Trump era in Atlantic City to end with a blast Wednesday in implosion of Trump Plaza

 ATLANTIC CITY – Just before the former Trump Plaza is about to be demolished might seem like a good time to assess the legacy of the casino-hotel’s onetime operator.

Only someone’s already done that, enthusiastically praising Donald Trump’s role in the gaming industry: “The Trump Organization enjoyed tremendous success in Atlantic City, and Donald Trump has been commended for the timing of his exit from this business.”

At least that’s the view from the Trump Organization’s online history.

Others see it differently, recalling 15 years of Boardwalk bombast, braggadocio and business reversals…

…“The history of Trump in Atlantic City was pretty much over-promising and under-delivering,” said attorney Glenn Zeitz, who represented a widow in an eminent-domain dispute with the developer…

For decades Donald Trump bullied Palm Beach to get his way. Now he’s determined to make it his home.

One night in late January 1994, fireworks sparkled in the sky above Mar-a-Lago, a grand estate in Palm Beach, Fla., with a gilded ceiling, an entry gate clad in antique Spanish tiles and a dining room modeled on the room in Rome’s Chigi Palace that the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini later used as his office.

The splashy display, and opulent setting, befitted the showy sensibilities of Donald Trump, then a 47-year-old boom-and-bust real estate mogul who had been hemorrhaging money to keep up the place and had recently cut a deal with the Town of Palm Beach to convert the historic property from his residence to a private club.

But there was a little problem.

…

A new opposition group composed of several attorneys — Preserve Palm Beach Inc., which was formed in the past few days — is building a legal case to attack Trump’s residency plans.The group’s attorney, Philip Johnston, told the council Tuesday that allowing Trump to live at Mar-a-Lago could make Palm Beach a “permanent beacon for his more rabid, lawless supporters.”

Another opponent, Glenn Zeitz — a pugnacious former mob attorney in New Jersey who owns a home in Palm Beach — said in an interview that making accommodations for Trump would “set a bad precedent” for similar “use agreements” between the town and clubs, including at least one use agreement that is currently being negotiated. Decades earlier, Zeitz had defeated Trump in an Atlantic City eminent domain battle.

Original article from the Washington Post.

Mar-a-Lago neighbors to Trump: Spend your post-presidency elsewhere

Next-door neighbors of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., that he has called his Winter White House, have a message for the outgoing commander in chief: We don’t want you to be our neighbor.

That message was formally conveyed Tuesday morning in a demand letter delivered to the town of Palm Beach and also addressed to the U.S. Secret Service asserting that Trump lost his legal right to live at Mar-a-Lago because of an agreement he signed in the early 1990s when he converted the storied estate from his private residence to a private club. The legal maneuver could, at long last, force Palm Beach to publicly address whether Trump can make Mar-a-Lago his legal residence and home, as he has been expected to do when he becomes an ex-president after the swearing-in of Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

The contretemps sets up a potentially awkward scenario, unique in recent history, in which a former Oval Office occupant would find himself having to officially defend his choice of a place to live during his post-presidency….

…“There’s absolutely no legal theory under which he can use that property as both a residence and a club,” said Glenn Zeitz, another nearby Palm Beach homeowner who has joined the fight against Trump and had previously tangled with him over Trump’s attempt to seize a private home to expand his Atlantic City casino. “Basically he’s playing a dead hand. He’s not going to intimidate or bluff people, because we’re going to be there.”

A Glitch in Trump’s Plan to Live at Mar-a-Lago: A Pact He Signed Says He Can’t

Neighbors of the president say he has violated the 1993 agreement he made with Palm Beach that allowed him to convert a private residence into a moneymaking club…

… Glenn Zeitz, a New Jersey-based lawyer who is assisting Mr. Stambaugh and is not being paid by the DeMoss family, said the town had declined to enforce certain aspects of the agreement in the past on several issues, including how many days a year the president has stayed there.

In other instances, Mr. Trump has been given leeway by the town because of legitimate security concerns. Among them was the addition of a helipad for Marine One, which will be removed after he leaves office.

“As president, I think they gave him certain considerations that they felt were the appropriate thing because of his status,” said Mr. Zeitz, who encountered Mr. Trump decades ago when he represented a client whose property the then-casino owner wanted for an Atlantic City expansion.

Original article from The Washington Post

HOW DID GEORGE FLOYD DIE?

George Floyd, 46, died handcuffed on the street in the custody of police in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. An officer responding to a report that Mr. Floyd had tried to pass a fake $20 bill held him down by lodging a knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

He died shortly after lapsing into unconsciousness… Still unanswered is the question of precisely what caused Mr. Floyd’s death.

What about the autopsy commissioned by the family?

Glenn A. Zeitz, a Philadelphia trial lawyer specializing in civil rights who has worked on several cases that hinged on autopsy results, said the key question will be whether the examiners find that the cause of death was the combined effect of any pre-existing heart condition and coronary artery disease coupled with the restraint by the police and any potential intoxicants in his system — or whether Dr. Baden will find something else.

“He is going to be looking for the things that are consistent with compression to the neck, which causes traumatic asphyxiation or strangulation,” he said. “This is about how this man died, who is responsible and whether the charges are the right charges.”

It remains to be seen whether the private autopsy results will differ substantially from those in the official report.

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.

Who Killed Jimmy Hoffa is up for debate

‘The Irishman’ tells us who killed Jimmy Hoffa. A lawyer with a secret trove of documents says the movie got it wrong.

To get to the big man, you had to get past the toughs.

Guys with calloused hands and hard-set jaws, massed there at the bar in the Rickshaw, a mob hangout with a pagoda on the roof, across from the racetrack in Cherry Hill, N.J.

“What are you doin’ here?” they asked, not in a welcoming manner, when the young lawyer walked in.

“I’m here to see Frank,” said the lawyer, a 33-year-old with hangdog eyes and a perfect part named Glenn Zeitz.

“It was like the Red Sea parted,” Zeitz, now semiretired, recalled one recent morning, looking back on that day 40 years ago.

The big man came into view at the other side of the bar, a glass of red wine in his hand, a 6-foot-4 inch, 250-pound hulk. Frank Sheeran — known as “Big Irish,” the Teamsters honcho, the legend.

Sheeran only wanted to know a few things before hiring his new lawyer. Was Zeitz mostly a skirt chaser or mostly a drinker? Zeitz answered by ordering a Crown Royal. The other thing he wanted to know is whether Zeitz would promise to pound two ideas into the heads of the feds and the public: Sheeran would never be a rat and, most important, he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, his boss, the Teamsters powerhouse.

Now, Sheeran’s longtime lawyer and friend, Glenn Zeitz, told the Washington Post that Sheeran was not the killer.
Read the full article on the Washington Post

Oscar nominations fuel new scrutiny of ‘The Irishman’ as lawyer speaks out

Sheeran was a Philadelphia truck driver, who befriended Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. According to Sheeran, in July 1975 he fatally shot the infamous mobster.

“I’m clearly stating he did not shoot Jimmy Hoffa,” the 72-year-old semi-retired attorney told the Post. “Frank from the very beginning wanted to mon­etize his story.”
Read the full article on Fox News