri Associ-

door to a competing spot—Pickus ended uptaking local developer Mike O’Neill’s offer to

lease a section of the old Budd Manufactur-

ing plant site he owned in North Philadel-

phia, feeling that once legislators got past

the whole building-a-casino-in-a-neighbor-

hood-where-some-third-of-all-residents-live-

below-the-poverty-line thing, they’d agree it

would make a better case for economic devel-

opment than another waterfront casino.

To which the citizens of Nicetown replied:

half a billion dollars in all—necessary to

make them look good enough to sport the

Trump name. He retained around a 25 per-

cent interest and a salary—$2 million “you

might call a salary for staying out of the busi-

ness,” bond analyst Barb Cappaert says—but

the bondholders would have financial and

management control and the exclusive right

Mayor.”Donald ended up obliging. Whether it was

because of Pickus or because Croce had once

blocked a flying hockey puck from hitting The

Donald in the face while seated beside him at

a Flyers game (The Donald thanked Croce by

pulling from his pocket a fake million-dollar

bill), The Donald met with the Mayor last De-

cember. The meeting lasted about an hour,

including the obligatory exchange of the

pleasantry “You’re fired.” Trump flew back to

but to welcome him to his assignment on

his first day of the job (not to be confused

with Apprentice Randal’s first day on the job

as captured by Mark Burnett Productions,

which occurred the following day), the con-

struction team set up a conference room full

of blueprints and renderings for Randal to

inspect.

So “overseeing,” in Dr. Randal Pinkett’s

he has never heard the name “Raoul Gold berg” but confirms that he has met with th

“Trump people.”)

When we spoke, Goldberg said Mul

Capital was also in talks to do Trump pro

ects in Boston and Seattle and that the com

pany was one of the major groups helpin

The Donald to develop a new image. Wh

he would not say was how he knows Do

ald Trump, who his investors are, or wh

his family—whom he credits for getting him

TrumpTrump


79/80

ates, which in 2003 had broken ground on

a massive skyscraper project called Water-

front Square. Goldberg’s firm, Multi-Capital

Group, knew some of the principals of Isle

of Capri, and began to consider a spot, Pier

35 1/2, owned by the group. Goldberg drove

down to the site, walked around Northern

Liberties, visited Waterfront Square. It was

the ideal place, he felt, for homebuyers look-

ing “to be bohemian while at the same time

basking in the lap of luxury.” It was ideal, in

other words, for Trump Tower Philadelphia.

Within a week, the deal was done. “We

picked up the phone,” explains Goldberg.

“We said, ‘Hello, Donald. Let’s meet tomor-

row,’ and he said, ‘Okay,’ because he always

schedules our appointments for the next

day.” For his part, Trump says Goldberg and

he aren’t quite that close. “It’s possible I met

him, because I’ve met a lot of the deal’s great

partners,” he says. “But I don’t know him.”

Trump says Raoul was recommended by his

old friend Morton “Mortie” Davis, a Wall

Street investment banker who emerged le-

gally unscathed when the bank he chaired,

D.H. Blair, was indicted on racketeering

charges in 2000.Trump agreed to go ahead with the proj-

ect. According to the renderings, the 45-story

Trump Tower Philadelphia will have the sort

of amenities you don’t even see on MTV

Cribs: an Olympic-size swimming pool with

a retractable glass roof allowing residents to

swim laps in the winter sunshine, a spa on

par with the Mandarin Oriental’s, full-time

concierge services, modules in every apart-

ment allowing residents to order room ser-

vice without speaking to anyone. The Trump

Organization will be paid a management fee,

and in the meantime, the Trump name—and

appearances from, if not The Donald himself,

Trump Organization employees Don Jr. and

Ivanka—will help woo the right people to the

job. Ivanka, for instance, negotiated with a

potential spa partner for Trump Tower Phila-delphia. Don Jr. has worked to secure a big-

name restaurateur. Goldberg claims he talks

to Don Jr. or Ivanka “every day.”

“We were asked by a very famous Phila-

delphia restaurateur who would like to place

a restaurant in the building, and we are on

very good terms, but everything we are do-

ing is novel,” Goldberg says tantalizingly. “We

wanted to be different.” (Stephen Starr says

You mean like all that economic develop-

ment that saved the impoverished residents

of Atlantic City?

Pickus had his work cut out for him. By

now the modest family man and 20-plus-year

Trump casino veteran knows North Philadel-

phia better than he knows South Jersey. Well

before he leased the site, he started attend-

ing neighborhood meetings and, to ease the

minds of residents with their NO TRUMP

signs, making concessions and compromis-

es, agreeing to award a full three-quarters

of the casino’s jobs to residents of the area

surrounding the casino, to allot millions to

rebuild a technical school that could become

a casualty of TrumpStreet, to put up three

movie screens to accompany the 3,000 slot

machines. He agreed to build seven restau-

rants in the facility and 8,000 square feet of

retail space, to accompany the gambling in

what the TrumpStreet gaming application

calls a Reading Terminal-inspired design.

“Bob just really cares about the community,

he’s sort of an activist as much as he is a mon-

ey guy,” says Pat Croce, who joined the project

in August. Croce had initially vowed to “kick

[Trump’s] ass” with a competing property atthe old Adam’s Mark site on City Avenue and

a group of investors that included the R&B

group Boyz II Men, who had familiarized

themselves with the casino industry by sing-

ing in a lot of casinos over the past decade.

When the Adam’s Mark site seemed to be a

no-go—the “community wanted a Target,”

Croce explains—he brought the Boyz, and his

money and energy, to Pickus’s team. He just

had one request: that Trump, himself, appear

in Philly to campaign for the license.

“I said, Bob, we have to get The Donald.”

Now, here is where it gets tricky. If you

are a celebrity, or a reporter, or even a low-

ly employee, it is relatively easy to get The

Donald on the phone, and certainly not an

impossibility to get a meeting in his office.

But getting Donald to leave Global GalacticHeadquarters is not so easy. (“He’s afraid

he’ll miss something,” explains Robert Slater,

who penned the authorized business biogra-

phy of Trump titled No Such Thing as Over

Exposure.)

“Um, Donald doesn’t make a lot of appear-

ances,” Pickus told Croce.

“Bob, we need to get Donald,” Croce in-

sisted. “We need him to pay respect to the

to use the TRUMP name on casinos through-

out the world.

They immediately recruited a new man-

agement team led by two casino veterans:

CEO Jim Perry, once with Illinois’s regional

empire Argosy Gaming, an affable expert on

the mass-market casino experience, and COO

Mark Juliano, a suave Caesars Palace Las Ve-

gas president who’d been a longtime fixture

on the high-roller scene, visiting Asia as often

as twice a month to wine, dine, and perform

karaoke Sinatra songs with his top clients.

Had The Donald had his druthers, his new

management team would have gone straight

to work planning a new Trump casino in

Las Vegas, or perhaps Macau. But Trump

casinos were no longer in the hands of The

Donald. And both Perry and Juliano agreed

that the Trump casino firm needed to focus

its resources on turning Atlantic City around.

But Bob Pickus, longtime general counsel to

the Trump casinos and monitor of the tide

of state gaming legalization schemes that

threatened the predominance of locales like

Atlantic City, convinced the two that there

was one market they needed to be eyeing im

mediately for a new outpost of the TRUMPname.

Philadelphia.

Philadelphia will eventually have two ca-

sinos, initially wholly devoted to slots but

at some point in the future, most observers

expect, full-service facilities offering table

games as well. Because the tax rate on these

slot parlors will be a whopping 54 percent,

Atlantic City—which taxes at less than 10 per-

cent—will still have an edge with the shrewd

gamer. But there is a customer—bored, lower-

or middle-class, probably elderly—who will be

attracted to the convenience of Philadelphia

over A.C., and especially on weekdays, Trump

casinos rely on those customers. Trump had

to secure a gaming license in Philadelphia,

Pickus reasoned, to hold onto them.

At the time, the threat of a joint venture between Trump’s former rival, casino indus-

try revolutionary Steve Wynn, mastermind

behind the Bellagio and the Mirage in Vegas,

and Wynn’s old Philly friend, politically-con-

nected-developer-to-end-all-politically-con-

nected-developers Ron Rubin, loomed large;

Wynn ended up balking at the tax rate. So

to bolster his group’s application—and, cyni-

cally, to keep customers from walking next

Global Galactic Headquarters without stop-

ping in Nicetown. Later, when Larry King

asked why he would possibly want to open

a slots parlor with “no hotel, no casino, other

than slots,” Donald chalked the whole thing

up to just the sort of political hackery and

cronyism of which he wasn’t a part. “Well

the Mayor, and the Governor, they’re all good

friends of mine, and they want me to do that,”

he said. “They want me there badly.” In fact,

Trump is widely considered to be the least

politically connected of the slot candidates.

Even his cronies were virtual!

If he had any reservations about the whole

thing, well, he related them to the only guy

who was enough of a Brand himself to really

understand.

“You sure about that location?” he called

one day to ask Pat Croce.

“Donald, I’m sure,” Croce said. And that

was all.

Down in A.C., renovations were already

well under way at Atlantic City’s three

Trump casinos when Donald Trump decided

to award the job of overseeing them to the

winner of the fourth Apprentice, 34-year-old, refreshingly normal MIT Ph.D. Randal

Pinkett.

The Trump Plaza, which had rolled back

its vacuuming schedule to every other day

because it couldn’t afford new vacuum clean-

ers, got new vacuums, and new rugs—and

in some cases got rugs replaced with tiles.

A new restaurant and a bar were fashioned

around the casino. It would never be the Bor-

gata, but it had done wonders with the $20

million-plus it was given.

Perry and Juliano were saving their big

money to renovate the Trump Taj Mahal,

the billion-dollar monstrosity that had been

so debt-ridden at its opening that Trump

famously had to convince his father Fred to

purchase $3.4 million in casino chips with-

out playing them or cashing them in, so thecasino would have enough cash on hand to

make an interest payment to his bondhold-

ers. (“I think it was a vote of confidence,”

Trump later said of his father’s bailout.)

Strapped as it was, the Taj had never reached

phase two of its construction, which called

for a second hotel tower; thanks to the reor-

ganization, the tower will finally be built. All

this was planned prior to Pinkett’s big win,

context, was tantamount to “taking a field

trip to go and see,” since not only was he

awarded the job on a TV show, but The Don-

ald had no actual authority to appoint anyone

to oversee anything at his casinos. Still, on

his first day at least, Randal certainly earned

his paycheck. Cocktail waitresses swooned

at his sight. Old ladies mobbed him. Awk-

ward-looking 14-year-old boys traveling with

their parents stood by to get their pictures

snapped next to his hulking six-foot-seven

frame. An elderly Chinese man, with tea-col-

ored teeth and eyes like he’d just seen Jesus,

asked him to sign his dollar bill, for luck.

And Randal obliged them all, warmly and

happily, gripping their hands as the germo-

phobe Donald never would. Donald notori-

ously hates crowds, hates gamblers, hates

signing autographs. On his several contrac-

tually obligated trips to Atlantic City each

year, when he bestows $100,000 “Live Like

Trump” checks as a casino promotion, he is

whisked in and out without greeting employ-

ees or high-rollers.

“No, he’s not overseeing the renovation,”

Juliano will remind the hapless Atlantic City

press corps tomorrow, trying his best notto roll his eyes. “We have an executive vice

president in charge of construction. Randal’s

part of the team.”

Later, Randal actually finds a place for

himself leading the team in charge of migrat-

ing the company’s software programs from a

motley assemblage of Lotus Notes, WordPer-

fect and Hotmail to a streamlined Microsoft

Office combination. It is not as glamorous a

job as overseeing the casino renovations, but

it is where he is needed.

He has learned a lot from Trump, he says.

“Mr. Trump taught me the value, I think, of

having your own personal brand,” Dr. Randal

Pinkett explains, sounding for a moment like

a Miss America contestant. “I think I would

like my brand to stand for getting an educa-

tion, for staying in school, for the importanceof technology.” But right now he is the vi rtual

ambassador for Brand Trump, in many ways

a much better one than Trump himself could

ever be.

Behind the proposed Trump Tower Phila-

delphia is another sort of ambassador. Born

in Belgium, Raoul Goldberg lived a transient

life, attending schools in Israel, New York

into the real estate business—is. This is pro

ably because his family was named “Gol

berger,” not Goldberg. Until 2003, when h

still went by the name Raoul Goldberger, h

was primarily known as an up-and-comi

drug trafficker who had been busted after

yearlong federal investigation for attemp

ing to ship tens of thousands of ecstasy pil

from Belgium.

Goldberger’s lawyer made the case th

young Raoul had been hurt at an early age

his parents’ divorce and stung by a breaku

with a young woman of mixed race who d

not win his family’s approval because sh

was not Jewish. Although he was sentenc

to 46 months in 2000, he was released ear

in part because of a rare liver and splee

condition called Gaucher disease that h

had been diagnosed with. After his relea

in 2002, he was supposed to be supervise

for five years, but got a special dispensatio

to move to Belgium to pursue a business o

portunity with his cousin Charles Goldber

Somewhere along the way, he took the nam

Goldberg. Before long, Raoul Goldberg ha

moved back to Manhattan and entered th

real estate business. When asked about hcolorful past, Raoul laughed and claime

the convicted Goldberger is a cousin. “I hav

38 cousins,” he said, “and many are name

Raoul.” Told by Philadelphia magazine of h

history, Multi-Capital and Trump began di

tancing themselves from him. “We were u

aware of his past,” the company said, throug

the powerhouse Rubenstein PR firm, “and h

is no longer associated with the marketing

the project and he is not a principal in th

development.”

Though Goldberg’s future role with Trum

Tower Philadelphia seems murky, it’s ha

not to admire such a quick change from

jumpsuits to pinstripes—a comeback so ma

sive and quick, it was practically Trumpian

The thing about being a virtual developis, at the end of the day, it’s hard to hold

virtual developer culpable; it’s like holdin

Kathie Lee Gifford—who, incidentally, r

tained Multi-Capital’s selfsame PR firm whe

she ran afoul of anti-sweatshop activists—r

sponsible for the seamstresses who made h

Kmart turtlenecks. To try and fashion Trum

into a player in some Philadelphia Story, o

the subject of some overarching Philade

have already virtually acquired.It is altogether a pleasant experience,

communicating one-on-one with a brand,

and it strikes me as rather selfless that The

Donald has given me and so many like me

the chance to bear witness to his relentless

positivity, his cloud-free no-fly zone for bad

vibes and bad locations and bad deals and

bad people. In truth, of course—and there is

always a truth—Trump biographer Gwenda

Blair wrote that Donald had fewer friends

phia narrative, was counter to everything his

Brand, massive and unstoppable and global

and fully Trump-centric as it was, would do.

Back at Global Galactic Headquarters, I

conducted an experiment:

“So, who were your favorite professors at

Wharton? Who were your best friends?” I

asked The Brand.

Trump


80/80

at Wharton than he’d had at military school,

and that he’d sought out real estate profes-

sors as friends, and that it was altogether a

socially awkward situation. Whatever, it is

blacked out. Gone. Eternal Sunshine of the

Spotless Mind erased.

In truth, in reality, Trump will furrow his

brow and purse his lips as if he is seriously

pondering a question, and then he will say

something like:

“Did you see this?” He pushes an opened

issue of Variety from a couple of weeks ago

toward me.

“Ratings for the finale came in second for

the week!” b

“Maureen, I had a lot of great professors

at Wharton,” The Brand tells me. “One of the

reasons I went to Wharton was because of

the great professors. I loved the Wharton

School. To this day, they are known to have

great professors.”

“Why Philadelphia?”

“It’s a place I know. I know the streets. You

have a great mayor in Philadelphia.” Brief

pause. “And when Rendell was mayor, he was

terrific, and now he’s governor.”

And it goes on this way for 32 minutes, as if

I am talking to a Donald Trump body double,

or Donald Trump as told by AskJeeves.com.

Trump has been reduced, wholly and purely,

to a Brand, a living Brand with speech pow-

ered by a world-class, state-of-the-art comput-

er algorithm that generates real, grammati-

cally correct and brand-appropriately effusive

sentences from the simplest of keywords.

(You will want, I realize, to know about the

hair, the skin, the jowls, the scowl, the pores,

and all I can offer is: I don’t know. Perhaps

it is all the earth tones and bronzed mirrors

of Trump Tower, but he simply looked blurry

and Trumplike: a ruddy complexion, tufts

of strawberry-blond hairlike substance thatseemed, if unnaturally, to cover everything.)

“So this lawsuit you’ve filed against Tim

O’Brien ... ” I attempt again, referring to the

author of the new book TrumpNation, which

The Donald claims is libelous because it es-

timates his wealth at $150 million to $250

million, as opposed to the $5 billion-plus

he makes it out to be. Yesterday The Donald

sued O’Brien and Warner Books for $5 billion

in Camden County. “How did you get to that

number, $5 billion?”

“We will show them in court how we came

up with those numbers.”

In court, lawyers may prove that The Don-

ald, The Brand, is worth $5 billion. The Don-

ald certainly seems to think that The Donald,

The Brand, is worth that much, and in No

Such Thing As Over Exposure, a financial an-alyst estimates that the Trump name adds an

“incremental $50 a square foot” value to ev-

ery building it graces. Maybe that explains all

those towers in Dubai, and the Philadelphia

plans—he is in a frenzied rush to accumulate

100 million Trump-branded square feet and

prove his case against O’Brien in court, add-

ing five billion actual dollars to the five bil-

lion virtual dollars this virtual developer will

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