Author: Stop the Donald Trump

Trump Rips ‘All Talk,’ ‘No Action’ Civil Rights Icon Lewis

President-elect Donald Trump harshly responded to civil rights icon and Georgia Rep. John Lewis on Saturday, calling him “all talk” and “no action” after Lewis said Trump was not a “legitimate” president.

“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad,” Trump tweeted Saturday, which happened to fall on the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday.

Lewis — an ally of King who was brutally beaten by police in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 while marching for civil rights — represents a Georgia district that includes most of Atlanta. On the campaign trail, Trump regularly decried crime in urban areas while pledging to revitalize neighborhoods primarily populated by black Americans.

A Hillary Clinton supporter, Lewis criticized Trump’s ascension to head of state due to Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.

“I don’t see this President-elect as a legitimate president,” the long-serving Democrat told NBC News’ Chuck Todd in a clip released Friday.

It was an astonishing rebuke by a sitting member of Congress toward an incoming President. Trump, however, largely launched his political career by calling into question the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s presidency by repeatedly suggesting he wasn’t born in the United States.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Here is a photo of a young John Lewis being beating by police at Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic march to Selma.

Here is a photo of a young John Lewis with a bloody nose.

Here is John Lewis being yanked from a “white’s only” diner.

Here is John Lewis being arrested for fighting for civil rights.

 

 

Trump Will Consider ‘Day One’ to Be Monday, Not His Inauguration

Donald Trump will be inaugurated on Friday, but he’ll consider his first day on the job to be Monday.

The detail emerged after he sat down with British and German journalists over the weekend and offered up his thoughts on a wide range of topics.

“I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration,” he said.

One of the first orders Trump said he’ll sign will cover “strong borders.”

The Times of London published the interview on its website Sunday, and CBS News posted part of the interview online.

(h/t The Boston Globe)

Newt Gingrich: Trump Should Use The CNN Confrontation As An Excuse To Break The Press

Newt Gingrich, a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump and a Fox News contributor, would like to shatter the influence of an “adversarial” press. And he thinks Trump’s press conference confrontation with CNN reporter Jim Acosta has given the incoming administration the opportunity to dramatically reshape White House press interactions to favor journalists who will treat the president-elect more favorably.

During Trump’s January 11 presser, he lashed out at CNN  and demanded the network apologize for a recent report on his alleged ties to Russia, and Acosta repeatedly called out, seeking to ask a question in response. Trump replied by calling CNN “terrible,” castigating Acosta for being “rude,” and declaring, “I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news!” Sean Spicer, who will serve as Trump’s White House press secretary, subsequently told Acosta that he would be removed if he continued to press for a question, and Spicer later demanded that the reporter apologize to the president-elect.

Team Trump’s efforts seem intended to both damage the credibility of CNN and cow other networks into shying away from similarly critical journalism — as Gingrich put it, to “shrink and isolate” the network. But the Fox News contributor wants the incoming administration to go even further and use the incident as an excuse to “close down the elite press.”

Gingrich laid out this strategy during an interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, one of the most pro-Trump venues available. He urged Spicer to learn “a couple of big lessons” from the incident. First and foremost, he suggested that Acosta be banned from reporting on Trump events for 60 days “as a signal, frankly, to all the other reporters that there are going to be real limits” for proper behavior.

https://mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2017/01/13/51770/fnc-hannity-1132017-gingrich2

But Gingrich’s recommendations went far beyond chastising Acosta. He urged Trump to stop prioritizing questions from major news outlets due to their tough coverage and confrontational attitude. Instead, he suggested that he “extend the privileges to reporters from out of town, folks that fly in from all over the country to be allowed to be at a briefing.” Those reporters, Gingrich suggested, would be “a lot more courteous” and “responsible” rather than being “adversarial.”

Gingrich went on to explain his theory of the press under the Trump administration. “You don’t have to think of The New York Times or CNN or any of these people as news organizations,” he explained. “They’re mostly propaganda organizations. And they’re going to be after Trump every single day of his presidency.”

“And he needs to understand that that’s the case, and so does Sean Spicer in speaking for him. And they simply need to go out there and understand they have it in their power to set the terms of this dialogue.” He added, “They can close down the elite press.”

Trump has already started to take steps like those Gingrich describes. During the 2016 campaign, he reportedly made a deal with the right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns television stations across the country, to provide more access to its stations in exchange for a promise from Sinclair to broadcast his interviews without commentary.

He took questions from sycophantic pro-Trump outlets Breitbart.com and One America News Network during this week’s press conference. Right Side Broadcasting Network, which has been described as “the unofficial version of Trump TV,” claims it will be in the White House press briefing room under the new president. Other right-wing outlets like Laura Ingraham’s LifeZette and Alex Jones’ conspiracy website Infowars could be next.

Alexey Kovalev, a Russian journalist who has covered Vladimir Putin’s annual press conferences, warned of the use of such tactics in a searing “message to my doomed colleagues in the American media” that he authored following Trump’s press conference.

“A mainstay of Putin’s press conferences is, of course, softball questions,” Kovalev wrote. These include both “hyperlocal issues that a president isn’t even supposed to be dealing with,” which nonetheless provide “a real opportunity for him to shine.” Putin also benefits from “people from publications that exist for no other reason than heaping fawning praise on him and attacking his enemies.”

“But there will also be one token critic who will be allowed to ask a ‘sharp’ question,” Kovalev added, “only to be drowned in a copious amount of bullshit, and the man on the stage will always be the winner (‘See? I respect the media and free speech’).”

Of course we are not there yet, but the precedent is unnerving. Gingrich wants nothing more than a cowed, broken press that exists solely to promote the Republican Party’s message. We’ll see soon enough how much of his advice Trump takes.

Update

Gingrich is not alone in urging Trump to freeze out the press. Following Trump’s election, Hannity stated that “until members of the media come clean about colluding with the Clinton campaign and admit that they knowingly broke every ethical standard they are supposed to uphold, they should not have the privilege, they should not have the responsibility of covering the president on behalf of you, the American people.”

“In other words, the mainstream press should not be allowed to cover Trump,” New York University’s Jay Rosen wrote in response to Hannity’s comments. “A few years ago that was a bridge too far. Now it’s a plausible test of poisoned waters.” It looks like we’ll see more of those tests in the days to come.

(h/t Media Matters)

 

Trump Revisits Clinton Criticism in Tweets: She’s Guilty as Hell’

News that the Justice Department’s inspector general had announced a review of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was received warmly on Thursday by staff members from her presidential campaign.

On Friday, President-elect Donald Trump wondered aloud why Clinton’s team was so enthused.

“What are Hillary Clinton’s people complaining about with respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she should never have been allowed to run – guilty as hell,” Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning. “They were VERY nice to her. She lost because she campaigned in the wrong states – no enthusiasm!”

The FBI’s investigation into the homebrew email system Clinton maintained during her tenure as secretary of state was a thorn that her campaign was unable to remove from its side throughout the election. The issue was seemingly closed in early July when FBI Director James Comey announced at a press conference that Clinton’s system did not rise to the level of criminal activity and that he would recommend against filing any criminal charges.

But the email issue unexpectedly resurfaced 11 days before the election when Comey wrote a letter to Congress announcing that the bureau was examining potentially new evidence in the case. That new evidence ultimately amounted to nothing, but on a conference call with donors just days after her defeat, Clinton herself blamed Comey’s letter for her loss.

“My reaction is that it’s entirely appropriate and very necessary but also not surprising,” Clinton’s campaign press secretary Brian Fallon said Thursday on MSNBC when asked about the inspector general’s announced review. “Because the deviations from the protocols at the FBI and the Justice Department were so glaring and egregious in terms of their handling of not just the email investigation into Secretary Clinton but just in general, the amount of leaks that were coming from the FBI throughout the election and even post-election, is something that…I think most observers and former officials at the Justice Department realized cried out for an independent review.”

Joel Benenson, a pollster and strategist for Clinton’s campaign, said that Comey’s last minute letter to Congress manifested itself in polling data as a drag on enthusiasm towards the former secretary of state and a boost in momentum for Trump’s supporters. Benenson was clear that “nobody’s trying to relitigate the election here,” but that the FBI’s public actions so close to Election Day are worthy of further scrutiny.

“If you go back and look at what professionals said at the time, Mr. Comey made his announcement 11 days before an election, Republican and democratic prosecutors, former FBI people, said this was inappropriate, this was unprecedented, it violated every principle in the FBI,” Benenson said in his own appearance on MSNBC Thursday. “I think when prosecutors abuse their power, and people inside that agency advised him not to take that action, it is appropriate they look into this to make sure that if he did violate rules, procedures, he’s held accountability like anybody else would be.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

The FBI cleared Hillary Clinton in July and AGAIN in November.

Trump Just Used His Presidential Power to Advertise a Donor

After the co-owner of retailer L.L. Bean expressed support for President-elect Donald Trump, the future leader of the United States urged his 19.6 million Twitter followers to buy the company’s goods.

The unprecedented endorsement came less than two hours after Linda Bean said on a talk show early Thursday that anti-Trump groups are browbeating American businesses, an effort she called “un-American.” “It’s a case of bullying,” Bean said on Fox and Friends. “I’m not going to back down. I never back down.”

Bean, a granddaughter of L.L. Bean founder Leon Leonwood Bean, contributed $30,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC called Making America Great Again LLC between August and October of last year, according to recently amended federal filings. Another $15,000 was contributed by Maine resident Diana Bean, the name of Linda’s sister.

The PAC, which also goes by Making Maine Great Again, ran a spate of TV and radio ads in the state toward the end of the campaign.

It was not until this month, however, that Linda Bean’s support for Trump burst into public view, when the Federal Election Commission alerted the group that it had erroneously formed as a traditional PAC, which can legally only accept donations up to $5,000.

That prompted Grab Your Wallet, a boycott effort against companies that carry Trump brand products or have other connections to the president-elect, to add L.L. Bean to its list. Organizers have said they will not take L.L. Bean off its website until Linda Bean is ejected from the board.

The company has asked for the boycott to be dropped, saying that the corporation has no connection to the PAC.

“We are deeply troubled by the portrayal of L.L.Bean as a supporter of any political agenda,” Executive Chairman Shawn Gorman posted on Facebook on Jan. 8. “L.L.Bean does not endorse political candidates, take positions on political matters, or make political contributions.”

Katherine DeCelles, a Harvard business professor who focuses on ethics, said no White House leader in modern history has used their platform to hawk products.

“It’s unprecedented,” she said, “for someone of his power voicing his support or being against particular companies.”

Federal employees are legally forbidden from endorsing private firms. Though the president is exempt from the rule and the president-elect is not a federal employee, such endorsements are largely frowned upon in America’s highest office.

In 2009, after a coat company used a photo of President Obama in an ad campaign, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama administration, told the New York Times that, “the White House has a long-standing policy disapproving of the use of the president’s name and likeness for commercial purposes.”

Amanda Schreyer, an advertising and social media lawyer in Boston, said Trump’s tweet broke no laws Thursday. He’s entitled to free speech (but could face lawsuits if he distributes false information about a company and hurts its profit).

“It’s just poor form,” Schreyer said. The president-elect, she added, “shouldn’t be picking and choosing which companies to endorse or otherwise.”

Since the election, Trump has made a practice of praising and chastising private companies. Last month, he slammed air conditioning company Carrier for moving jobs from Indiana to Mexico. He also has criticized several automakers for offshoring jobs and Boeing for the cost of its new Air Force One.

Trump’s tweets tend to spark publicity storms around his targets. Kellan Terry, a data analyst at Brandwatch, said online mentions of L.L. Bean have surged 990 percent since Wednesday, jumping from 2,200 to 22,000.

David Mayer, a leadership and ethics in business professor at the University of Michigan, said it’s natural for people to want to reward those who demonstrate loyalty. But reciprocity from the president-elect, he said, is problematic for the free market, creating incentive for executives to craft their messaging around pleasing the country’s leader.

“You gain advantages from the government for supporting it,” Mayor said. “And when that happens, you could also become afraid to criticize the government.”

(h/t Washington Post)

 

 

 

Trump Barred Reporters From Examining Stacks of Folders at Press Conference

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday wouldn’t allow reporters to see piles of documents displayed at his press conference, which he and lawyers said detailed his plans to disentangle himself from his business.

“These papers are just some of the many documents I’ve signed turning over complete and total control to my sons,” Trump said during his press conference, standing next to a table stacked with manila folders.

“They are not going to discuss [the business] with me,” Trump said of his sons. “Again, I don’t have to do this. They’re not going to discuss it with me.”

CNN reported that the press was not allowed to take a closer look at the documents. The Associated Press similarly reported that Trump staffers blocked journalists from looking at the folders.

Trump announced Wednesday that he is handing control of his business empire to his two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and placing his assets into a trust. The press conference was the first Trump has held since the election and included long-awaited details of how the president-elect plans to avoid conflicts of interest when sworn into office.

The head of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) slammed Trump’s plans to separate himself from his business as “wholly inadequate” in resolving conflicts of interest.

“The plan the president-elect has announced doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the last four decades have met,” OGE Director Walter Shaub said during a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Shaub added that the plan isn’t a true blind trust.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Trump Spokesman Threatened to Expel CNN’s Jim Acosta

CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta said Donald Trump’s spokesman Sean Spicer threatened to expel him from Trump Tower if he attempted to ask another question after a contentious exchange with the president-elect during Wednesday’s news conference.

“After I asked and … demanded that we have a question, Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, did say to me that if I were to do that again I was going to be thrown out of this press conference,” Acosta told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, speaking on “Inside Politics.”

Spicer’s threat came after Acosta pressed Trump to take a follow-up question after the president-elect assailed CNN for publishing a report Tuesday night on classified documents presented to President Obama and Trump which included allegations that Russian operatives claimed to possess compromising personal and financial information about Trump.

“Mr. President -elect since you are attacking our news organization can you give us a chance,” asked Acosta.

“Not you,” interjected Trump.”[Y]our organization is terrible … I am not going to give you a question … You are fake news.”

“Mr. President-elect that is not appropriate,” Acosta chided towards the end of the exchange.

Speaking later with Tapper and Blitzer, Acosta said he felt obligated to push Trump to answer a follow up question given the attack on CNN.

“I felt it was only fair that if our news organization is going to be attacked that we get a chance to ask a follow up question about what Donald Trump was talking about,” he said.

Trump did later take a question from CNN’s Jeremy Diamond.

(h/t CNN)

Update

Spicer flat out denied that he ever threatened to remove Acosta, again accusing CNN of “false reporting.”

And then, less than an hour later, he appeared on Fox to brag about… threatening to kick Acosta out of the presser for being “disrespectful” to Trump (by asking him a hard question).

Spicer:

“I went over to him. I informed him that, as I said, I thought his behavior was rude, disrespectful, and inappropriate and if it happened again, I would have him removed.”

Trump Packed News Conference With Paid Staffers to Cheer and Jeer as He Bashed Reporters

When Donald Trump gathered the press at Trump Tower 20 months ago to announce his unlikely candidacy for president, he reportedly paid actors to fill the marble lobby and cheer.

Not much — and everything — has changed since.

On Wednesday morning, when the president-elect once again faced hundreds of reporters from around the globe gathered in his lobby — this time for his first press conference in seven months — Trump filled the room with paid staffers who clapped and cheered as he blasted members of the media as purveyors of “fake news.”

It was Trump’s method of battling back an extraordinary report that U.S. intelligence officials have presented both Trump and President Barack Obama with unverified allegations that Russia has compromising information about the incoming 45th president, including about a reported salacious encounter in a Moscow hotel room.

With three of his grown-up children, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and members of his senior staff looking on from the sides, Trump framed the anticipated barrage of questions about his connections to the Russians as a referendum, instead, on the untrustworthy media, seated in seven rows of plastic folding chairs in front of him.

The Greek chorus of loyal, paid staffers in the back of the room boosting Trump with their hoots and cheers also served as a reminder, of sorts, of the movement of Trump backers happy to take him at his word and jeer the media as the out-of-touch liars.

“It’s very familiar territory, news conferences,” said Trump, who has been more visible on Twitter than in person since Election Day, as he took the podium. His long absence was the media’s fault, he said, not his. “We stopped giving them because we’re getting quite a bit of inaccurate news,” he said, before calling Buzzfeed, the website that published the full 35-page unverified dossier of allegations against Trump, a “failing pile of garbage.”

“Fake news” became the running theme of the hour-long press conference, which peaked with Trump refusing to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta and yelling at him, “I’m not going to give you a question. You’re fake news.” CNN broke the story on Tuesday about the intelligence briefings, which implied Russia could potentially be in a position to blackmail Trump.

Twitter gasped, but his Greek chorus cheered.

“Do you honestly believe that Hillary Clinton would be tougher on Putin than me?” Trump asked at another point. Some staffers in the room responded to the rhetorical question, yelling out, “No!”

And they cheered again when Trump jeered sarcastically at a reporter who asked if he planned to release his tax returns. “Oh gee,” the president-elect said, employing a verbal eye roll, “I’ve never heard that before. The only ones who care about my tax returns are the reporters. I became president.”

The press conference, his first as president-elect, was a dry run of sorts for how Trump can be expected to interact with the press corps in the White House briefing room.

And while it foreshadowed major clashes with news outlets that publish critical stories about Trump — Trump continuing to be Trump — it was also a more formal, less gawdy affair than the press-savvy incoming president has put on in the past.

There was no walk-on music, for instance, as there was during Trump’s presidential announcement. That day, he entered the lower lobby of his Tower via the now-famous escalator with wife Melania at his side and played standards from the musical “Cats” over the sound system.

This time, Trump, without Melania in tow, was delivered to the press via elevator, a little after the scheduled 11 a.m. start time. He called on reporters himself and wrapped up the news conference after 58 minutes when he decided he had had enough — instead of relying on an aide to shut things down, as many politicians do.

Even though he entered the press conference under fire on Wednesday, Trump still appeared more comfortable when he was running the room than when he was standing to the side as a bystander. Trump ceded the podium in the middle of taking questions, so his attorney Sheri Dillon could outline at length the steps Trump is planning to remove himself from the day-to-day operation of his real estate business. But without the spotlight on him, Trump appeared to grow distracted, whispering to his stone-faced daughter, Ivanka, and sipping water from a plastic bottle.

If the cheering staffers created a sense of support for Trump as he denied any collusion with the Russians during the campaign and promised to get Mexico to pay for his wall, the scene outside was a reminder of the other side of the coin. Protesters holding up signs likening the Trump-Pence team to a “fascist regime” lined up across Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower in protest.

With nine days to go until Inauguration Day, the spectacle may be one of the last ones that unfolds on Trump’s home turf in midtown Manhattan, between the Gucci and Bulgari stores. Next up, he will be occupying the people’s home, and confront the press in less familiar, more intimidating surroundings. Despite the fireworks, Trump promised things would settle down before Inauguration Day, which he previewed as “an elegant day.”

“We have a movement,” he said. “It’s a movement like the world has never seen before.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump Shouted Down CNN’s Jim Acosta As ‘Fake News’ Then Took a Question From Breitbart

One of the stranger moments in Wednesday’s deeply strange Donald Trump press conference came when the president-elect got into a shouting match with CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was trying to ask him a question.

Earlier in the presser — his first one since July — Trump had attacked CNN for disseminating “fake news” because it broke the story that both the sitting president and the president-elect had been briefed on allegations that Russia has “compromising personal and financial information” regarding Trump.

“Since you’re attacking us, can you give us a question?” Acosta asked during a Q&A portion of the presser. Trump replied, “Not you, not you, your organization is terrible.”

“I am not going to give you a question,” the president-elect said. “You are fake news.”

You can watch their full exchange here:

Acosta later said that incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had threatened to boot him from the press conference if he attempted to ask another question.

During an on-air segment following the press conference, CNN’s Jake Tapper — one of the journalists who wrote the initial report on the allegations — pointed out that his network had not disseminated uncorroborated rumors, as Trump had suggested. Instead, the CNN report acknowledges the existence of the rumors and reports that both Trump and Obama had received briefings on them from the U.S. intelligence community. The specific details of the rumors came from a document Buzzfeed posted in full later Tuesday evening, a move that Tapper described as irresponsible.

“What I suspect we are seeing here is an attempt to discredit legitimate, responsible attempts to report on this incoming administration with irresponsible journalism that hurts us all, and the media going forward should keep that in mind,” said Tapper of Trump’s attempt to conflate the decisions made by Buzzfeed and CNN.

Shortly after he successfully shouted down Acosta, Trump took a question from Breitbart News — a website closely associated with the white nationalist “alt-right,” and an avid promulgator of misleading or inaccurate information that supports hard-right beliefs. Trump’s top adviser, Steve Bannon, is the former chairman of Breitbart.

Here’s the question Trump took from Breitbart: “[With] all the problems that we’ve seen throughout the media over the course of the election, what reforms do you recommend for this industry here?”

(h/t Think Progress)

Trump Preps for Presidency as He Attempts to Sue a Painter Out of Business

After his election, Donald Trump quickly settled a series of business disputes — but just days before his inauguration, the president-elect’s company is still waging a legal battle against a Florida shop owner over an unpaid bill.

The matter could have been settled for what amounts to pocket change for a billionaire, but the Trump Organization decided to take its chances in court.

Now Trump stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if he wins, it could force a small businessman — one of hundreds who say they were stiffed by Trump over the years — possibly into bankruptcy.

That businessman, Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, won the first round of the legal skirmish last summer when a judge found a lien he slapped on the Trump National Doral golf resort was valid.

The court ordered Trump to pay for $32,000 worth of paint, plus nearly $300,000 in legal fees. Trump’s company appealed, and barring a last-minute resolution, the case will be pending when he takes office; the deadline for final briefs is two days before he becomes the most powerful person in America.

Enriquez’s lawyer, Daniel Vega, said he is not surprised it has gone this far.

“The Trump litigation team litigated this case from day one like lions on fresh meat and continue to do so now on appeal,” he told NBC News.

The matter dates back to the fall of 2013 when Enriquez, who owns three Miami paint stores, was tapped by a subcontractor to supply paint for a major remodeling project at the Doral resort, owned and operated by a Trump company called Trump Endeavor.

There is no dispute that the paint was delivered and used on the property, according to court records. But after the subcontractor walked off the job weeks before completion, Enriquez didn’t get a final payment.

In a deposition, a project manager for general contractor Straticon testified that he failed to get the Trump Organization to pay the balance.

“Were you trying to pay him,” Vega asked the manager, Jamie Gram, during the sessions.

“I was,” Gram replied.

“And what happened?”

“Somebody chose not to,” Gram said.

“Who?” the lawyer asked.

“The Trump Organization,” Gram said.

“Who at Trump?”

“I don’t know,” Gram said. “Mr. Trump. Donald Trump.”

In October 2014, Enriquez filed a lien — a legal tool that can be used to recover a debt by tying up a piece of property — against Doral.

Eight months later, Enriquez filed a lawsuit against Trump Endeavor, seeking to foreclose on the 800-acre resort.

The Trump team’s defense was largely technical.

It turned out that when Enriquez took the job he submitted paperwork called a Notice to Owner, which would allow him to file a lien against the property if a bill wasn’t paid.

A Trump official gave him a form to work off — but it listed the general contractor for a different part of the project, and Enriquez repeated the mistake on his notice.

Gram later noticed and flagged the error. Enriquez said he would fix it but never did, court documents show.

At trial, though, Gram testified that the decision not to pay Enriquez “had nothing to do with a defective notice to owner.”

He went on to explain that the bill went unpaid because the Trump Organization had already paid “a decent amount of money” to the subcontractor, M&P, before it abandoned the job. The resort used any money left over, plus additional funds, to complete the unfinished paint job, he said.

Gram’s testimony appeared to distress Trump’s legal team, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Jorge Cueto noted in his June 2016 ruling.

“When Mr. Gram made that admission, Trump’s trial attorneys visibly winced, began breathing heavily and attempted to make eye contact with him,” the judge wrote.

The judge found that Enriquez had made “diligent efforts” to comply with the lien law and that being given the wrong paperwork by the Trump official was the root of the mistake. He also dismissed Trump clams that the bill was fraudulent, subtracting only $76.39 for a stepladder from the bottom line.

Cueto then dealt the Trump team a bigger blow, ruling that they had to pay Enriquez’s legal costs. Because Vega had taken the case on contingency, meaning he would not get paid if they lost, the judge tacked on a multiplier to compensate him for the risk he took, nearly doubling the award to $283,949.91.

“Trump elected to fight this case ‘tooth and nail’ instead of resolving it for a reasonable amount, driving up Paint Spot’s litigation fees and costs,” the judge explained.

The Trump trial attorneys did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the Trump Organization’s general counsel. The attorney handling the appeal, Bruce Rogow, did not respond to a question about who should have paid Enriquez for the paint used at Doral.

“Florida Statutes on liens are very specific and the appeal seeks to enforce those statutes which would mean that there was no valid lien to begin with and therefore the plaintiff was not entitled to any relief,” he wrote in an email. “That really is all that is at issue.”

Rogow did not respond to a question about whether the president-elect was personally involved in the decision to appeal the judgement. A spokesperson for Trump also did not respond to questions from NBC News.

Vega said he is confident The Paint Spot will win the appeal. But if he loses, he said, Enriquez could be saddled with Trump legal fees and might face bankruptcy. Trump’s attorney declined to say whether they would seek to recoup the legal fees.

Despite the stakes, Vega said he and his client were not afraid to take on the litigious billionaire.

“The Paint Spot is also owned by a proud small business owner… and he felt and we agreed that he was right factually and legally and therefore, we both decided to take on the risk,” Vega said.

(h/t NBC News)

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