The Trump Organization – Page 15

Donald Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, is hemorrhaging money, especially at its golf resorts, according to a report from Forbes:

“The Trump Organization, which has … declared losses of roughly $90 million at its European golf resorts, according to an analysis of records from Ireland and the United Kingdom. Since the president opened his Aberdeen course in 2012, he has lost $15.5 million. Business has been even worse at Turnberry, which Trump bought in 2014 for $65 million. Despite investing an additional $75 million or so to fix up the property from 2014 to 2018, the place piled up losses of $58 million, according to an analysis of financial reports. The 2019 figures, first reported by the Scotsman, bring Turnberry’s total losses to $61 million since 2014.”

All of Trump’s golf resorts — which were once a major source of revenue for the company — have seen dramatic declines since Trump took office:

For example, at the 643-room Trump National Doral in Miami, Forbes notes:

“Revenues dropped to $87.5 million in 2016, and profits slid to $12.4 million. After election night, the resort lost 100,000 booked room nights, according to someone familiar with the business. Revenue plummeted to $75.4 million in 2017, and profits sank to $4.3 million.”

This latest bad financial news comes on top of the losses suffered by Trump’s hotels during the coronavirus pandemic, which has also negatively impacted the Trump Organization’s bottom line, as was first reported earlier this year:

“Seventeen of Trump’s clubs and hotels have closed. The remainder of Trump properties are operating at a fraction of their normal capacity: hotels running with restaurants closed, golf clubs operating with clubhouses shut down, and golfers warned not to share carts or touch the flagsticks.”

Simply put, not only is Donald Trump and his company facing serious legal problems in the very near future, there’s a very real possibility that the Trump Organization could be on the verge of bankruptcy.

Looks like karma is starting to catch up with the ex-president in a major way.

Prosecutors in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. have turned their focus to Allen H. Weisselberg, who has served as chief financial officer of the Trump Organization for decades, and are clearly hoping to get him to turn state’s evidence and implicate former President Donald Trump, along with members of his family, according to a report from the New York Times:

“The increased focus on the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, could step up pressure on him to cooperate with the investigation if the prosecutors unearth evidence of wrongdoing on his part. He has served as the Trump Organization’s financial gatekeeper for more than two decades and could be a vital source of information for the government about the inner workings of the company.
“In recent weeks, the prosecutors working for the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., have been interviewing witnesses who know Mr. Weisselberg and have asked at least one witness about Mr. Weisselberg’s sons, Barry and Jack Weisselberg, according to two of the people with knowledge of the matter.”

The idea of placing Weisselberg under the microscope in an effort to convince him to flip on his boss makes perfect sense, according to the former president’s niece, Mary:

Weisselberg started working for my grandfather at Trump Management in Brooklyn in 1971 and most likely followed Donald to Manhattan in order to keep an eye on him. He knows close to everything.
— Mary L. Trump (@MaryLTrump) March 2, 2021

Additionally, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman noted that Weisselberg is a key to Vance’s investigation because he “knows where all the bodies are buried.”

Weisselberg is 73 and has been working for the Trump Organization since Trump's father was in charge. Knows where all the bodies are buried and is not going to go to jail to save Trump.
Prosecutors Investigating Trump Focus on His Finance Chief https://t.co/cQvEhqe1zv
— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) March 2, 2021

Would Weisselberg be willing to sing like a proverbial canary? According to Elie Honig, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, we already know that the Trump Org. CFO is indeed willing to cooperate to make sure he isn’t charged with the Donald’s crimes:

Reminder that Weisselberg was given immunity for his testimony in the SDNY in 2018. That suggests (1) he was willing to testify, and (2) SDNY thought it was worth giving him a pass to get his testimony. https://t.co/tA7YEdNk0x
— Elie Honig (@eliehonig) March 1, 2021

And then there’s this from Andrew Weissmann, who was one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s top deputies in the Russia investigation:

Breaking Re Trump NY Criminal Investigation: The CFO is always a key person to flip. He can be a fall guy for the CEO or a cooperator, but not both. Will Weisselberg become the next Andy Fastow?
via @NYTimes https://t.co/TqJpBbVqFV
— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)🌻 (@AWeissmann_) March 2, 2021

The sudden turn to Weisselberg comes just a week after Vance’s office finally obtained eight years of Trump’s tax returns, along with “millions of pages” of his financial records. Those documents are suspected of containing evidence that Trump and his company committed fraud on an unprecedented scale.

For his part, the former president whined in response to the Manhattan D.A. getting his tax returns:

“For more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I’ve ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S.”

However, if Trump has done business by the books and committed no crimes, why did it take the Supreme Court to wrest control of his tax returns away from the Trump Organization? An innocent man would never fight so doggedly to keep such information private. Only a crook with something to hide would go to such lengths.