In the years that followed, [Senator Hillary Clinton] was instrumental in crafting legislation addressing health care needs for first responders and called hearings to discern whether the White House and EPA intentionally misled New Yorkers on the safety of the air quality at Ground Zero. But in the immediate days and weeks after the attacks, she spent her time spearheading, with fellow New York senator Chuck Schumer, a furious lobbying effort to get federal funding for recovery efforts.
In January 2002, four months after the attacks, Clinton and Schumer stood in the White House Rose Garden, where George W. Bush thanked them for their work as he signed into law a budget containing some $20 billion in dedicated funding for New York's recovery.
A not-insignificant chunk of that federal funding, $2 billion, was earmarked for distribution by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Empire State Development Corporation. About a quarter of that – some $500 million – was explicitly set aside for helping small businesses in the area recover. Among the 8,214 early recipients was 40 Wall Street LLC, the most valuable building in Donald Trump's portfolio of properties, a skyscraper that sits less than a mile from Ground Zero. (An additional $350 million was later allocated to the same cause, bringing the total number of businesses impacted to more than 14,000.)
Trump applied for and accepted the money, despite the fact that – as he acknowledged in an interview with a German news show immediately after the attacks – the property "wasn't, fortunately, affected by what happened to the World Trade Center."
Technically, 40 Wall Street LLC (if not its parent company, the Trump Organization) did meet the criteria for the funds: It had fewer than 500 employees, and was located south of 14th Street. And, as the agency that administered the funds said, eligibility wasn't necessarily determined based on damage incurred; rather, the goal was "to keep businesses and jobs from deserting the city and moving to other States or overseas."
The Full Story (September 9, 2016)
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