Donald Trump once tried to pay a lawyer he owed $2m with a deed to a horse.
The bizarre scene is described in Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice, a book by David Enrich of the New York Times that will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Enrich reports that “once he regained the capacity for speech”, the lawyer to whom Trump offered a stallion supposedly worth $5m “stammered … ‘This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t pay me with a horse.’”
Accounts of Trump refusing to pay legal and other bills are legion. In New York, his business and tax affairs are the subject of civil and criminal investigations.
Trump’s reluctance to pay legal fees also featured in his attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, which has landed him in further legal jeopardy.
In another forthcoming book, Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, Andrew Kirtzman reports that in January 2021 Rudy Giuliani’s girlfriend sought $2.5m from Trump, for the former New York mayor’s legal work on the attempt to block Joe Biden’s win and for “defending you during the Russia hoax investigation and then the impeachment”.
Maria Ryan, Kirtzman writes, made the request in the same letter in which she requested that Giuliani receive a “general pardon” and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Ryan was not successful. The New York Times has reported that Trump told advisers Giuliani “would only get ‘paid on the come’, a reference to a bet in the casino game craps that is essentially payment on a successful roll of the dice”.
Enrich’s book places particular focus on Trump’s relationship with Jones Day, a giant US law firm, and the role played by Donald McGahn, a partner, in Trump’s 2016 campaign and then in the White House.
It was not all plain sailing. Enrich quotes an unnamed Jones Day associate as saying that in the early days of the campaign, after a Trump Tower meeting with Corey Lewandowski and Alan Garten, close Trump aides, McGahn said: “These guys are morons.”
McGahn, Enrich writes, “disputed the quotes attributed to him, particularly the word ‘moron’”. He has, however, previously been reported to have called Trump “King Kong” behind his back.
McGahn was Trump’s first White House counsel. A member of the rightwing Federalist Society, he worked with the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, on an unprecedented stacking of the federal judiciary with conservative hardliners, which ultimately included three supreme court picks.
McGahn resigned in 2018, after it was revealed he cooperated extensively with Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.
Enrich describes Trump’s “reputation for short-changing his lawyers (and banks and contractors and customers)” but says that in the case of Jones Day, “against all odds, Trump paid and paid again”.
In contrast to the description of the alleged “morons” remark, Enrich’s story about Trump trying to pay a debt with a horse does not identify the attorney involved.
Describing “a lawyer at a white-shoe firm” who worked for Trump in the 1990s, Enrich writes: “The bill came to about $2m and Trump refused to pay.
“After a while, the lawyer lost patience, and he showed up, unannounced, at Trump Tower. Someone sent him up to Trump’s office. Trump was initially pleased to see him – he didn’t betray any sense of sheepishness – but the lawyer was steaming.
“‘I’m incredibly disappointed,’ he scolded Trump. ‘There’s no reason you haven’t paid us.’
“Trump made some apologetic noises. Then he said: ‘I’m not going to pay your bill. I’m going to give you something more valuable.’ What on earth is he talking about? the lawyer wondered. ‘I have a stallion,’ Trump continued. ‘It’s worth $5m.’ Trump rummaged around in a filing cabinet and pulled out what he said was a deed to a horse. He handed it to the lawyer.”
Enrich describes the lawyer’s stunned and angry response, in which he threatened to sue.
Trump, Enrich writes, “eventually coughed up at least a portion of what he owed”.
