Donald Trump may have salivated over the idea of a housing crash to
make some easy cash, but when the market tanked he tried to use it to
get off the hook for a major debt.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee sued Deutsche Bank to try to
get out of $40 million in personal loans he'd taken out to build Trump
International Hotel & Tower in Chicago in 2008, arguing the
financial collapse was an unexpected "force majeure," or act of God,
that negated his duties to repay the loan.
The lawsuit came just two years after Trump suggested he was rooting
for a real estate collapse so he could swoop in and buy up property at a
steep discount.
"I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in
and buy. You know if you're in a good cash position, which I'm in a good
cash position today, then people like me would go in and buy like
crazy," he said in a recording unearthed by CNN earlier this week. "If
there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know you could make a lot
of money."
The real estate mogul indicated at the time that he didn't think a
collapse was likely, however — possibly explaining why he'd decided to
build Chicago's second-tallest building in the lead-up to the
devastating 2008 crash.
"There's just tremendous amounts of money pouring in so I don't think
that's going to happen. I'm not a believer that the interest market,
that the real estate market is going to take a big hit," he said at the
time.
Two years later, he wasn't grinning about the crash.
Trump had taken out a $640 million loan — including $40 million he'd
personally guaranteed — to finance the Trump Tower on the site of the
old Chicago Sun-Times building.
When the Great Recession hit, it took a big bite out of the building's
luxury condo sales. Trump asked Deutsche Bank and his other creditors
for more time to pay back his loans. When they denied an extension to
the billionaire, he sued.
According to court documents obtained by the Daily News, Trump cited a
"force majeure clause" in the original contract — one that said acts of
God and impossible-to-predict circumstances let him out of the
requirements. He wasn't just looking to get off the hook — Trump also
asked for $3 billion in damages, claiming the company's "predatory
lending practices" had hurt his reputation.
The suit was likely a ploy to gain better leverage at pushing his
creditors for more time, and Deutsche Bank wasn't having any of it.
In a counter-suit, the German conglomerate fired back that "Trump is no
stranger to overdue debt" and called his lawsuit "classic Trump" after
highlighting his casino's bankruptcies.
The two sides ended up settling on an agreement in 2010 that gave Trump
a five-year extension on paying the money back. Deutsche Bank has since
issued other loans to the billionaire.
That property generated more than $5 million in rent and $742,000 from
condo sales since 2015, according to Trump's recently filed personal
financial disclosure form.
While Trump wanted an out from his financial obligations, he wasn't so keen on letting others off the hook.
When the New York Times asked him in 2008 whether he'd give people who
bought his Chicago condos the same out he was asking for from the
courts, Trump said no. "They don't have a force majeure clause," he
argued.
Trump's campaign didn't respond to a request for comment on his
Deutsche Bank suit. But he put out a statement clarifying his 2006
remarks Tuesday.
"I am a businessman and I have made a lot of money in down markets, in
some cases as much as I've made when markets are good. Frankly, this is
the kind of thinking our country needs — understanding how to get a good
result out of a very bad and sad situation," he said in a statement.
Hillary Clinton's campaign has beaten on Trump for days for his comments, seeming to root for the collapse.
"When Trump got his wish for a housing crash, millions of Americans
lost their homes. This guy can't be president," Clinton's campaign
tweeted Tuesday.
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