{"id":28158,"date":"2020-10-13T08:38:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T16:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=28158"},"modified":"2020-10-20T00:32:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T08:32:45","slug":"funny-biz-at-trump-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/funny-biz-at-trump-international\/","title":{"rendered":"Funny biz at Trump International"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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With his golf-course-and-hotel empire bleeding cash, Donald Trump<\/strong> needed some quick moolah to juice his 2016 presidential campaign. And where did he get it? From the coffers of Trump International Las Vegas<\/strong>, according to tax documents obtained by the New York Times<\/em>. To be fair, The Donald had asked Deutsche Bank<\/strong> for a loan\u2014and been rejected. (He’s not what you’d call a good credit risk.) He said the money would go toward a golf course in Scotland<\/strong>. Bankers thought differently and were proven right. Over the next four months, Trump dumped $30.5 million in stock. He then “engineered a sudden financial windfall,” courtesy of Trump Int’l LV. In a bit of ‘structuring,’ co-owner Phil Ruffin<\/strong> funneled $21 million in a series of payments to his business partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

“In its waning days, as his own giving had slowed to a trickle, Mr. Trump contributed $10 million, leaving many people wondering where the burst of cash had come from,” the New York Times<\/em> reports. While a 1:1 Ruffin-to-Trump correlation is difficult to make, that $21 million would certainly have come in handy for the perpetually strapped Trump. As the Grey Lady puts it, “The tax records, by their nature, do not specify whether the more than $21 million in payments from the Trump-Ruffin hotel helped prop up Mr. Trump\u2019s campaign, his businesses or both. But they do show how the cash flowed, in a chain of transactions, to several Trump-controlled companies and then directly to Mr. Trump himself. The bulk of the money went through a company called Trump Las Vegas Sales and Marketing<\/strong> that had little previous income, no clear business purpose and no employees. The Trump-Ruffin joint venture wrote it all off as a business expense.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"” … It was created in 2004, as Mr. Trump and Mr. Ruffin were drawing up plans for the Trump International Hotel. Precisely what it did, though, is obscure. It had no employees, or at least no payroll. And while the Trump-Ruffin joint venture certainly spent several million dollars a year to promote its room rentals and condominium sales, that money did not go to Trump Las Vegas Sales and Marketing. The company\u2019s tax records show that it had little income over the years, posting modest profits only twice: $54,924 in 2007 and $420,756 in 2008. Then, in 2016, came a payment of $13,756,623 … The second unusual payment was for $2,685,000, divided between the two companies that hold Mr. Trump\u2019s share of the hotel and then paid out directly to him. He called it one thing for the I.R.S. (a ‘loan fee’) and another in his public filings (a ‘sponsor fee’).” There’s also a mysterious “development fee” of almost $5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked tax expert Daniel Shaviro<\/strong>, \u201cWhy all of a sudden does this company have more than $20 million in fees that haven\u2019t been there before? And all of this money is going to a man who just happens to be running for president and might not have a lot of cash on hand?\u201d Ruffin may have pulled a Howard Hughes<\/strong> and made an illegal campaign contribution, as opposed to paying for legitimate services. (Ruffin would seem to be in more potential trouble than his partner.) White House<\/strong> spokesman Judd Deere<\/strong> minimized it as “a standard business deal,” adding that “during his years as a successful businessman, Donald Trump was longtime partners with Phil Ruffin and earned whatever payments he received.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"Ruffin, for his part, passed the buck, blaming his underlings, an aide saying that \u201call tax statements go to the people who work on his taxes.\u201d As for quid pro quo<\/em>, Ruffin lobbied Trump for money for a Victorville<\/strong>-to-Vegas bullet train, a boondoggle that the previous administration had wisely nixed. Federal bonding approval was soon forthcoming. (A 2024 completion is predicted but we’re not holding our breath.) As Las Vegas<\/strong> Mayor Carolyn Goodman<\/strong> [I] said, \u201cAnybody having the president\u2019s ear genuinely\u2014not just to have a meeting and have it fall into an empty basket that is 12 miles deep\u2014I am all in favor of it.\u201d Ruffin twice comped Treasure Island<\/strong> meeting space for Trump campaign rallies and falsely claimed, \u201cYou won\u2019t hear this in the media, but Donald gave $20 million to the St. Jude<\/strong> children\u2019s home. He could have used that $20 million for television ads, but he decided to give it to the children of cancer.\u201d Trump did<\/em> orchestrate the marriage of Ruffin, now 85, to a youthful Russian model, a sore point with the mogul (Ruffin, not Trump). The two have also sniffed around Moscow<\/strong> for real estate together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruffin definitely made one untoward donation to Trump’s political career: $1 million to a super PAC that had to be deflated after improper coordination with the Trump campaign was revealed. (Ruffin got his money back.) Ruffin’s controversial infusion of 2016 capital conveniently coincides with a $10 million surge in Trump campaign funds right after Access Hollywood<\/em> released its infamous “Grab ’em by the pussy” tape, something that would have ended the career of any politician other than the teflon-coated Trump. That was also when Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> came off the sidelines (I guess we know now what Sheldon thinks of women) with $20 million plus a Las Vegas Review-Journal<\/em> endorsement. Ruffin publicly donated $1.5 million over the course of the 2016 campaign and put $1 million into the infamous Trump Foundation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for money pit Trump International, it was in red in from 2010-12, a period in which both partners subsidized it to the tune of $46 million. Its fortunes gradually improved and showed a cash reserve of $6 million in 2016, hardly the roaring success Trump has claimed but still respectable. But that’s when Ruffin started raiding the cookie jar, driving Trump Int’l to its biggest single-year loss in its history. Ruffin also guaranteed a $30 million bank loan made out to Trump. It’s thought possible that the money was for settling the $25 million Trump University<\/strong> lawsuit but far from proven. Ruffin’s own explanation for these machinations is as murky as the dealings themselves: \u201cHe had $28 million in back fees that he never collected. The hotel paid him [what] was owed to him. I don\u2019t know what he did \u2026 It was his money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"As for the Victorville choo-choo, it made unlikely political bedfellows, pitting Ruffin and then-Sen. Harry Reid<\/strong> (D) against GOP stalwarts Paul Ryan<\/strong> and Jeff Sessions<\/strong>. Trump seemed like an apostle of high-speed rail, saying in 2016, \u201cYou go to China<\/strong>, they have trains that go 300 miles an hour. We have trains that go \u2018chug, chug, chug.\u2019 And then they have to stop because the tracks split, right? We are like Third World.\u201d Added Ruffin, \u201cI mentioned it to Donald. And that would be something below his pay grade, so it would have to go to the Labor Department<\/strong> or the Transportation Department<\/strong>. \u201cHe said it sounds like a good deal, especially if it employs 80,000 people.\u201d Torture-supervisor Stephen Bradbury<\/strong>, now with the Transportation Department<\/strong>, and boss Elaine Chao<\/strong> signed off on $1 billion in federal bond sales, a sweet accomplishment for Phil if the Choo-Choo To Nowhere ever gets built. And where would the Vegas terminal be? Hard by Trump International. Understates Ruffin, “We would benefit some.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you, too, would like to make money off the Trump presidency, bet heavily on his reelection. He’s a steep\u2014and getting steeper\u2014underdog on overseas futures markets. The Washington Examiner<\/em> reports that $150 million has been wagered in Europe<\/strong>, with bets going 2-1 in favor of Joe Biden<\/strong>. The latter is given a 69% chance for victory versus Trump’s 33%. \u201cThe gap between Trump and Biden in the betting markets is getting closer in size to the one that has existed in the polls for months, but Biden\u2019s fondness for a gaffe coupled with the learnings of 2016 suggest that to write off the president would be to do so at your peril,\u201d warned OddsChecker<\/strong> spokesman Pete Watt<\/strong>. (Remember, bookies paid out prematurely in 2016, assuming a Hillary Clinton <\/strong>victory.) We agree. Like reader Mike<\/strong> Alexakis<\/strong>, we wouldn’t bet S&H Green Stamps on this election\u2014at any level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With his golf-course-and-hotel empire bleeding cash, Donald Trump needed some quick moolah to juice his 2016 presidential campaign. And where did he get it? From the coffers of Trump International Las Vegas, according to tax documents obtained by the New … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,42,26,140,37,271,119,254,31,9,100],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28158"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28413,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28158\/revisions\/28413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}