The controversies and legal woes of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida has been plagued by a litany of shocking allegations, legal troubles and other dubious goings-on over the years. A magnet for headline-grabbing controversy, the elite Palm Beach residence and private members’ club has seen everything from health code violations to corruption investigations and sexual assault probes during its sordid history. Brace yourself and click or scroll through to discover the staggering scandals that have clouded the Sunshine State estate under Trump’s ownership.

Mar-a-Lago was built in the 1920s for flamboyant heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Post splurged $7 million (£5.6m) – a hefty $122 million (£98m) today – on the opulent 118-room Spanish-Moorish-style palace. When the moneyed scion passed away in 1973, Mar-a-Lago was left to the US government to serve as a permanent Winter White House. But the property turned out to be a poisoned chalice. No president ever stayed there during that time and the maintenance costs proved astronomical. In 1981, an Act of Congress returned the estate to Post’s foundation.

Mar-a-Lago was later put up for sale. Trump, who first heard about the property from a Palm Beach taxi driver, made an offer but was turned down by the Post family. The real estate mogul then decided to play dirty, telling the clan he’d bought a strip of land in front of Mar-a-Lago and would erect an eyesore if they refused to sell him the estate. The audacious ruse worked and Trump bagged Mar-a-Lago and all its contents in 1985 for a reported $8 million (£6.4m), around $23 million (£18.5m) in today’s money.

In 1995, Trump transformed Mar-a-Lago into a private members’ club, igniting a feud with Post’s daughter, Hollywood actress Dina Merrill. The real estate tycoon was furious after she wrote to the town council objecting to the club. Trump went on to call the star “an arrogant and aloof daughter who was born with her mother’s beauty but not her brains,” in his 1997 book Trump: The Art of the Comeback.

Donald Trump’s dubious choice of guests at the estate has raised eyebrows across the decades. Described by Vanity Fair as an “epic bromance”, Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein started in the 1980s and lasted for almost two decades. The pair spent much of their time together at Mar-a-Lago – this photo was taken at the estate in 1997. Though Trump denies he was close to Epstein and insists he had no knowledge of his crimes, one of the sex offender’s victims has claimed that Epstein introduced her to Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was just 14 years old. No wrongdoing by the former president was alleged.

The ‘bromance’ ended in 2004 when the duo fell out over a property deal, four years before Epstein pled guilty to a felony charge of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. However, a 2020 exposé on the estate entitled The Grifter’s Club claims he was banned from Mar-a-Lago after making advances towards a member’s teenage daughter. Trump was also friendly with Epstein’s partner-in-crime, Ghislaine Maxwell. Pictured here together at Mar-a-Lago in 2000, the pair appear to have had a good relationship and following her arrest in 2020, Trump even reportedly wished the heiress well.

With Trump at the helm, Mar-a-Lago has welcomed a slew of controversial celebrities over the decades too, including Michael Jackson, who had an apartment in New York’s Trump Tower and was a frequent Mar-a-Lago visitor by all accounts. Trump has said he was a close friend of Jackson’s and helped set the singer up with Elvis Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. The unlikely couple spent their 1994 honeymoon at Mar-a-Lago and, according to Trump, never left their suite the entire week they were there. Following Jackson’s death in 2009, the documentary Leaving Neverland revived allegations of sexual assault against the star.

Trump drew the ire of the Palm Beach set in 1995 when he sold off a large selection of treasured Mar-a-Lago antiques collected by the former owner. The auction at Christie’s New York generated over $1.5 million (£1.2m) for “the continued preservation of Mar-a-Lago”. But in readiness for its conversion to a members’ club, Trump replaced the furnishings and artworks with mass-produced reproductions robust enough to cope with heavy use.

Mar-a-Lago was rocked by scandal in 1996 when Trump’s then-wife Marla Marples and his bodyguard Spencer Wagner were reportedly discovered hiding together on the beach near Mar-a-Lago in the early hours of 16 April, according to a police incident report. Rumours the pair were having an affair reached fever pitch, even though Maples released a statement to the contrary. Wagner was fired four months later and, reportedly broken from the furore, died in 2012 of a drug overdose.

During Trump’s tenure at the estate, a number of women have accused him of sexual misconduct at Mar-a-Lago. One of the former president’s accusers is Cathy Heller, who says the future president gave her an unwanted kiss on the lips at a Mother’s Day brunch there in 1997. The 2020 book All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator shares the stories of other women who claim they were assaulted by the president at the estate too, including Jill Harth. In 1997, Harth accused the property billionaire of attempted rape. She alleges that she was sexually assaulted by the real estate magnate in Ivanka Trump’s fairytale-like bedroom in 1993.

Harth claimed in a sexual harassment suit that Trump had made numerous unwanted advances before groping her in the Sleeping Beauty-inspired bedroom during an impromptu tour of Mar-a-Lago. Harth and her boyfriend at the time, George Houraney, had been visiting the estate to establish a business relationship with the mogul. In the end, Trump and Harth agreed to a confidential settlement and the legal proceedings were dropped, but Harth has since spoken out about her alleged ordeal.

Karen Johnson is another accuser whose alleged assault was revealed in the book. According to the account in the book, Johnson claims that she was groped by Trump and forcibly kissed on the lips at a Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve Party in the early 2000s. She alleges that she was grabbed by the property tycoon on her way to the bathroom and pulled behind a tapestry: “I was so scared because of who he was,” Johnson later said. “I don’t even know where it came from. I didn’t have a say in the matter.”

Mindy McGillivray alleges she was sexually assaulted by Trump at a Ray Charles concert at Mar-a-Lago in 2003. At the time, she was assisting photographer Ken Davidoff, a seasoned paparazzo who has snapped the club and its owner countless times. He captured this shot of Trump, Melania and the legendary R&B pioneer at the event in question. Gillivray claims that she was minding her business and hard at work when Trump, out of nowhere, groped her, leaving her in shock.

Moments later, McGillivray reportedly turned to Davidoff and said: “Donald just grabbed my a**!” Years later, McGillivray felt compelled to tell her story, viewing it as her patriotic duty, but has faced a fierce backlash from some MAGA supporters. Things got so bad at one point in 2016 that she even considered fleeing the US to keep herself and her family safe.

People magazine’s Natasha Stoynoff worked on a profile of Donald and Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 to mark their first wedding anniversary. Melania was heavily pregnant with their first son, Barron, at the time. The couple is pictured here at the estate that same year. During a tour of the property, Stoynoff claims Trump pushed her against a wall and forced his tongue down her throat. He allegedly did this after making suggestive comments and sexually harassing the journalist.

Stoynoff has gone on to be vocal about the alleged encounter, recounting her story in detail on numerous occasions. She even took to the stand to testify against Trump in the recent civil rape lawsuit filed against him in a New York Court by E Jean Carroll. On 9 May 2023, Trump was found liable by the jury for sexual abuse and defamation, but not for the charges of rape.

The sordid rumours surrounding the estate extend to the club’s cleanliness too. Mar-a-Lago has frequently been reprimanded by the authorities for its poor hygiene practices. An Associated Press investigation conducted in 2017 found that the club had been cited for 78 health code violations in the previous three years. Inspectors identified a range of problems that included chefs failing to wash their hands, dirty cutting boards and mould growing on the ice machine, as well as serving unsafe seafood and meat that had been improperly refrigerated.

When Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016 and became the 45th president of the United States, Marjorie Merriweather Post’s dream of making Mar-a-Lago the Winter White House came to fruition. Trump stayed at the estate for a staggering 142 days during his one-term presidency. And with each sojourn setting back taxpayers an estimated $1 million (£806k) a day, according to a report by Time Magazine with data from the Government Accountability Office (GOA), the former POTUS’ frequent trips to his Winter White House unsurprisingly attracted a tremendous amount of criticism.

Trump enjoyed entertaining foreign leaders and dignitaries at the estate during his presidency. In February 2017, Trump hosted the late former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago for a “classified” meeting to discuss North Korea and other pressing matters. The tete-a-tete was widely criticised for its lack of security and later probed by the House Oversight Committee for its indiscretion, with club members reportedly able to eavesdrop on the top-secret conversations the leaders were having.

Perhaps concerns around the estate’s security were valid. The Guardian reported that former intelligence officials had warned Mar-a-Lago was “a magnet for foreign spies”. In one incident from 2019, prosecutors say that Chinese national Yujing Zhang was caught trespassing on the club’s grounds with, among other things, a device containing computer malware, nine USB drives, five sim cards and a signal detector used to identify hidden cameras. She was eventually handed a prison sentence of eight months and subsequently deported to China in 2021.

That’s not the only security breach at the club in recent years. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) alleged that Ukrainian-born “scammer” Inna Yashchyshyn was able to mingle with Trump’s family and friends at Mar-a-Lago, posing as banking dynasty heiress Anna de Rothschild to gain access to the club. The “self-confessed grifter” even met and had this photo taken with the former president in 2021. While there’s no evidence that Yashchyshyn is a spy, the incident has shown how easy it is to sneak into Mar-a-Lago’s inner circle.

As well as acting at Trump’s unofficial Winter White House while he was in office, Mar-a-Lago has been a hotbed of lobbying, it would seem. In 2021, an investigation by the House Oversight Committee and Department of Veterans’ Affairs found that three members of Trump’s club – an attorney, a doctor and the chairman of Marvel Entertainment Ike Perlmutter – had improperly influenced decisions at the department in a bid to monetise vets’ medical records. Perlmutter is pictured here shaking hands with Trump in Washington, DC in 2016.

The controversies didn’t die down when Trump departed the White House in January 2021. In fact, the former president still managed to run up quite the bill for taxpayers to foot. According to an investigation in The Washington Post from 2021, the ex-POTUS invoiced the Secret Service more than $40,000 (£32k) to accommodate his Mar-a-Lago security detail when he left the executive mansion. While former presidents are entitled to Secret Service protection for life, no other past POTUS has ever billed the agency such a huge amount.

When Trump left the White House, it seems he may have taken some government-stamped souvenirs with him to Mar-a-Lago. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which is responsible for preserving presidential ephemera for posterity, noticed a number of historic documents were missing, including the so-called “love letters” from Kim Jong-un to Trump and the infamous map charting Hurricane Dorian that was altered with a black Sharpie pen.

It turned out Trump, who had a habit of bringing official papers to Mar-a-Lago while he was president, was storing the missing items at his Florida estate. They were eventually returned, along with myriad other documents stuffed into 15 boxes. But when NARA staff found documents marked classified among the stash, they contacted the Justice Department which, together with the FBI, launched a major investigation.

Suspicions grew that Trump was illegally harbouring other top-secret documents and had destroyed government records, and with the security at Mar-a-Lago a major cause for concern, a subpoena was issued on 11 May 2022 for the return of all missing paperwork. A batch of documents was retrieved the following month. Despite this, the FBI decided to take the investigation to the next level and raided the residence and private members’ club on 8 August 2022.

Trump lambasted the FBI for the search, calling it a “government crime” and “witch hunt”, adding that agents “ransacked” his home. However, investigators did manage to recover nearly 11,179 government documents, including over 100 labelled as classified, which had the potential to damage US national security if they fell into the wrong hands. These included sensitive documents regarding Iran’s missile programme and US intelligence work in China.

The federal investigation is still ongoing but the FBI has since uncovered evidence that Trump may have asked for boxes of records to be moved after receiving the subpoena demanding they be returned to Washington, DC. More recently, allegations have come to light that Trump might have obstructed the probe in other ways. According to The Washington Post, a Mar-a-Lago employee is said to be aiding the Department of Justice’s investigation and has claimed that Trump and his aides carried out “dress rehearsals” at the property to practice relocating the files prior to the serving of the subpoena. 

A report by CNN in June 2023 revealed another instance at the Florida club that has caught the attention of investigators. In October 2022, two months after the FBI searched the estate, a Mar-a-Lago employee drained the resort’s swimming pool and ended up flooding a surveillance room. The space is said to have contained computer servers holding video logs of the estate, CNN‘s sources said. Whether the flooding was accidental or intentional is unclear, but federal prosecutors are reportedly treating the incident as suspicious and are said to have quizzed at least one witness about the flood. 

Plus, the 2024 presidential hopeful appeared to incriminate himself in his explosive CNN town hall on 11 May 2023. Trump told CNN he had “every right” to take the documents from the White House, but the comments contradict statements his lawyers made to Congress in April 2023 that they got there by accident. Moreover, Trump’s vagueness about whether he did or didn’t show classified documents to unauthorised personnel is “like red meat to a prosecutor” according to former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann. Trump himself is now suggesting he may soon be charged in relation to the case, and sources indicate that prosecutors are preparing to ask for an indictment on obstruction and espionage charges. 

During its long history, Mar-a-Lago has hosted a ton of glittering events, some of which Trump has charged guests obscene sums of money to attend. They include 2022’s ‘Take Back Congress Candidate Forum’. According to New York Times reporter and Trump expert Maggie Haberman, the former POTUS stung attendees for up to $250,000 (£202k) for entry. The top-tier ticket included a photo and a private dinner for two with Trump, plus VIP seating and a two-night stay at the resort.

Mar-a-Lago became the eye of another legal storm in September 2022, when New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, three of his children and members of the Trump Organization. The case hinges on whether Trump broke the law by exaggerating the value of his assets to obtain favourable borrowing terms and other perks. 20 Trump-owned properties are implicated in the suit, including the Palm Beach estate. James alleges that Trump’s company inflated the value of Mar-a-Lago by as much as $664 million (£535m) from 2011 to 2021.

In a statement that has no doubt crushed Trump, the suit alleges that: “In reality, the club generated annual revenues of less than $25 million [£20m] and should have been valued at closer to $75 million [£60m].” James’ office says that the Trump Organization’s valuations regarded Mar-a-Lago as “an unrestricted home to ‘be sold to an individual”, while in reality, Trump had signed deeds that gave up any residential development rights to the estate. 

2022 turned out to be one of Mar-a-Lago’s most scandal-hit years. In May, Trump caused an upset by hosting the premiere of 2000 Mules, a movie trumpeting his false election fraud claims, at the Florida estate. The event was reportedly packed full of MAGA icons, including Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Rudy Giuliani and Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who was controversially acquitted after killing two people at an anti-police protest.

Kanye West caused a storm in November 2022 when he dined with Trump at the estate. West chronicled the occasion on Twitter, including a video dubbed the ‘Mar-a-Lago Debrief’ in which he slams the ex-POTUS for rejecting his offer to run as West’s vice president. He also berated Trump for failing to support the 6 January insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol building in 2022.

Kanye West also revealed that Trump screamed at him during the dinner and told him he would lose if the rapper and entrepreneur went ahead with his plan to run for president. The biggest controversy that resulted from the November dinner, however, was the presence of far-right white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a figure who has been widely denounced for his extreme racist and antisemitic views, which include denying the Holocaust ever happened.

Trump took to Truth Social to respond to the avalanche of criticism, playing down the meeting and claiming that he didn’t know Fuentes. On 25 November 2022, he wrote: “This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago… he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport.”

Another event in 2022 that had Trump critics up in arms was a soirée in December featuring a talk from Liz Crokin, a key promoter of the discredited QAnon and pro-Trump conspiracy theories. As reported by ABC News, Trump posed for photos with Crokin, with Trump making a thumbs-up sign in one of the snaps.

Mar-a-Lago has seen its fair share of controversies so far in 2023, too. In early January, the estate’s security (or lack thereof) was called into question yet again when a trespasser suffering mental health problems sneaked into the property and approached the owner’s suite, where Trump was in residence. The suspect was eventually apprehended and arrested for trespassing. It later emerged that he had come to the main gate earlier in the day and asked to speak to Trump but was turned away by police and Secret Service agents.

Regarded as defiant by some and shameless by others, Trump did the unexpected on 30 March 2023, the evening of his indictment on 24 felony counts of business fraud. Instead of hunkering down with his legal team, Trump threw a big bash at Mar-a-Lago and partied with Melania and a group of his diehard supporters. Conservative news anchor Gina Loudon posted these images of the gathering on her Twitter, enthusing: “Beautiful evening here at the gorgeous Mar a Lago! Our REAL First Couple enveloped in the love of their friends and most loyal!” What’s more, another ‘indictment party’ may soon be on the books as sources suggest Trump could face charges in the ongoing classified files investigation…

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