Trump Tries to Stiff Small Business – Gets Nailed for $300,000 in Attorney’s Fees

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:14 pm

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The Miami Herald reported Friday that “Circuit Court Judge Jorge Cueto, presiding over a lawsuit related to unpaid bills brought by a local paint store against the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort, ordered the billionaire politician’s company to pay the Doral-based mom-and-pop shop nearly $300,000 in attorney’s fees.”

Yes. Another example of Donald Trump stiffing those who do work for him. Not paying his debts. You know, managing money – the thing of which he says he is the master.

Apparently The Paint Spot did a job for Trump and Trump failed to make a final payment of $34,863 on a $200,000 bill for paint used at the resort. The guy who thinks he is immune to all laws – and indeed, the United States Constitution – figured The Paint Spot had been “paid enough” regardless of the contract his company had signed.

Try that one next time you run up some bills at the store. See how it works for you. As Judge Cueto showed, it doesn’t.

The Herald reports that this led “The Paint Spot to slap a lien on the property and Cueto to order the foreclosure sale of the resort.”

Trump National avoided disaster by placing the $34K in escrow but that only avoided the auctioning off of the property; it did not remove the lien, and so Judge Cueto ruled that Trump had to pay for 500 hours of legal work plus a 75 percent “risk” fee for the paint company’s lawyers, who had taken the case despite risking not being paid at all.

Of course, this is Trump we are talking about. The Herald reports that Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot said, “I’m happy I have a judgment. But he [Trump] hasn’t paid yet.”

“You know how he says he’ll surround himself with the greatest people if he is president? In this case, he might not be surrounded by the right people.”

That’s right. Trump says he has the best people working for him. Apparently, they’re good at screwing everyone else out of money while protecting Trump’s own dwindling resources.

As Josh Marshall of TPM reported today, Trump’s “debt load has grown dramatically over the last year, from $350 million to $630 million. This is in just one year while his liquid assets have also decreased. Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks.”

Trump’s entire campaign is built on the idea that he alone can create all the jobs already created by President Obama and save an economy already saved by Obama, when he can’t even save his own.

Worse, the GOP claims to be the champions of small businesses. Apparently, this is only if they don’t stand between the 1 percent and money.

Trump is a deadbeat, pure and simple. If he is planning to do to the US what he has done to his own businesses, we all need to get out and vote on Election Day, because all the things Republicans said are true about Obama are actually true of Donald Trump. And that’s a mistake we cannot afford to make.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.