Could Donald Trump’s Dock Battle With Mar-A-Lago Neighbors Cost Him Millions In New York Taxes?

Revelations about President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence may cost him millions in state income tax if the New York Department of Revenue takes them seriously. 

A story in the Washington Post by Manuel Roig-Franzia maintains that the President’s claim of Mar-a-Lago as his permanent residence violates agreements that he made when he converted Mar-a-Lago from a private residence to a club.

Under the agreement, President Trump is only allowed to live at Mar-a-Lago for three non-consecutive seven day periods. Mr. Roig-Franzia interviewed attorney Glenn Zeitz who indicated that the agreement was “a substantial and serious potential legal impediment” to the President using Mar-a-Lago as his voting address.

Original article in The Washington Post.

Under fire, President Trump drops his Mar-a-Lago dock plan — for now

President Trump has temporarily withdrawn a controversial dock proposal at his Palm Beach resort that had raised larger questions about the legality of the change of his official residency from New York to Florida.

The decision, which was disclosed in a letter sent to the Palm Beach mayor and town council on Monday, comes three days after The Washington Post published a story that outlined assertions by local attorneys who argue that agreements Trump entered into with the town prevent him from living at the resort, and may have precluded him from legally registering to vote in Florida…

…Glenn Zeitz, a Trump critic who owns a winter home in Palm Beach, said Tuesday in an interview that he interpreted the vague wording of the letter as an attempt to not directly link a decision to pull back the proposal to the ongoing pandemic because that rationale might conflict with Trump’s stated desire to reopen the economy and for businesses to begin resuming normal activities.

“The proposal was noticed during the crisis and it was going down the train track, and it got derailed by the facts and the law,” Zeitz said. “It’s a lawyer practicing semantic surgery. I have to believe that the letter is written so as to not have to put in a letter that the coronavirus is the reason.”

Original article from The Washington Post.

Trump made Florida his official residence. He may have also made a legal mess

… More than two decades after cutting his deal for the club, Trump still wants his dock. He asked for it in 2018, saying that it was necessary “for safety and security reasons to protect the President of the United States and his family.” His attorneys went on to say that the request had been endorsed by the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

That last part grabbed the attention of attorneys for Mar-a-Lago’s neighbors, who feared the appearance of rowdy booze cruises, loud boats and damage to precious underwater coquina rocks that they believe would be destroyed by dredging to deepen the channel and allow boats to pull up to the dock. The Palm Beach sheriff had weighed in to back the dock plan, citing similar security concerns. But the attorneys had seen nothing from either the Secret Service or the Coast Guard. A person familiar with the submission said the Secret Service and Coast Guard provided only oral endorsements. The Secret Service and Coast Guard declined to comment.

Stambaugh and others managed to stall the dock plan when it came up on the council’s agenda in February 2019. Among those who weighed in against the proposal — and has been fighting behind the scenes and helping develop legal tactics ever since — was Glenn Zeitz, a pugnacious Philadelphia-area attorney who owns a home in Palm Beach and had defeated Trump in the mid-1990s in an eminent domain lawsuit related to one of Trump’s Atlantic City casinos…

Original article from The Washington Post.