As the bankruptcies and embarrassments mounted, Donald was confronted for the first time with the limits of his ability to talk or threaten his way out of a problem. Always adept at finding an escape hatch, he seems to have come up with a plan to betray his father and steal vast sums of money from his siblings. He secretly approached two of my grandfather’s longest-serving employees, Irwin Durben, his lawyer, and Jack Mitnick, his accountant, and enlisted them to draft a codicil to my grandfather’s will that would put Donald in complete control of Fred’s estate, including the empire and all its holdings, after he died. Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert would effectively be at Donald’s financial mercy, dependent on his approval for the smallest transaction.
As Gam later told Maryanne, when Irwin and Jack went to the House to have Fred sign the codicil, they presented the document as if it had been Fred’s idea all along. My grandfather, who was having one of his more lucid days, sensed that something was not right, although he couldn’t say exactly what. He angrily refused to sign. After Irwin and Jack left, Fred conveyed his concerns to his wife. My grandmother immediately called her oldest child to explain what had happened as best she could. In short, she said, “it simply didn’t pass the smell test.”
Maryanne, with her background as a prosecutor, had limited knowledge of trusts and estates. She asked her husband, John Barry, a well-known and respected attorney in New Jersey, to recommend someone who could help, and he asked one of his colleagues to look into the situation. It didn’t take long for Donald’s scheme to be uncovered. As a result, my grandfather’s entire will was rewritten, replacing one he had written in 1984, and Maryanne, Donald, and Robert were all named as executors. In addition, a new standard was put into place: whatever Fred gave Donald, he would have to give an equal amount to each of the other three children.
Maryanne would say years later, “We would have been penniless. Elizabeth would have been begging on a street corner. We would have had to beg Donald if we wanted a cup of coffee.” It was “sheer luck” that they had stopped the scheme. Yet the siblings still got together every holiday as though nothing had happened.
Donald’s attempt to wrest control of Fred’s estate away from him was the logical outcome of Fred’s leading his son to believe that he was the only person who mattered. Donald had been given more of everything; he had been invested in; elevated to the detriment of Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert (and even his mother) and at the expense of Freddy. In Donald’s mind, the success and reputation of the entire family rested on his shoulders. Given that, it makes sense in the end that he would feel he deserved not just more than his fair share but everything.
I was standing at the window of my studio apartment looking at the rush-hour traffic clogging the 59th Street Bridge when Donald called me from his plane, not a usual occurrence.
“The dean of students at Tufts sent me a letter you wrote.”
“Really? Why?”
It took me a minute to realize what he was talking about. One of my professors had been up for tenure, and before I graduated, I had written a letter in support of him. That had been four years earlier, and I’d forgotten all about it.
“The letter was to show me how great you thought Tufts was. It was a fund-raising thing.”
“I’m sorry. That was rude of him.”
“No, it’s a fantastic letter.”
The point of the conversation was eluding me. Then Donald said, apropos of nothing as far as I could tell, “Do you want to write my next book? The publisher wants me to get started, and I thought it would be a great opportunity for you. It’ll be fun.”
“That sounds incredible,” I said. And it did. I heard the plane engine rev in the background and remembered where he was. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“Heading back from Vegas. Call Rhona tomorrow.” Rhona Graff was his executive assistant at the Trump Organization.
“I will. Thanks, Donald.”
It wasn’t until later, when I reread the letter, that I understood why Donald thought it would be a good idea to hire me—not because it was “fantastic” but because it demonstrated that I was really good at making other people look really good.
A few days later, I was given my own desk in the back office of the Trump Organization. A nondescript, open space with drop ceilings, fluorescent lighting, and huge steel filing cabinets lining the walls, it had a lot more in common with the utilitarian office of Trump Management on Avenue Z than the gold-and-glass walls lined with magazine covers featuring Donald’s face that greeted guests out front.
I spent the first week on the job familiarizing myself with the people who worked there and the filing system. (To my surprise, there was a folder with my name on it containing a single sheet of paper—a handwritten letter I had sent to Donald my junior year in high school. I’d asked if he could get me a pair of tickets to a Rolling Stones concert. He couldn’t.) I kept to myself for the most part, but whenever I had a question, Ernie East, one of Donald’s vice presidents and a very nice man, helped me out. He suggested documents that might be useful, and on occasion he’d put some file folders on my desk that he thought might help. The problem was that I didn’t really know what
