According to a new report from the New York Times, a judge has ruled in favor of the Trump Organization to allow the ex-president’s company to continue to operate their city-owned golf course in the Bronx after the judge determined that New York City wrongfully terminated the company’s contract in the wake of the infamous January 6th Capitol attack.
Just days after the now ex-president’s supporters infamously stormed the nation’s Capitol building on January 6th, 2020, as the whole of Congress and the Vice President were inside working to certify the Electoral College votes in Joe Biden’s favor, New York City moved to terminate the lucrative contract they maintained with Donald Trump’s family company for the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the time that the decision was made because the then-president had personally incited the violence at the Capitol — a move the mayor said constituted criminal activity that gave the city the right to prematurely sever the contract.
However, lawyers for the city used a different argument in their defense, claiming that NYC terminated the contract because the Trump Organization failed to meet the obligations of the contract to maintain “a first class tournament quality daily fee golf course.”
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
In the termination, the city cited the company’s inability to attract a major golf tournament and noted that the Capitol attack would likely only serve to make that even less probable in the future because the Trump brand would now be “synonymous with an insurrection against the federal government.”
The Trump Organization unsurprisingly sued, arguing that they were only contractually obligated to maintain the course, not acquire and host high-profile events. Like any other legal battle Trump has been embroiled in, his legal team labeled the contract termination as politically motivated without any legal basis.
The Times reports, “In her decision, Justice Debra James of the State Supreme Court did not weigh in on the political aspects of the case, nor did she mention what had happened at the Capitol. But she sided with the Trump Organization, ruling that the city had not given a valid legal reason for ending the contract.”
In a statement following the ruling, Trump Organization spokeswoman Amanda Miller said, “As we have said since the beginning, the city’s efforts to terminate our long-term license agreement to operate Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point Park were nothing more than a political vendetta. This is not just a win for the Trump Organization; this is a win for justice, for the people of the City of New York, and for the hundreds of our hard-working employees at Ferry Point.”
You can read the full report from the Times here.
Featured image via screen capture
