”It`s a legal issue. It`s a contract,” Kirk Blouin, city manager of Palm Beach, told PEOPLE. ”We have lawyers who prepared [the user agreement] for the city. obviously, it was prepared many, many years ago. So, because it is a legal issue, it is under consideration. In 1985, Mar-a-Lago was bought by Donald Trump for about $10 million. [6] [7] His then-wife, Ivana Trump, was accused of running the property. [8] Trump retained Mar-a-Lago through his two divorces. His family maintains private quarters in a separate and cordoned off area of the house and property. [9] Trump frequently visited him as President of the United States[10] and called him the Winter White House and his ”Southern White House.” Mar-a-Lago has been used to host meetings of President Trump and international leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In September 2019, Mar-a-Lago became the primary residence of Donald and Melania Trump, who previously had their primary residence in New York City. [11] [12] Author Laurence Leamer, a Palm Beach resident who wrote the 2019 book ”Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump`s Presidential Palace,” said this week that he did not expect the city to challenge Trump if he chose to live there. He said Trump liked to mingle with club members and guests and let them ”caress his ego,” something he wouldn`t get elsewhere. On the 30th. In March 2019, Yujing Zhang, a Chinese citizen, was arrested and charged with illegally entering the premises and making false statements to federal law enforcement. [77] West Palm Beach attorney Reginald Stambaugh, who represents Trump`s neighbors, tried in December to convince the council that Trump`s life at Mar-a-Lago would violate that agreement, raise safety concerns, and devalue surrounding properties. Neighbors and others who wanted the city to prevent Trump from living at his Palm Beach club had used the 1993 agreement as a clear argument for why he couldn`t live there. Mar-a-Lago has a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Center (SCIF) for communication with the White House Situation Room and the Pentagon.
[35] The Mar-a-Lago crowd, an informal council organized by President Trump that oversees many of the Department of Veterans Affairs` activities, bears the club`s name and meets frequently at the club. [36] Instead of using the agreement to determine whether Trump can legally live in Mar-a-Lago, Randolph wrote, the city should pay attention to its zone code, which allows ”gullible employees” to live in private clubs. Aside from neighbors` arguments that Trump is not allowed to live in Mar-a-Lago, based on a usage statement he signed with the city in 1993, Palm Beach Town attorney John Randolph concluded that the deal did not explicitly prohibit the ex-president from living at the club, city manager Kirk Blouin told the Daily News this week. Trump appears to have already broken that deal during his tenure, with HuffPost reporting that he violated the seven-day limit at least three times during his four-year term. In 2018, President Trump visited Mar-a-Lago eight times before the seasonal shutdown in May. Meanwhile, he had a summit meeting with Shinzō Abe on April 17 and 18. [59] These findings come after John Marion, a lawyer representing Trump and Mar-a-Lago, wrote to Randolph to defend the idea that the former president had the right to maintain a residence at the club. ”President Trump is the president of Mar-A-Lago Club, LLC. and as a senior executive, he oversees the property,” Marion said. He is therefore a bona fide employee within the meaning of the express provisions of the city`s zoning by-law. As such, separately and apart from all the other reasons mentioned above, he clearly has the right to live there in accordance with the city`s own zoning regulations. Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress of post Cereals, paid for the construction of the house with her husband Edward F.
Hutton. She hired Marion Sims Wyeth to design it and Joseph Urban to design the interior design and exterior decorations. [14] [15] Post spent $7 million (equivalent to $103 million in 2019) and was completed in 1927. [16] On April 4, 2017, prior to President Xi`s visit, ShareAmerica, a website of the U.S. State Department`s Office of the International Information Program, published a blog post describing the history of Mar-a-Lago. [49] On 5. In April 2017, the U.S. Embassy in the U.K.
shared excerpts from the original blog post on its own blog, and the U.S. Embassy in Albania`s Facebook page shared the original post. [50] [51] On April 24, 2017, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and ethics observers such as former Ambassador Norman Eisen questioned the use of official government resources that promote Trump`s private property. [52] [53] [54] [55] By April 25, 2017, ShareAmerica and the two U.S. embassies in the United Kingdom and Albania had eliminated their respective positions. ShareAmerica replaced its contribution with the following statement: ”The intent of the article was to inform the public about where the president received world leaders. We regret any misperception and have deleted the message. [49] The City`s solicitor will then provide City Council with a legal opinion on whether or not the agreement is binding. The deal, Randolph wrote in the memo, ”did not contain a direct ban on former President Trump staying at the club.” Some islanders don`t like it and have called on the city`s leaders to enforce the 1993 agreement. The City Council will review the legality of the 1993 agreement signed by Trump, which essentially states that not all guests are allowed to stay longer than three weeks a year. Donald Trump learned of the property after unsuccessfully trying to buy and combine two apartments in Palm Beach for his family. He offered the Post family $15 million for this, but they refused. Trump bought the land between Mar-a-Lago and the ocean from Jack C.
Massey, the former owner of KFC, for $2 million,[24] said he intended to build a house that would block the view of Mar-a-Lago beach. The threat reduced interest in the property, and Trump got the property in 1985 for $7 million. [25] [22] Various sources have estimated the total cost of the purchase at about $10 million. [7] [26] [27] Trump then renovated the property, adding a 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) ballroom. [23] The club also has five clay tennis courts and a waterfront pool. In the early 1990s, Trump ran into financial difficulties. While negotiating with his bankers, he promised to divide Mar-a-Lago into smaller properties, which alarmed Palm Beach residents; therefore, the city council rejected his plan to do so. Trump turned the property into a private club instead.
[Citation needed] The Trump Organization told the Huffington Post: ”There is absolutely no document or agreement prohibiting President Trump from using Mar-A-Lago as his residence.” ”They don`t want to have anything to do with Donald Trump,” author Laurence Leamer told MSNBC. ”A lot of members don`t go there very often because it`s a very discouraged place.” This meeting, scheduled for next Tuesday, is expected to include a presentation by John C. .
