The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Blumenthal-Trump grudge has history
Father-in-law and Trump sparred over Empire State Building
Richard Blumenthal isn’t the first person in his family to face the scorn of Donald Trump.
Long before the Twitter age, cloak-and-dagger meetings with Russians and Trump’s bold conquest of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. — the president has denied calling the White House a “real dump” — there was a grudge over another real estate commodity.
The prize: the Empire State Building.
The other combatants were Peter Malkin, Harry Helmsley and Leona Helmsley, from whom Trump tried to pry the Manhattan skyscraper away during a failed takeover attempt in the 1990s in which rival real estate titans sued and countersued.
Malkin is the father-inlaw of Blumenthal, Trump’s Senate inquisitor from Connecticut and frequent target of the president’s Twitter barbs. Leona Helmsley, who was dubbed the “Queen of Mean” by the tabloids, was Malkin’s longtime business partner and a fellow Greenwich resident.
“One of Leona Helmsley’s best tweets, except it wasn’t a tweet, was that she wouldn’t trust Donald Trump if his tongue was notarized,” Gerald Fields, Helmsley’s lawyer at the time, told Hearst Connecticut Media.
Blumenthal has been broadsided three times by Trump over discrepancies between the Democrat’s military record as a Marine Corps reservist during the Vietnam War and public comments Blumenthal made in the past that gave the impression he saw combat. The most recent Twitter venom from Trump was spewed last Monday, with the president calling Blumenthal a “Vietnam con artist.”
“I have no knowledge about financial dealings and litigation involving my father-in-law and Donald Trump,” said Blumenthal, who is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. “I have no idea what is in the president’s mind.”
Tower of contention
The typically loquacious Blumenthal avoided further comment about the two decades-old showdown between Trump and Malkin, who declined to comment for this story. Malkin took over his family’s real estate empire from his late father-in-law, Lawrence Wien, whose holdings once included another future Trump property, New York’s famed Plaza Hotel.
A White House spokesperson referred questions on the matter to the Trump Organization, for which a request for comment was left Thursday.
The turf war over the 102-story landmark and “King Kong” backdrop unfolded in 1994, when the Queens-born Trump acquired a 50 percent stake in the building from an investment group led by Japanese billionaire Hideki Yokoi and his daughter, Kiiko Nakahara.
The kicker is, it cost Trump nothing, with the real estate baron convincing the skyscraper’s new owners to let him handle publicity and marketing of the “The New Trump Tower,” as the Daily News coined it.
“This is a great deal for me,” Trump said at the time. “It solidifies my position as New York’s native son. I get 50 (percent) of all the upside, and I intend to make my position worth a fortune. It is my intent to take the action necessary to restore the Empire State Building to its rightful position as a world-class real estate asset.”
But there was a wrench in Trump’s grand plan for the building, part of which he was eyeing for an apartment conversion. Malkin and the Helmsleys owned a lucrative master leasehold on the building until 2075, giving them control of the entire Art Deco tower. They even got to decide the color scheme of the building’s lights.
So Trump sued the leaseholders in 1995 in an attempted eviction. He claimed that Malkin and the Helmsleys let the landmark fall into a state of decline from its former glory.
“If he could cancel the lease for the building, he now owns the building. That’s a big win,” said Edward Lehner, a retired judge who presided over the case. “God knows what would have happened then. Every imaginable kind of default he came up with: The windows aren’t good; there’s crime on the street.”
Trump’s pursuit of one of the Big Apple’s biggest trophies didn’t stop there, however. His lawsuit further claimed that the Empire State Building was infested with rats.
“It was a strong fight for a serious amount of money over a historic property,” said Henry Bubel, a top tax attorney who advised Trump’s Japanese business partners. “Certainly, (Trump) wanted it.”
Helmsley’s lawyer, Fields, said Trump claimed victory from the outset of the feud.
“He used to brag at times that he owned the Empire State Building,” Fields said. “I think it was a typical Trump transaction: trying to muscle his way in and get a settlement.”
Fields said Trump’s narrative of the skyscraper being a dump didn’t square with reality.
“There were so many horse (expletive) claims in that litigation,” Fields said.
Twitter barrage
A few months after Trump filed his lawsuit, Malkin and the Helmsleys countersued “The Donald” for $100 million in damages, accusing their rival of trying to extort money from them and trying to drive down rents in the skyscraper. The countersuit challenged Trump’s real estate chops, saying that the “deeply in debt” Trump
was consorting with unsavory business partners with ties to organized crime in Japan.
“I’m not so sure how much (Trump) equates Malkin and Blumenthal,” said Bubel, a Stamford resident. “Or he could just say Blumenthal is a liberal Democrat.”
Said Fields, “Who knows how a guy like Trump thinks?”
Blumenthal has played a prominent role in the Democratic opposition to Trump, being one of the first members of Congress to call for the appointment of a special counsel in the probe of Russian contacts with Trump’s family members and campaign confidants during last year’s election.
The former state attorney general is also at the forefront of a lawsuit against Trump that accuses the president of violating a gift prohibition from foreign diplomats and lobbyists, people the suit claims are regularly booking expensive rooms at Trump International Hotel in Washington to curry favor.
The opening Twitter salvo was unleashed by
Trump at Blumenthal in February. There was another round in May and the latest in August.
“I have never said that he has an obsession,” Blumenthal said of Trump.
Trump’s lawsuit against Malkin and the Helmsleys was thrown out by Lehner, the judge in the case. The ruling was upheld by an appellate court.
“Trump was, of course, sitting there in the background, snarling,” said Fields, Helmsley’s lawyer.
Trump sold his stake in the landmark for $57.5 million in 2002 to the Malkinand-Helmsley-controlled Empire State Building Associates. Malkin and Helmsley later became embroiled in litigation against each other over control of the skyscraper, with the Malkin family prevailing and later packaging the property into a publicly traded real estate trust with 19 other properties. Malkin’s son, Anthony Malkin, is the chairman and CEO of the Empire State Realty Trust.
“I don’t think (Trump) was happy,” Lehner said. “He made millions, but he could have millions plus millions.”