Why couldn’t you have chosen tennis, Donny?
AS WE all know, former US president Donald Trump has been going through some trying times. There literally seem to be new challenges every day.
Apart from hordes of ex-staff turning on him, he has been accused of insurrection, espionage and defeating the ends of justice. On top of this, he has lost consecutive cases, one for defamation and sexual harassment and another for financial fraud.
In the first, he had to cough up some $91 million and in the latter, he has been forced to find $464m in bond money. Of all his cases, the $464m one probably gives him the biggest headache.
To the man in the street, this case sounds long-winded and technical. But on closer examination it is fascinating, with at its source something you would never expect – the game of golf.
Now, everybody knows Trump is a conman. He started with newspapers and financial magazines, where he lied that his assets were worth $8 billion, when they weren’t anyway near that.
He just got his accountant, Allen Weisselberg, to do some mathematical gymnastics, inflating the prices of his properties by adding a few zeros; lying that his apartment in Trump Towers was three times its actual size and falsifying the value of Mar-a-Lago, which has a by-law attached that doesn’t allow it to be sold as a residential property.
The drama started when he bought land adjacent to Mar-a-Lago and put a golf course on it. This was 1999 and he named the course Trump International. Shortly before opening, he played a round with a few new members and after making the best score, declared this the “official club championships”.
So he became the first club champion. He loved this. And so began his quest for golfing greatness.
He then started scouring the US, Scotland and Ireland for bankrupt and decrepit golf courses. He would buy and renovate them in the hope that they would garner membership fees of $200 000 a year per golfer. As with most of his other businesses, this failed. But the hunger to be recognised as a golf tycoon didn’t desert him.
By 2011 he had 10 golf courses, which he bragged were the best. However, the world governing body, the PGA, ignored several requests from him to host any of their tour events. And so, he did what a Trump would do. He bought a course where a PGA tournament already took place – Doral in Florida.
At that point this course was in a mess and bankrupt. Up stepped Donald and he paid $150m for it.
But he still had to put in his gilded furniture, chandeliers and waterfalls, and this would set him back another $250m. But, as usual, he did not have the cash or assets to attract a favourable loan.
So, this is where the conspiracy comes in. He got Weisselberg to use the fake financials he had sent to magazines, to banks. Now in the US, it is okay to deceive the media, but if you lie to a bank, it’s a crime.
He then secured good interest rates from Deutsche Bank. He repeated the ploy two more times and got away with it. Well, that’s until he became president and came under public scrutiny.
And that came from Letitia James. The New York Attorney-General commenced an investigation alleging that Trump had engaged in financial fraud by presenting “vastly disparate property values to potential lenders and tax officials”.
The civil trial was held between October 2023 and January this year. Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump “engaged in a years-long conspiracy with top executives at his company to deceive banks and insurers about the size of his wealth and the true value of several of his properties”, forcing him to fork out some $464m, including interest.
As Donald Trump does, he will now be taking the case on appeal, but before doing this, he will have to raise that $464m bond.
This in itself has become a major issue because Trump claims he does not have the money or cannot raise a loan for this.
And no businessman (at the time of writing) has come forward to assist or even lend him the money.
Trump is now petrified that James is going to attach his properties.
He doesn’t want this because he could be further exposed, as many think his shareholding in these properties is much lower than he professes.
So that’s the story of Donald Trump. It’s a sad tale, equally about golf as it is about banking. He got hitched after he proclaimed himself winner of his own club champs at Trump International in 1999.
He then proceeded to continue to cheat the system by appointing himself club champion at several of his other courses around the globe. But as all golfers know, just when you think you’ve beaten the game, it comes back to bite you. And in Trump’s case the Golfing Gods were not kind – striking back “bigly” to the tune of $464m.