The Maestro: Lying, Cheating, Chortling
"Landscaping, roofing. walls, painting, leaks, artworks in the -- you know, the great tapestries, tiles, Spanish tiles, the beach, the erosion."
"It's still not what it was."
"We lost a lot of the vegetation that gave Mar-a-Lago its character, [following Hurricane Frances]."
"I wasn’t there for the storm, but I’ve been told by my people there that it re-landscaped the place. There was a little flooding in some of the basements, too."
Donald Trump
"That house [Mar-a-Lago] has never been seriously damaged. I was there for all of them [hurricanes]."
Anthony Senecal, former Trump butler
"[A whopping $17 million in restorative work would have needed] dozens, maybe scores of workers [to accomplish the job]."
"If there were $17 million dollars of damage, we sure as hell [Palm Beach building department] would have known about that."
"I would have known if there was anything in the magnitude of $100,000 [in his capacity of planning administrator at the time]."
Tim Frank
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| The Mar-a-Lago Club occupies 20 acres between the Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean. The main building, completed in 1927 as a private home, has 3-foot-thick walls and is anchored to the coral reef below it, one of the reasons it has survived a number of hurricanes. Richard Graulich / Palm Beach Post |
Two weeks after Hurricane Wilma struck the area, 370 guests were welcomed at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate the wedding of Trump's son Donald Jr. The photographs taken by Getty Images show the house, its pools, cabanas and landscaping in excellent condition. This is unquestionably a valuable property, estimated by Forbes to be worth $150 million for its 110,000-square feet of distinguished buildings. Quite the investment, among many the billionaire boasts of.
But Donald Trump schemes constantly on how he can continue to bring in more money to enhance his already stuffed inventory and personal treasury. If there are any loopholes his lawyers and estate managers can explore on his behalf, they are instructed to do just that. And they do. After a series of tropical storms this real estate tycoon and presidential wannabe agreed that he pocketed insurance money meant to repair the property he claimed had been heavily damaged due to the storms.
He called in a $17 million insurance payout in 2005 for hurricane damage. He claims not to have any detailed data on the repairs that were presumably undertaken, but he does recall transferring funds from the insurance payout into his personal accounts. Under the terms of the insurance policy, he claims, "you didn't have to reinvest it". This champion of the ordinary person on the street for whom taxes are a burden he will ameliorate once he takes office in the White House, can do things no one else has the chutzpa to claim credit for.
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| Meghan McCarthy The Mar-a-Lago Club as seen Thursday Oct. 6, 2016. |
Although Trump speaks of extensive damages incurred as a result of the storms, no evidence of any large-scale damage could be found, even through the investigative skills of The Associated Press. The club's members cannot recall damage, and his former butler scoffs at the very idea that there were any. Hurricane Wilma, the final storm of a string to hit, that hurled itself through the area in 2004 and 2005 did, he said flatten trees backing the estate, but only a few loose roof tiles were detached from the house.
And Palm Beach building department records are void of permits for construction following the storm, on any measurable scale that would verify Trump's hazy account. Yet another way in which the intrepid property owner/businessman whose money-making acumen is only partially disputed through bankruptcies resulting in tax write-offs, to demonstrate his penchant for hoodwinking and barging boisterously into serious criminal malfeasance, scorning trust and legitimacy as chump stuff.
Labels: Corruption, Presidency, Trump
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 25, 2016
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