By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
Their consensus: Trump is a master grifter, who uses bullying and arrogance as negotiating methods, before ending the relationship by withholding payments and making contractors settle for far less by threatening them with litigation – knowing the cost of litigation would eat up most of the money in the dispute.
And frequently, these exploited contractors were left ruined after the Taj went bankrupt in 1991, the AP found.
One contractor whose company did $1.3 million in paving work ended up with one-third that amount. Atlantic Plate Glass installed walls of glass and was screwed out of $1.1 million. Molded Fiber Glass sued Trump for the $3 million it took to install the Taj's famous onion domes, and ultimately settled for $1 million. A marble supplier was owed $3.9 million, and after he settled for 30 cents on the dollar, he went bankrupt.
Even the guy who was owed $232,000 for putting up the bathroom partitions had to lay off his brother after Trump reneged.
In hindsight, it seems so predictable: By the time the Taj opened in April 1990, Trump owed $70 million to 253 contractors. Within months, he was already missing debt payments to his investors, who had bought $675 million in junk bonds (at 14 percent interest) to finance the $1 billion Taj disaster.
Many of the contractors sued, but time ran out on collections in July 1991, when the casino went bankrupt.
The Full Story (July 4, 2016)
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