Sometime in June, Donald Trump sells the entire 45th floor of Trump World Tower to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $4.5 million.
The five apartments included 10 bedrooms and 13 bathrooms at the time of the sale, and had yearly common charges of $85,585 for building amenities, documents obtained by The News show. If those common charges remain the same, Trump was paid at least $5.7 million by the Saudi government since 2001.
New York Daily News
Rebecca Ocampo and her firm Housing International help broker the deal between Trump and the Saudis. She later says the apartments are related to a “new, potentially lucrative market in the Middle East.” Ocampo sues Trump later in the year for refusing to pay her broker’s fee.
Just a few months later, 19 men including 15 Saudi nationals take down the World Trade Center. Some of them are allegedly financed by individuals connected to the Saudi government, including two Saudi intelligence agents. Larry Silverstein, one of Trump’s “friends,” watches as the property he’d bought a week before falls to the ground, and a Trump building becomes the tallest skyscraper in New York City.
I assumed maybe he [Larry Silverstein] was in the building. He took possession of the building one week ago. As you know, he just bought the World Trade Center.
Donald Trump on 9/11
Trump warned in his latest book, released in January 2000, that Osama Bin Ladin is dangerous and that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil is imminent–but he did not connect the two.
In 2008, the apartments become part of the “Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations.”
The government of Saudi Arabia is literally living in Trump’s house today, right now, and is paying him for the privilege.
William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut, 2019
External Sources
New York Daily News – Trump World Tower (Archived)
TruthOut.org – Trump Tower (Archived)
PDF: U.S. Intelligence Report, Part IV, Declassified in 2016 – Saudis & 9/11
Photo: Vince Fleming