Donald Trump faced a surprisingly tough opponent when an 87-year-old investor who accuses him of cheating her took the stand in a Chicago federal courtroom on Friday.
Trump himself isn’t a defendant — it’s his business and his investors that will be on the hook if his side loses — but he was already forced to testify earlier in the week. During the combative testimony, the 66-year-old Trump attacked Jackie Goldberg, who is fighting with him over a $500,000 deposit she made on two condos in a hotel at Chicago’s Trump Towers.
During Trump’s testimony, which included eyerolls at Goldberg’s attorney Shelly Kulwin, US District Judge Amy St. Eve scolded both of them:
“You have been dancing around and boxing each other for the last 45 minutes…You’ve got to stop it.”
Trump admitted in his court testimony that he couldn’t remember key details of the 2006 deal at the heart of the dispute.
Despite being two decades older than Donald Trump, Jackie Goldberg seemed to have a more focused memory of what happened. She isn’t just any 87-year-old investor. It turns out that she’s a self-made millionaire and experienced real estate investor who haggled for a better deal before she decided to buy.
According to her testimony, in addition to receiving two hotel units, she was also promised a share of the revenue brought in by the hotel ballroom and valet parking.
“[The revenue sharing] was an important factor in (buying) the first unit and a compelling factor in the second one,” she stated.
Trump didn’t really deny that, but he said that the fine print allowed him to change the deal so that hotel unit buyers could no longer share in the revenue stream.
He feels that Goldberg is exploiting him by finding a way to back out of the hotel deal after the economic collapse in 2007. Therefore, when the sale fell through, he held onto Goldberg’s $500,000 deposit.
Poor, poor Donald Trump.
[Donald Trump photo by lev radin / Shutterstock.com ]
