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FTR#1373 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1374 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: “Fol­low the Mon­ey” is an axiom. These pro­grams explore the forces con­trol­ling the cen­ter­piece of his real estate port­fo­lio.

Before delv­ing into analy­sis of 40 Wall Street, we note the alto­geth­er dubi­ous nature of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna, who will head over­lap­ping inquiries into, among oth­er things, the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, MLK and (pos­si­bly) RFK.

Appar­ent­ly fun­da­men­tal mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of her back­ground are a mea­sure of Ms. Luna’s intel­lec­tu­al cred­i­bil­i­ty.

It will be inter­est­ing to see if Ms. Luna’s rep­re­sen­ta­tions give intel­lec­tu­al momen­tum to Holo­caust Denial, “Yes” on Aliens, “Yes” on Con­trolled Demo­li­tion of the World Cen­ter, and, per­haps, Don­ald Trump on Mount Rush­more.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Ms. Luna’s Mater­nal Grand­fa­ther’s Third Reich Ser­vice; The use of a finan­cial real estate vehi­cle as a mon­ey laun­der­ing instru­ment for Fer­di­nand Mar­cos’ wealth, the bulk of which came from Gold­en Lily recov­er­ies; The mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man aris­to­crats (includ­ing the Von Bis­mar­ck fam­i­ly) who own the land beneath Don­ald Trump’s 40 Wall Street prop­er­ty; The sale of the 40 Wall Street land to the Mar­cos front three weeks after its pur­chase; The mys­te­ri­ous own­er­ship of the LLC’s con­trol­ling the land beneath 40 Wall Street and (pos­si­bly) Trump him­self; Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Jr.‘s Gold­en Lily pres­i­den­cy in the Philip­pines; The pro­jec­tion of a fas­cist Gold­en Lily milieu about tak­ing over the U.S. with their own nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus; The encour­age­ment of the Mar­cos Gold­en Lily pipeline into the U.S. by the Rea­gan White House and William Casey’s CIA.

1.“Meet Anna Pauli­na Luna, the GOP law­mak­er tasked with revis­it­ing JFK files and Epstein’s list” by Alex Wood­ward; The Inde­pen­dent [UK]; Feb. 12, 2025.

Repub­li­can fire­brand believes there were ‘two shoot­ers’ and promis­es ‘trans­paren­cy’ to reveal ‘fed­er­al secrets’

The Repub­li­can con­gress­woman tasked with revis­it­ing “fed­er­al secrets” sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tions of John F. Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King Jr. — and Jef­frey Epstein’s so-called “client list” — is among a new class of GOP insur­gents and Don­ald Trump loy­al­ists who recent­ly float­ed a bill to put Trump’s face on Mount Rush­more.

Flori­da Rep. Anna Pauli­na Luna, a mem­ber of the far-right House Free­dom Cau­cus who was elect­ed to the House in 2022, has repeat­ed­ly pushed for “trans­paren­cy” in fed­er­al gov­ern­ment — specif­i­cal­ly, to dive into con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries sur­round­ing uniden­ti­fied fly­ing objects, the ori­gins of COVID-19, and the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, all of which will be at the cen­ter of her task force.

“The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has been hid­ing infor­ma­tion from Amer­i­cans for decades,” she said in a state­ment Tues­day.

The gov­ern­ment has spent years inves­ti­gat­ing polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions and “oth­er gov­ern­ment secrets with­out suc­cess,” she claimed, and “it is time to give Amer­i­cans the answers they deserve.”. . . .

2.“Con­gress­wom­an’s claim of Jew­ish her­itage omits Nazi grand­fa­ther;” i24NEWS; Feb 12, 2023.

A Repub­li­can con­gress­woman whose claim regard­ing being “raised as a Mes­sian­ic Jew by her father” could not be ver­i­fied by fact check­ers, appears to have dis­tort­ed her fam­i­ly his­to­ry in an even more strik­ing man­ner: by omit­ting men­tion of her pater­nal grand­fa­ther’s mil­i­tary ser­vice in Ger­many dur­ing Nazi rule.

Anna Pauli­na Luna, 33-year-old Flori­da law­mak­er, made a num­ber of unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims about her back­ground, the Wash­ing­ton Post alleged, includ­ing claim­ing to both have Jew­ish her­itage and to have been raised as a Jew; the report cites “peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter” say­ing that was not the case.

Luna stat­ed that while she present­ly iden­ti­fies as Chris­t­ian, she was “raised as a Mes­sian­ic Jew by her father,” and was” also a small frac­tion Ashke­nazi.” Mes­sian­ic Jews is a move­ment in Judaism whose adher­ents accepts Jesus as the Mes­si­ah.

How­ev­er, three mem­bers of Luna’s extend­ed fam­i­ly said that her father was Catholic, and that they were not aware of him prac­tic­ing any form of Judaism while Luna was grow­ing up. George Mayerhofer’s father, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, immi­grat­ed to Cana­da from Ger­many in 1954 after serv­ing in the ranks of the Nazi mil­i­tary as a teenag­er. He iden­ti­fied as Roman Catholic, accord­ing to an immi­gra­tion record cit­ed by the Post.

3. The Trump casi­no is open for busi­ness. Re-opened real­ly. Not his Atlantic City casi­nos. Those all went bank­rupt. No, it’s a much high­er stakes casi­no: secret­ly brib­ing this his­tor­i­cal­ly cor­rupt pres­i­dent. Although, after the Supreme Court’s pres­i­den­tial immu­ni­ty rul­ing, it’s not even clear you’d have to do it in secret. And any­one on the plan­et can play in it. As long as they have deep pock­ets and an abil­i­ty to some­how direct the con­tents of those pock­ets into Don­ald Trump’s bank accounts.

It’s that gross cor­rup­tion, increas­ing­ly out in the open, that brings us to a fas­ci­nat­ing pair of sto­ries about the incred­i­ble cor­rup­tion poten­tial found in the ‘crown jew­el’ of Pres­i­dent Trump’s com­mer­cial real estate port­fo­lio: The 40 Wall Street build­ing.

Or at least the for­mer ‘crown jew­el’ in Trump’s port­fo­lio. It turns out Trump has been over­stat­ing the val­ue for this prop­er­ty so egre­gious­ly that it end­ed up the cen­ter­piece of the New York state’s civ­il law­suit against Trump over the sys­tem­at­ic defraud­ing of banks he engaged in for years with rou­tine mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his prop­er­ties’ val­u­a­tions. A law­suit he end­ed up los­ing and that result­ed in $489 mil­lion fine (with inter­est) that could be more than enough to wipe out Trump’s cash reserves. And that’s on top of the $114 mil­lion mort­gage Trump still owes on the prop­er­ty.

Even worse, giv­en the cra­ter­ing of com­mer­cial real estate post-pan­dem­ic, the income gen­er­at­ed from the prop­er­ty may not be enough to even cov­er the mort­gage pay­ments. Adding to the cri­sis is the fact that Trump has such a tox­ic rep­u­ta­tion at this point many of the remain­ing ten­ants have indi­cat­ed they would like to relo­cate at the ear­li­est con­ve­nience. It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion that had Don­ald Trump fac­ing the poten­tial loss of his for­mer crown jew­el.

Or at least that would have been the case had Trump lost the 2024 elec­tion. At this point, who knows how he’ll be able to turn the sit­u­a­tion around. Or if he’ll some­how end up get­ting the fine dropped entire­ly. Giv­en that it’s a state-lev­el fine, Trump can’t just par­don him­self and the opin­ion from New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Leti­tia James last month was that Trump still had to pay the fine, pres­i­dent or not. We’re obvi­ous­ly in unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry here when it comes to what a pres­i­dent can and can­not do.

But that mas­sive civ­il fine and the depressed val­u­a­tion of what was once Trump’s crown jew­el is just part of what makes the 40 Wall Street prop­er­ty so grim­ly fas­ci­nat­ing in the con­text of a Trump sec­ond term. Because there’s anoth­er very strange dimen­sion to this sto­ry: it turns out Don­ald Trump’s own­er­ship of the 40 Wall Street tow­er doesn’t actu­al­ly include the ground beneath the tow­er. Instead, the orig­i­nal builders signed a long-term lease with the investors who own the land. As a result of that unusu­al own­er­ship arrange­ment, it’s actu­al­ly pos­si­ble for those investors to take con­trol of the entire tow­er should Don­ald Trump fail to make his rent pay­ments.

Now, as we’re going to see, a sce­nario that involves Trump hand­ing over own­er­ship of the tow­er to the land own­ers appears to be high­ly unlike­ly at this point. In part because the investors appear to be on very friend­ly terms with Trump.

So who are these investors? That’s not 100% clear, which is also part of this sto­ry. It turns out two LLCs own the land, and tech­ni­cal­ly it would be pos­si­ble for the true own­ers of those LLCs to change hands with­out any pub­lic dis­clo­sure. But we do have a vague idea of some of the orig­i­nal investors: Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck, Joachim Fer­di­nand von Grumme-Dou­glas and sib­lings Ani­ta, Chris­t­ian, and Wal­ter Hin­neberg.

The pur­chase by the five Ger­man investors was made on Decem­ber 7, 1982. Today, the Hin­nebergs appear­ing to con­trol the LLC that owns 80 per­cent of 40 Wall Street, with Joachim von Grumme-Dou­glas own­ing the oth­er per­cent. It’s unclear if Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck is still an own­er.

As we’re going to see, these weren’t ordi­nary investors. The Hin­nebergs come from one of the largest ship­ping-bro­ker dynas­ties on the plan­et. And Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck and Joachim Fer­di­nand von Grumme-Dou­glas both appear to be close­ly relat­ed and both hail from promi­nent Ger­man aris­to­crat­ic fam­i­lies. The Hin­nebergs also appear to be not just very chum­my with Don­ald Trump but they’ve been involved with orga­nized sim­i­lar kinds of ‘anti-elite’ polit­i­cal move­ments in their home city of Ham­burg, Ger­many. And, again, we don’t actu­al­ly know who else is involved with this invest­ment group. These are poten­tial­ly just the pub­lic faces.

But there’s anoth­er very inter­est­ing piece of his­to­ry relat­ed to these Ger­man investors: Don­ald Trump wasn’t the first per­son to lease the tow­er from these investors after they pur­chased the land in 1982. Pri­or to their pur­chase, the group of investors – George Com­fort, Hen­ry Loeb and Clif­ford Michel – had been leas­ing the tow­er from the land own­ers. But just three weeks after the Ger­man land pur­chase, the investors leas­ing the tow­er trans­ferred the lease­hold to an enti­ty that was lat­er found to serve as a vehi­cle for hid­ing the wealth of Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos. Fol­low­ing Marco’s exile in 1986, the US gov­ern­ment even­tu­al­ly seized con­trol of the tow­er.

So with the trans­fer of the lease to Fer­di­nand Mar­cos just three weeks after the pur­chase of the land beneath the tow­er, we have to ask: was this mys­tery Ger­man invest­ment group direct­ly involved with the laun­der­ing of the vast Gold­en Lily WWII plun­der that Mar­cos had been recov­er­ing? Because that tim­ing sure is remark­able. They buy the land, and Mar­cos gets the lease. Was that all just hap­pen­stance? Because if not, that is a real­ly inter­est­ing detail on the his­to­ry Marco’s vast inter­na­tion­al Gold­en Lily-relat­ed mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tions.

That’s all part of what makes the evolv­ing sto­ry about 40 Wall Street so a dark­ly fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry to keep an eye on. Not only do we still not know the com­plete iden­ti­ties of the mys­tery land own­ers who poten­tial­ly have enor­mous lever­age over Trump – and there­fore favors to ask of him – but it’s also pos­si­ble this same mys­tery investor group has some sort of rela­tion­ship to the Fer­di­nand Mar­co Gold­en Lily chap­ter of his­to­ry. A chap­ter of his­to­ry that remains wild­ly under-appre­ci­at­ed to this day in terms of the role it played in the financ­ing of the elite inter­na­tion­al far right and the real ‘Deep State’. An inter­na­tion­al far right that has more or less cap­tured con­trol of the US gov­ern­ment at this point. So while we can be con­fi­dent Pres­i­dent Trump is going to be engag­ing in an orgy of gross cor­rup­tion when it comes to his pri­vate busi­ness con­cerns and all the con­flicts of inter­est that entails, keep in mind that when it comes to the cor­rup­tion involv­ing Trump’s ‘crown jew­el’ at 40 Wall Street, the cor­rup­tion could end up being a lot more his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant:

“The Weird Worth of 40 Wall Street” By Andrew Rice; Curbed; 10/31/2024

In April of last year, dur­ing his sea­son of indict­ments, Don­ald Trump sat for a depo­si­tion and defend­ed his worth. The ses­sion was held at the New York State attor­ney general’s office in low­er Man­hat­tan, in a large con­fer­ence room with a south­ern expo­sure that looked out on 40 Wall Street, Trump’s near­by cop­per-crowned Art Deco office tow­er. The build­ing also hap­pened to be at the cen­ter of that day’s lit­i­ga­tion: a civ­il law­suit accus­ing Trump of defraud­ing banks by over­stat­ing the val­ue of his prop­er­ties. Trump gri­maced as Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tish James opened the depo­si­tion with a promise of a “fair and impar­tial” process. Over sev­en con­tentious hours, he brushed aside her team’s ques­tions about val­u­a­tion. With Trump, it has always seemed the strength of assets proves the qual­i­ty of the man.

“We have the Mona Lisas of prop­er­ties,” Trump tes­ti­fied, com­par­ing him­self to an art col­lec­tor for whom cash flow is a sec­ondary con­cern. He con­sid­ered 40 Wall to be one of his mas­ter­pieces — maybe the can­ni­est deal of his career. Trump had acquired the sky­scraper for just $1.3 mil­lion dur­ing a real-estate reces­sion in the 1990s, after which he con­vinced a bank to lend him mon­ey for ren­o­va­tions and rode the Man­hat­tan office mar­ket back up. Kevin Wal­lace, a lawyer from James’s office, hand­ed Trump a doc­u­ment pre­pared for his cred­i­tors in 2013, which list­ed the val­ue of 40 Wall Street at $530 mil­lion — more than 400 times his orig­i­nal pur­chase price.

“It’s, I think, today worth more than that,” Trump said.

…

In real­i­ty, the build­ing behind the cur­tain is once again worth next to noth­ing. Like many Man­hat­tan sky­scrap­ers, 40 Wall has been dev­as­tat­ed by the post-pan­dem­ic office-mar­ket crash. Its cur­rent oper­at­ing income, as reflect­ed in dis­clo­sures to its mort­gage ser­vicer, appears not to even cov­er its loan pay­ments, and the building’s mar­ket val­ue today is almost cer­tain­ly less than the $114 mil­lion bal­ance Trump will owe when the mort­gage comes due next year. One real-estate investor said Trump’s most ratio­nal move would be to “throw in the keys to the lender,” like oth­er New York office land­lords who have seen their tro­phies turn into emblems of dis­as­ter.

Trump has built his iden­ti­ty around punch­ing back and win­ning, what­ev­er the odds. But while that approach has brought him a stun­ning come­back in pol­i­tics, putting him on the cusp of a sec­ond term as pres­i­dent, his orig­i­nal busi­ness — New York real estate — is on the ropes. Ear­li­er this year, James won her fraud law­suit, and the penal­ties the judge assessed, $489 mil­lion (and count­ing, with inter­est), could be more than enough to wipe out Trump’s cash reserves if they stand up on appeal. His fam­i­ly com­pa­ny, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, has been hol­lowed out by crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions and is now oper­at­ing under the super­vi­sion of a court-appoint­ed mon­i­tor. The com­pa­ny has been busy over­seas, cut­ting deals to license Trump’s per­son­al brand to devel­op­ments in places like Oman and Dubai, and host­ing tour­na­ments affil­i­at­ed with the Sau­di-gov­ern­ment-backed LIV golf tour. But at home in New York, Trump’s name has become a repel­lent. Con­do boards have vot­ed to rip it off their build­ings. The city of New York was glad to see him final­ly out of his deal to oper­ate a pub­lic golf course in the Bronx so it could remove the “Trump Links” sig­nage that was so con­spic­u­ous from the White­stone Bridge. Guc­ci, the anchor ten­ant in the aging mall at Trump Tow­er, man­aged to get Trump to slash its rent in 2020, but the retail­er is once again rumored to be plot­ting a move, since its par­ent com­pa­ny recent­ly spent near­ly $1 bil­lion to pur­chase anoth­er build­ing across the street. Trump’s most lucra­tive real-estate invest­ments, his pas­sive stakes in a pair of New York and San Fran­cis­co office build­ings run by Vor­na­do Real­ty Trust, are also worth less than they were before the pan­dem­ic.

No Trump prop­er­ty, how­ev­er, has expe­ri­enced a fall like 40 Wall, which was once con­sid­ered to be the sin­gle most valu­able prop­er­ty in his port­fo­lio. “What a fuck­ing mess that build­ing is,” says one real-estate pro­fes­sion­al who is famil­iar with its state. “You could charge a nick­el a foot and no one wants to pay the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion rent.” Of the 75 ten­ants list­ed on 40 Wall’s rental rolls in 2015, the last time it refi­nanced its mort­gage, more than 40 have left. Around two dozen oth­ers have long-term leas­es that appear to be set to expire in the next two years. Although the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion claims 40 Wall is still 75 per­cent leased, a few floors are entire­ly vacant and sit­ting on the sub­let mar­ket. Its ground-lev­el retail space is almost total­ly emp­ty. In today’s world, the 1930s-vin­tage sky­scraper is like­ly best suit­ed for con­ver­sion to res­i­den­tial use; to sur­vive as an office build­ing, it needs expen­sive upgrades. Either way, it will require a land­lord and lenders will­ing to invest hun­dreds of mil­lions in cap­i­tal, a poten­tial­ly tall order for a con­vict­ed felon whose largest source of per­son­al wealth is his founder’s stake in the prof­it­less com­pa­ny that owns Truth Social, a meme stock that fluc­tu­ates with his poll num­bers. And that’s before you even get to the deal­break­er: the fact that Trump doesn’t own the land beneath his own build­ing and must pay rent to a secre­tive group of for­eign investors who have a con­trac­tu­al option to jack it up in a few years.

Per­haps it seems dis­cor­dant in this of all weeks to dwell on the fate of a mere build­ing. But to look out the win­dow and exam­ine 40 Wall is to imag­ine a pair of diver­gent sce­nar­ios. In one, Trump is the los­er. His bil­lion­aire bene­fac­tors desert him, his stonk goes to zero, his super-PAC dona­tions dry up, the Saud­is and oth­er for­eign gov­ern­ments lose inter­est in woo­ing his busi­ness, his pros­e­cu­tions and his sen­tences go for­ward, his fines from civ­il judg­ments stand and his legal fees drain his for­tune, the rule of grav­i­ty pulls his com­pa­ny into dis­tress, and he gives up the keys. Or he could win, in which case his fight to save 40 Wall could go in a very dif­fer­ent direc­tion, open­ing up nov­el ways for Pres­i­dent Trump to lever­age his office.

*****

When I brought up 40 Wall Street to peo­ple in the real-estate busi­ness, even usu­al­ly talk­a­tive sales­men went silent. A bro­ker at Cush­man & Wake­field, which act­ed as 40 Wall’s leas­ing agent before the firm dropped Trump’s busi­ness after the Jan­u­ary 6 assault, wrote back: “Bet­ter that I don’t.” Anoth­er bro­ker who did a lease deal in the build­ing, when reached on his cell phone, told me his train was going into a tun­nel before the line went dead. He nev­er picked up again. Of the sources who did agree to talk, sev­er­al used the same metaphor in ask­ing for anonymi­ty, call­ing Trump a “third rail,” as if just say­ing the name in pub­lic might get them zapped. Of the more than three dozen 40 Wall ten­ants con­tact­ed for this sto­ry, the vast major­i­ty declined to com­ment.

…

A com­mer­cial office bro­ker had described the build­ing to me as “slow and sleepy.” Soft music tin­kled in the white mar­ble lob­by, where there was hard­ly a soul walk­ing in or out on a sum­mer work­day. I got off the ele­va­tor at Jay Suites, on the 28th floor, which was dec­o­rat­ed with a framed poster of Roger Moore sip­ping a mar­ti­ni. Past a giant red sculp­ture of a bear, I found my room, a gener­ic unit with a sad plant, a large white­board, and a bro­ken clock. One glass wall looked onto the hall­way, where I could watch my tem­po­rary co-work­ers going about their days, phones pressed to ears.

…

The val­ue of 40 Wall was espe­cial­ly depressed by its unusu­al own­er­ship struc­ture. The bankers who con­struct­ed it had not pur­chased the ground on which it sat, instead opt­ing to sign a long-term lease with the under­ly­ing landown­ers. (The lease cur­rent­ly runs until 2059, with two renew­al options that go on through the 22nd cen­tu­ry.) The own­er of a ground lease acts in every way like a building’s own­er — keep­ing up with main­te­nance, pay­ing prop­er­ty tax­es, col­lect­ing rent — but does not hold the deed to the under­ly­ing land, and if the lease­hold­er stops pay­ing its ground rent or oth­er­wise vio­lates the lease terms, the landown­er can fore­close. The lease­hold­er that sold to Trump, a com­pa­ny from Hong Kong, had found 40 Wall impos­si­ble to man­age. “All they want­ed to do is get the build­ing sold and go back to Chi­na,” recalls a for­mer Trump Orga­ni­za­tion employ­ee who worked on the deal. And so the sell­er was will­ing to accept the num­ber Trump offered: bare­ly more than zero.

Then Trump did his thing. He slapped his name on the build­ing. He met the ground own­ers, a group of silent Ger­man investors who had pur­chased the land in 1982. (Accord­ing to the Real Deal, 80 per­cent of the land is owned by a com­pa­ny rep­re­sent­ing the Hin­neberg fam­i­ly, who run a Ham­burg ship-bro­ker­age com­pa­ny, while the oth­er 20 per­cent belongs to a group that includes Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck, a descen­dant of the Iron Chan­cel­lor.) Trump host­ed mem­bers of the fam­i­ly for din­ner at his triplex in Trump Tow­er and “just charmed them to death,” the for­mer employ­ee said. Trump rea­soned that most ground own­ers are just look­ing for a reli­able return with­out has­sle and expense. He promised sta­bil­i­ty in exchange for con­ces­sions that made it eas­i­er for him to rent the build­ing and to take out loans to ren­o­vate it. He also nego­ti­at­ed a pro­vi­sion that said he could con­vert 40 Wall into con­do­mini­ums if he chose. Trump went to Deutsche Bank and pitched it on lend­ing him $125 mil­lion for improve­ments. The exec­u­tive who struck the deal memo­ri­al­ized it by com­mis­sion­ing a scale mod­el of 40 Wall to dis­play in his office, and Trump became a long­time Deutsche Bank client.

Trump pro­mot­ed the build­ing and filled it with ten­ants, many of whom were drawn by the cachet of a Wall Street address and the landlord’s image as a win­ner. Trump used it as the head­quar­ters for some of his enter­pris­es, like Trump Mort­gage, his sub­prime home lender, and Trump Uni­ver­si­ty, which would lat­er set­tle claims it had defraud­ed stu­dents. In 2016, a Bloomberg News inves­ti­ga­tion found that 40 Wall’s past ten­ants have includ­ed a remark­able num­ber of swindlers and felons. (Since then, the exec­u­tives run­ning an engi­neer­ing firm that is one of the largest ten­ants plead­ed guilty to bribery charges relat­ed to gov­ern­ment con­struc­tion con­tracts.) But 40 Wall also attract­ed plen­ty of small busi­ness­es and start-ups that were drawn to low­er Man­hat­tan by its com­par­a­tive­ly low rents. By 2015, the build­ing was around 95 per­cent full.

…

This Trump effect is hard to quan­ti­fy. After Jan­u­ary 6, news orga­ni­za­tions report­ed that a hand­ful of ten­ants, includ­ing the Girl Scouts of Greater New York, were try­ing to vacate the build­ing. Four years lat­er, the Girl Scouts remain; its lease runs until 2035, accord­ing to the data firm Costar, so it’s stuck. But office leas­es typ­i­cal­ly last around ten years, which means many of the ones Trump signed before he was elect­ed have been run­ning out. Whether for eco­nom­ic or polit­i­cal rea­sons, many ten­ants are mov­ing else­where. Duane Reade vacat­ed the cor­po­rate head­quar­ters it had on the 21st and 22nd floors when it aban­doned its store. The engi­neer­ing firm Thorn­ton Tomaset­ti moved in 2020, cit­ing a desire to con­sol­i­date its offices in anoth­er build­ing after a merg­er, and is still try­ing to find some­one to sub­let its 60,000 square feet. (Its bro­ker declined to dis­cuss the space.) As ten­ants depart, CompStak’s fig­ures show the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion has signed few leas­es to replace them.

…

*****

Trump has always been able to con­vince lenders to take risks on him. Back when 40 Wall was full, he man­aged to take out mort­gages on the prop­er­ty, even though banks gen­er­al­ly hate to extend loans to ground-leased build­ings. (They are con­sid­ered to be shaky col­lat­er­al because the prop­er­ty is not entire­ly owned by the debtor.) When Trump last refi­nanced the mort­gage on 40 Wall, in 2015, he han­dled it like a fam­i­ly mat­ter. Allen Weis­sel­berg, his long­time chief finan­cial offi­cer and right-hand man, called up his son Jack, who worked at finance firm Lad­der Cap­i­tal. The Weis­sel­bergs nego­ti­at­ed a ten-year loan of $160 mil­lion at an inter­est rate of 3.7 per­cent.

The Man­hat­tan office mar­ket was sta­ble, Trump had suc­cess­ful­ly oper­at­ed the build­ing for decades, and the lender assessed that there would be lit­tle chance of a default. The loan would lat­er be bun­dled with oth­er com­mer­cial mort­gages into a pub­licly trad­ed bond, shift­ing its risk to investors. “Don­ald is on board and ready to go,” Jack Weis­sel­berg emailed his col­leagues in April 2015. That June, Trump rode down his esca­la­tor and announced he was run­ning for pres­i­dent.

A decade lat­er, as the 40 Wall mort­gage matures, every­thing is dif­fer­ent. The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion as a com­pa­ny has been crim­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed of tax fraud. Trump and his com­pa­ny face the huge civ­il fraud penal­ty hand­ed down ear­li­er this year by Judge Arthur Engoron, and Tish James has sig­naled that if he refus­es to pay, she could move to seize his real-estate assets, includ­ing 40 Wall. Engoron’s deci­sion also banned Trump from involve­ment in run­ning his fam­i­ly busi­ness. (All the penal­ties are on hold while Trump’s appeal makes its way through the courts.) Allen Weis­sel­berg has served two sep­a­rate terms in jail, one for tax eva­sion and the sec­ond for com­mit­ting per­jury at the civ­il fraud tri­al. In August, the rat­ing agency Fitch down­grad­ed its out­look on the mort­gage bond that includes Trump’s loan, cit­ing its con­cerns about 40 Wall’s sol­ven­cy as a major fac­tor. Last year, Bloomberg report­ed that the building’s loan had been trans­ferred to a spe­cial ser­vicer, a sign of dis­tress, although the deci­sion was lat­er rescind­ed.

Between 2019 and last year, 40 Wall’s annu­al net oper­at­ing income — the fig­ure the real-estate indus­try uses to deter­mine a building’s mar­ket val­ue — fell by about a third to $12 mil­lion, accord­ing to dis­clo­sures made to bond­hold­ers. Through the first six months of 2024, the build­ing was on pace to gen­er­ate less than $8 mil­lion in net income this year, not enough to even pay all the $9.8 mil­lion Trump owes in debt ser­vice. Like many office land­lords who bor­rowed before the pan­dem­ic, Trump now has a build­ing that is worth less than its mort­gage bal­ance on paper. “40 Wall is not alone,” says Kent Swig, a real-estate exec­u­tive who has rede­vel­oped many build­ings in low­er Man­hat­tan. “Two-thirds of the $2 tril­lion in debt that is com­ing due over the next two years is under­wa­ter.”

Any new mort­gage would be much more expen­sive, because inter­est rates have more than dou­bled since 2015. A lender would also demand to see a plan to return 40 Wall to health. It is con­sid­ered to be “Class B” real estate, in an office mar­ket that is pun­ish­ing any­thing that is not at the top. “The com­mon areas of the build­ing are old and have not been upgrad­ed,” says a com­mer­cial bro­ker. “That would involve a pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant — pos­si­bly nine-fig­ure — invest­ment.” Because the build­ing has dimin­ished in val­ue, Trump would also have to be will­ing to pay down his exist­ing mort­gage with cash and to take out a small­er loan. “Which is not what Trump does,” says a Man­hat­tan build­ing own­er. “He’s a debt per­son.” And that is pre­sum­ing he could find a bank will­ing to refi­nance the loan at all, which is far from cer­tain because he also has anoth­er prob­lem: his ground lease, which con­tains a con­trac­tu­al time bomb.

Cur­rent­ly, Trump pays the ground own­ers just $2.5 mil­lion a year. But 40 Wall’s lease con­tains a clause that says the rent will peri­od­i­cal­ly reset to reflect the land’s fair mar­ket val­ue, as defined by a for­mu­la that is very favor­able to the ground own­ers, giv­en the extra­or­di­nary increase in Man­hat­tan land prices over the past few decades. The first reset was sup­posed to hap­pen years ago, but dur­ing the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis, Trump was able to push off the day of reck­on­ing. In his civ­il-fraud-case depo­si­tion, Trump tes­ti­fied that he had rene­go­ti­at­ed “very favor­able terms” and said he fore­saw that he would one day con­vert 40 Wall into a lux­u­ry res­i­den­tial build­ing. “If the city ever comes back,” he said, “you can con­vert the entire tow­er of 40 Wall Street into con­dos and make an absolute for­tune, far more than the five-or-six-hun­dred mil­lion prob­a­bly that the build­ing is worth now.” Maybe he’d for­got­ten that dur­ing the last lease nego­ti­a­tion, he gave up his option to uni­lat­er­al­ly do a con­do con­ver­sion. The long-post­poned reset is now sched­uled to hap­pen in eight years, with­in the term of his next mort­gage.

For the pur­pos­es of reval­u­a­tion, the reset for­mu­la pre­tends there is no land­marked office build­ing on the prop­er­ty and sets its val­ue as if it were emp­ty for devel­op­ment. An appraisal pre­pared the last time Trump refi­nanced esti­mat­ed that in those cir­cum­stances, the 40 Wall land would be worth around $160 mil­lion, yield­ing a reset annu­al rent of around $10 mil­lion — more than the building’s cur­rent net oper­at­ing income. The land might be even more valu­able today. Woody Heller, a real-estate exec­u­tive who han­dled a pre­vi­ous sale of 40 Wall back in the 1990s, said that in some cir­cum­stances, a rent reset can “destroy the eco­nom­ics” of a build­ing, and for that rea­son, “a lease­hold with a fair mar­ket val­ue reset is very hard to refi­nance.”

“It’s like your head is on a chop­ping block,” a vet­er­an invest­ment-sales bro­ker in Man­hat­tan said of the sit­u­a­tion fac­ing any land­lord with an impend­ing rent reset. “The guil­lo­tine is being held up by a piece of twine that is fray­ing. That thing is about to fall, and when it falls, you’re dead.”

That may sound over­dra­mat­ic. Matthew Kwatinetz, a pro­fes­sor of real-estate eco­nom­ics at New York Uni­ver­si­ty, says that usu­al­ly ground-lease dis­putes get worked out with a com­pro­mise or a set­tle­ment in arbi­tra­tion. “The rea­son some­one does a ground lease is because they don’t want to run the build­ing,” he says, and that is espe­cial­ly true at a time like this, when the real-estate mar­ket is dif­fi­cult. But there is always the risk that the ground own­er will try to use the rent reset as a lever to evict the lease­hold­er. “What’s their incen­tive?” said the invest­ment-sales bro­ker. “They get the build­ing back. They get a much more valu­able asset.” After evict­ing, the land own­er can resell the prop­er­ty or hold onto it in the hope that the mar­ket rebounds.

…

Ear­li­er this year, the ground lease on a 920,000-square-foot office build­ing near Times Square, which sold for $332 mil­lion in 2006, was pur­chased by a Texas fam­i­ly for just $8.5 mil­lion in an online auc­tion. If $9 a foot is the going rate for a ground lease, then the com­pa­ra­bly sized 40 Wall would not be worth much on the open mar­ket. That explains why many real-estate investors say Trump would be wise to sim­ply give 40 Wall to the bank when his mort­gage comes due, rather than pay­ing back the bal­ance of more than $100 mil­lion. Com­mer­cial real-estate loans are gen­er­al­ly “non-recourse,” mean­ing the own­er is not per­son­al­ly respon­si­ble for repay­ing in the event of a default. Although it is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble that a lender could go after Trump per­son­al­ly for the bal­ance, invok­ing what is known as a “bad boy clause” — he was found to have com­mit­ted fraud in mis­rep­re­sent­ing his net worth — such lit­i­ga­tion would be cost­ly and far from cer­tain to suc­ceed. Most like­ly, Trump would walk away free. He would take a tax hit, and an ego hit, but 40 Wall would become some­one else’s prob­lem.

It is not in Trump’s nature, though, to ever con­cede defeat. For all his spec­tac­u­lar ups and downs in the real-estate busi­ness, in his entire career he has trans­ferred only three prop­er­ties back to his lenders, all dur­ing his crash in the ear­ly 1990s. (The only large fore­clo­sure was at the Plaza Hotel.) And it is easy to imag­ine how Trump might see a strat­e­gy for sav­ing his per­son­al invest­ment in 40 Wall. It hap­pens to be the same route he is tak­ing to solve all his prob­lems: He just has to win the elec­tion.

If that hap­pens, Trump can sweep away his fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tions and put off any sen­tence for his New York State con­vic­tion indef­i­nite­ly. The legal pres­sure on his finances will ease, and he will have new delay options and new immu­ni­ty argu­ments to take to the Supreme Court as he attempts to avoid pay­ing the ruinous judg­ments in his civ­il cas­es. (Besides the civ­il fraud case, Trump owes $88 mil­lion in dam­ages to E. Jean Car­roll from her sex­u­al-assault and defama­tion law­suits.) He will like­ly be able to string out the legal col­lec­tion process for years — pre­sum­ing the judg­ments stand up. At a New York State appeals court hear­ing held in Sep­tem­ber, a pan­el of judges sound­ed skep­ti­cal of Engoron’s civ­il-fraud deci­sion, and the size of Trump’s penal­ty could be adjust­ed down­ward. As a vic­to­ri­ous pres­i­dent-elect, Trump would also be free to liq­ui­date his stock in Truth Social at its peak mar­ket. (Over the past week, the val­ue of Trump’s stake has risen from rough­ly $4 bil­lion to $6 bil­lion on mar­ket opti­mism about his chances.) He would have more than enough finan­cial room to pay off the mort­gage on 40 Wall.

But why would he both­er? “Who’s going to fore­close on the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States?” says a real-estate investor who is famil­iar with 40 Wall. “Nobody.” Peo­ple will sure­ly be lin­ing up out­side the Oval Office to extend Trump cred­it. The last time he was pres­i­dent, Trump ele­vat­ed some of his for­mer lenders — Wilbur Ross, Tom Bar­rack — to posi­tions of influ­ence. When he strug­gled to find a finan­cial insti­tu­tion to issue him a $175 mil­lion bond so he could appeal the civ­il-fraud judg­ment, a sym­pa­thet­ic bil­lion­aire who had made his mon­ey in sub­prime car loans stepped in to help. “He has a lot of friends with a lot of mon­ey,” Kwatinetz says. “There will be some­one who will back him for finan­cial rea­sons or polit­i­cal rea­sons.”

Trump’s first elec­tion brought about unprece­dent­ed con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing his busi­ness rela­tion­ships, con­flicts of inter­est, for­eign influ­ence, and the con­sti­tu­tion­al emol­u­ments clause. Those issues have now been most­ly resolved in Trump’s favor. He turned his hotel on Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue into a resort for pres­i­den­tial favor seek­ers, then flipped it for a $100 mil­lion prof­it. You can imag­ine how the restored Pres­i­dent Trump could do some­thing sim­i­lar with his Wall Street office build­ing, mar­ket­ing it to lob­by­ists, defense con­trac­tors, and oth­er peo­ple who crave a rela­tion­ship with the pres­i­dent. Kwatinetz says the build­ing is a great office loca­tion “for peo­ple that want to flip the bird to the New York City Estab­lish­ment.” Or for that mat­ter, for for­eign inter­ests. Trump paused his over­seas busi­ness deal­ings for the dura­tion of his first term, but he and his chil­dren revved them back up as soon as he left office, and they are mak­ing no promis­es about self-imposed lim­its the sec­ond time around. (“Frankly, we got crushed any­way,” Eric Trump recent­ly told the New York Times.) There would be lit­tle to stop a reelect­ed Pres­i­dent Trump from, say, tak­ing a friend­ly invest­ment or a loan from a Sau­di sov­er­eign-wealth fund.

With the build­ing recap­i­tal­ized, Trump would be able to rene­go­ti­ate with the Ger­mans from a posi­tion of strength. In his 2004 book Trump: How to Get Rich, he described a warm ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with the Hin­nebergs, call­ing them “among the finest peo­ple with whom I’ve ever done busi­ness,” but the cur­rent state of rela­tions between the par­ties is unknown. (“I have been sworn to silence at the moment,” said Per­cy Pyne, a Flori­da ship­ping exec­u­tive who has rep­re­sent­ed the family’s busi­ness inter­ests at 40 Wall in the past.)

Typ­i­cal­ly, in ground-lease dis­putes, “who winds up win­ning is a ques­tion of who can wheel and deal the best,” Kwatinetz says. “I’m not a fan, but I am not per­son­al­ly putting mon­ey against Trump at that game.” Trump could rework the lease again. Or he — or some­one inter­est­ed in back­ing him — could buy the Ger­mans out. Amer­i­cans might not even learn if there was a change of own­er­ship. The ground is tech­ni­cal­ly held by a pair of LLCs, and those enti­ties could change hands with­out pub­lic dis­clo­sure . . . .

4. As we can see in the fol­low­ing Real Deal arti­cle from Jan­u­ary 6, 2017, while we may not know exact­ly who owns these LLCs that owns the land beneath the tow­er, it’s pret­ty clear the own­ers are very pro-Trump. The Hin­neberg broth­ers even appear to have a his­to­ry of MAGA-adja­cent ‘anti-elite’ polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing.

But we also learn a very inter­est­ing fun fact about that his­to­ry of the shady own­er­ship of this build­ing: Fer­di­nand Mar­cos acquired the lease to the tow­er just three weeks after the Ger­man investors took own­er­ship of the land in 1982. Which rais­es the fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tion as to whether or not the leas­ing of the tow­er to Mar­cos was the intend­ed plan all along. Because if that’s the case, there could be a whole Gold­en Lily-laun­der­ing angle to this sto­ry that has yet to be revealed:

“Meet the obscure Ger­man mag­nates who actu­al­ly own Trump’s most valu­able build­ing” By Kon­rad Putzi­er; The Real Deal; 01/06/2017.

The sky­scraper at 40 Wall Street occu­pies a spe­cial place in Don­ald Trump’s tale of busi­ness suc­cess. It is, in all like­li­hood, the most valu­able sin­gle real estate asset he con­trols, worth hun­dreds of mil­lions. And he nev­er gets tired of say­ing that he bought it for a mere $1 mil­lion in 1995. “On occa­sion, I am asked what my favorite deals have been,” he wrote in his book “Nev­er Give Up.” “I have a lot to choose from, but there is some­thing about the acqui­si­tion of 40 Wall Street that will always stand apart.”

What’s often left unsaid is that Trump doesn’t actu­al­ly own the build­ing. He mere­ly leased it for a term of up to 200 years. The building’s actu­al own­ers are a group of obscure, wealthy Ger­mans.

That sud­den­ly mat­ters a great deal. Trump will be sworn in as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States on Jan. 20. The com­man­der-in-chief owing reg­u­lar lease pay­ments to a bunch of for­eign busi­ness­men might not be con­cern­ing if it weren’t for the fact that no one seems to know exact­ly who they are.

…

The own­er­ship web of 40 Wall

On Decem­ber 7, 1982, five Ger­mans bought the land under the tow­er from its long-term own­er, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life Insur­ance Com­pa­ny. The buy­ers: Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck, Joachim Fer­di­nand von Grumme-Dou­glas and sib­lings Ani­ta, Chris­t­ian, and Wal­ter Hin­neberg (more on these peo­ple below).

Ani­ta and Wal­ter Hin­neberg each owned 25 per­cent of the prop­er­ty and Chris­t­ian Hin­neberg owned 30 per­cent. Bis­mar­ck and Grumme-Dou­glas each owned 10 per­cent.

In 1992, the three Hin­neberg sib­lings trans­ferred their com­bined 80 per­cent inter­est to an enti­ty called 40 Wall Lim­it­ed Part­ner­ship. In Decem­ber 2014, that enti­ty in turn trans­ferred its inter­est in the prop­er­ty to anoth­er enti­ty, 40 Wall Street Hold­ings Corp. The ben­e­fi­cial own­ers of that lat­est enti­ty aren’t pub­lic, but Chris­t­ian Hin­neberg signed the deed as the buy­er on behalf of 40 Wall Street Hold­ings Corp.

Mean­while, in 1992, Bis­mar­ck and Grumme-Dou­glas trans­ferred their com­bined 20 per­cent inter­est to an enti­ty called Scan­dic Wall Lim­it­ed Part­ner­ship. In 2004, that enti­ty in turn trans­ferred it to anoth­er enti­ty, called New Scan­dic Wall Lim­it­ed Part­ner­ship, which still owns a 20-per­cent stake in the build­ing. The ben­e­fi­cial own­ers of that enti­ty aren’t pub­lic, but the 2004 deed doc­u­ment lists Joachim Fer­di­nand von Grumme-Dou­glas as its pres­i­dent. Reached by phone, Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck con­firmed that she invest­ed in the prop­er­ty but declined to say whether she still holds a stake. Grumme-Dou­glas could not be reached.

To sum up: the Hin­nebergs still appear to con­trol the enti­ty that owns 80 per­cent of 40 Wall Street. Joachim von Grumme-Dou­glas is the pres­i­dent of the enti­ty that owns the remain­ing 20 per­cent, and Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck may or may not still be a part of it.

Here’s where it gets com­pli­cat­ed: While the Ger­mans tech­ni­cal­ly bought the prop­er­ty in 1982, they didn’t have full con­trol. Since 1966, the build­ing had been leased to investors George Com­fort, Hen­ry Loeb and Clif­ford Michel.

While the land stayed under Ger­man own­er­ship the fol­low­ing decades, the lease­hold changed hands sev­er­al times. Three weeks after the prop­er­ty sold to the Ger­mans, Com­fort and his part­ners trans­ferred the lease­hold to an enti­ty that was lat­er found to hide the wealth of Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos. Fol­low­ing Mar­cos’ exile in 1986, the tow­er became embroiled in sev­er­al law­suits. In 1989, New York-based Resnick fam­i­ly took over, but amid a mar­ket down­turn, they couldn’t make the build­ing lucra­tive. In 1993, Hong Kong-based Kin­son Prop­er­ties took con­trol of the lease­hold in a fore­clo­sure sale, but it too strug­gled to make the build­ing a cash cow. In 1995, Trump took over the lease­hold and restruc­tured it.

Under the new terms, the lease runs through April 30, 2059, with two tenant’s options to extend it by 67.5 years each. Bloomberg val­ued the lease­hold at about $550 mil­lion in 2015. Though it’s unclear how much the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion receives in annu­al rent, Don­ald Trump Jr. last year said the build­ing was 97 per­cent leased. With an esti­mat­ed aver­age $36 per square foot, Trump could receive more than $30 mil­lion a year from ten­ants at 40 Wall Street.

…

Trump, who took out a $160 mil­lion loan against his lease­hold in 2015 from Lad­der Cap­i­tal, pays the own­ers $1.6 mil­lion a year under the terms of the ground lease, accord­ing to SEC doc­u­ments cit­ed by the New York Times.

…

The Hin­nebergs

Elec­tions to the Ham­burg cham­ber of commerce’s plenum don’t typ­i­cal­ly make head­lines, but this year marks the excep­tion. A group called “We are the cham­ber” is run­ning on a plat­form to shake up what they describe as a crusty elite, get rid of manda­to­ry dues and increase trans­paren­cy. Sound famil­iar? It seems that the glob­al anti-estab­lish­ment move­ment that swept Trump into the Oval Office and put the Unit­ed King­dom on a path to leave the E.U. has made it into the hal­lowed halls of one of the mer­chant city’s most pres­ti­gious insti­tu­tions.

But that’s not the only con­nec­tion between the so-called cham­ber rebels and Trump: one of its lead­ers is Wal­ter Jr. Hin­neberg. “How Don­ald Trump’s friend is shak­ing up Ham­burg,” read a Ger­man-lan­guage head­line in local paper Ham­burg­er Abend­blatt on Nov. 11.

Twin broth­ers Chris­t­ian and Wal­ter Jr. Hin­neberg, 64 years old, are among the wealth­i­est and best-con­nect­ed ship bro­kers in the world. They run their busi­ness, named Wal­ter J. Hin­neberg GmbH after their late father, from a small office in Hamburg’s Ballindamm street. Like Trump, the Hin­nebergs inher­it­ed a sub­stan­tial busi­ness from their father and made it big­ger. But in anoth­er sense they are the exact oppo­site of Trump: they are reserved, shy away from media cov­er­age and live a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est lifestyle con­sid­er­ing their wealth, one fam­i­ly friend told TRD. “Their mot­to is ‘dis­cre­tion is our busi­ness,’” the friend said.

While many ship bro­kers field flashy, cor­po­rate offices, the Hin­nebergs run their busi­ness from a cou­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive­ly dec­o­rat­ed rooms with a staff of less than a dozen, one ship­ping indus­try source who per­son­al­ly knows the Hin­nebergs said.

The source sug­gest­ed that the broth­ers like­ly had some sort of involve­ment with the major­i­ty of con­tain­er ships that roam the oceans, and have par­tic­u­lar­ly strong rela­tion­ships with Kore­an ship­yards.

…

In a rare inter­view, Chris­t­ian told the mar­itime news com­pa­ny Lloyd’s List in 2004 that with his father’s trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence of los­ing his sav­ings dur­ing World War II in mind, the fam­i­ly eschewed stocks or cur­ren­cy invest­ments in favor of prop­er­ty, “some­thing sol­id,” he said.

The Hin­nebergs appear to have a good rela­tion­ship with their ground ten­ant at 40 Wall. In a recent chat with the Ham­burg­er Abend­blatt, Wal­ter Jr. described Trump as a “friend­ly and not at all arro­gant per­son.”

Trump, in turn, has heaped praise on the fam­i­ly. “I got along very well with the Hin­nebergs, and they real­ized that after a string of losers who had owned the build­ing, I had the integri­ty of their spec­tac­u­lar prop­er­ty first and fore­most in my mind,” he wrote in “Nev­er Give Up.” “They are a tru­ly great fam­i­ly, and they knew I loved the build­ing, that I would be doing every­thing pos­si­ble to restore it to its inher­ent grandeur.”

The friend­ship between the devel­op­er and the ship bro­kers appears to have last­ed: two sources close to the fam­i­ly told TRD that the Hin­nebergs spent the hol­i­days with Trump at his Flori­da estate Mar-a-Lago this year.

And on Jan. 4, Wal­ter Hin­neberg had a 25-minute meet­ing with Trump at Trump Tow­er. Accord­ing to news reports, he also had lunch with Trump’s son Eric.

Joachim von Grumme-Dou­glas and Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck

Stephanie Andrea Vive­ca Mar­ti­ta von Bis­mar­ck, nee Sedl­mayr, mar­ried into the aris­to­crat­ic dynasty most famous for pro­duc­ing Germany’s first chan­cel­lor, Otto von Bis­mar­ck. Her hus­band, Got­tfried von Bis­mar­ck, holds a mas­ter of sci­ence in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing degree from MIT and spent some time work­ing in the U.S. Accord­ing to his Linkedin page, he now works as an inde­pen­dent busi­ness con­sul­tant. (He is not to be con­fused with anoth­er Got­tfried von Bis­mar­ck famous for host­ing drug-fueled orgies in Lon­don who died of a cocaine over­dose in 2007. ) The cou­ple, both in their 70s, lives in Ham­burg.

Lit­tle is known about Joachim Fer­di­nand von Grumme-Dou­glas, oth­er than that he was born in 1933 and lived or still lives in Brus­sels. Accord­ing to an online geneal­o­gy track­er of the sprawl­ing Dou­glas fam­i­ly, he is a descen­dant of Scot­tish and Ger­man aris­to­crats and the grand­son of an admi­ral in the impe­r­i­al Ger­man navy.

Joachim von Grumme-Dou­glas and Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck appear to be close­ly relat­ed. When Grumme-Dou­glas’ moth­er Annabel Sedl­mayr (nee von Arn­im, wid­owed von Grumme-Dou­glas) died in 2001, the death announce­ment list­ed Stephanie von Bis­mar­ck (nee Sedl­mayr) at a spot typ­i­cal­ly reserved for imme­di­ate rel­a­tives of the deceased.

As the son of a born von Arn­im, Grumme-Dou­glas is the scion of one of Germany’s more famous aris­to­crat­ic dynas­ties. Arguably the best-known von Arn­im was Hans-Jur­gen, a World War II gen­er­al who led Nazi Germany’s army in North Africa from 1942 until its capit­u­la­tion in 1943.

5.Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 190.

. . . . Some of their motives are of ques­tion­able con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. We repro­duce let­ters from mem­bers of The Enter­prise net­work, describ­ing how they intend to use recov­ered Japan­ese war loot to set up a pri­vate FBI-style net­work to police the Amer­i­can pub­lic, and a sep­a­rate mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex “con­trolled by us.”. . . .

6.Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 191.

. . . . While the Agency was phys­i­cal­ly mov­ing Mar­cos bul­lion, it active­ly encour­aged the Mar­coses to salt their prof­its in Amer­i­ca. This became clear dur­ing the Hon­olu­lu fraud tri­al of Ronald Rewald in 1983–1985, which revealed that his invest­ment firm Bish­op, Bald­win, Rewald, Dilling­ham & Wong, was a con­duit for CIA in funds in gen­er­al. The firm helped Mar­cos and oth­er wealthy Fil­ipinos invest illic­it funds in Amer­i­ca. When Imel­da was tried in New York on charges of rack­e­teer­ing, her defense attor­neys told us she and her hus­band had been encour­aged to do “by their friends in the White House.” . . .

7.Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 219.

. . . . As evi­dence that Mar­cos [Sr.] was in pos­ses­sion of enor­mous quan­ti­ties of gold bul­lion, far in excess of known Philip­pine reserves, [pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Arlene] Fried­man tracked down two Aus­tralian bro­kers who, in the ear­ly 1980’s, had nego­ti­at­ed nine con­tracts with Mar­cos to sell a total of $1.63-trillion in gold. . . .

. . . . Nor­man “Tony” Dacus, a Las Vegas investor, told Fried­man that on a vis­it to the Philip­pines, he was tak­en to Mt. Apo, where Mar­cos was build­ing a Mt. Rush­more style memo­r­i­al to him­self. Dacus said the president’s son Bong-Bong took him into secret tun­nels in Mt. Apo, where he was shown box­es of gold bars and oth­er trea­sure. Dacus said Bong-Bong told him this gold was wait­ing to be flown out of the coun­try by the U.S. mil­i­tary, at the behest of the CIA. . . .