Making it clear yet again just how unique the Trump presidency really is, the president is connected to a dispute over ownership of a hotel in Panama that has escalated at times into in-person scuffles that prompted local police to be called.
The hotel was formerly the Trump Organization’s property in Panama, but investor Orestes Fintiklis, along with other hotel unit owners, voted to fire the Trump Organization in recent months. The Trump Organization fought to maintain control of the hotel, but Fintiklis, who bought out a majority of the hotel, was undeterred, and attempted last month to “hand-deliver termination notices to Trump’s [management] team,” in the description of the Associated Press.
Trump’s team didn’t take kindly to that, and ended up at one point essentially barricading themselves inside the room housing both the hotel’s closed-circuit security system and equipment involved in the running of the building as a whole, which includes establishments besides the hotel.
After building staff forced their way in, a scuffle ensued between the two groups, but that wasn’t enough to allow Trump security staff to maintain control of the room. Building owners went to local magistrate Marisol Carrera to get her help in forcing Trump staff from the control room, and the judge sided with the building owners, issuing an order to that effect. (The Trump Organization was eventually forced from the hotel as a whole.)
Now, via a report that Carerra filed with the country’s anti-corruption division of Panama’s chief prosecutor, it’s come out that she was at one point harassed and intimidated by lawyers working for the Trump Organization.
The lawyers were from the Panama City law firm of Britton & Iglesias, and they “berated her and her staff in her office,” she said in the description of the AP, although she declined to comment for the outlet’s story, which was based entirely on her complaint filed with Panamanian officials.
She wrote in the report that she felt “intimidated and threatened.” The law firm has, of course, denied any wrongdoing. The encounter took place after Carrera handed down her ruling demanding that Trump staff cede control of the building in question’s control room, when the Trump Organization’s lawyers visited her office in an effort to retrieve paperwork associated with the case.
The president is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of his family business that oversees all of this, although he does maintain a financial connection to the enterprise. It’s his two adult sons Eric and Donald Jr. who, along with other interests, maintain executive control of the family business and are thus at the top of the chain of command that ends in the lawyers who allegedly harassed a Panamanian judicial official.
Featured Image via Samuel Corum/ Anadolu Agency/ Getty Images
