Oh, fearful symmetry! One day before Donald Trump signed his name on the dotted line at the bottom of the Great Corporate Tax Cut, his name was coming down from the facade of one of the most reviled and beleaguered buildings in New York City: the former Trump Soho hotel/condo.
In the dead of night, the New York Post reports, workers removed the T-word from the building, which has severed all ties with President Trump and his family and will henceforth be known as the Dominick Soho Hotel and Spa.
The building has been a source of acrimony since the day it opened. In August 2010, some disgruntled buyers sued the Trump Organization in federal court, accusing the Trumps of “a consistent and concerted pattern of outright lies.” Eventually the Trumps and their partners settled with the buyers, agreeing to return 90 percent of their deposits, plus their attorneys’ fees.
More recently, after the president’s long-time lawyer intervened, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. dropped a criminal fraud investigation against Trump’s children, Ivanka and Donald Jr., who were suspected of misleading investors in the troubled 391-unit condominium-hotel.
And now, sources tell The Post, several people involved in the Soho project have been contacted by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. One of Trump’s partners in the Soho project was the Bayrock Group, run by Tevfik Arif, a Soviet-born Turkish real estate developer. In 2010, the year the Trump Soho opened, two ex-Bayrock employees sued, claiming it was a front to launder Kremlin-sourced money.
Only about one-third of the 46-story tower’s condo units have sold.