10 Takeaways From NYT's Blockbuster Report On Donald Trump's Atlantic City Casinos

Long before he was the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump lorded over Atlantic City.

Not a single visit for the New Jersey seaside resort could go by without seeing Trump's name on a billboard or a building. He had four casinos that in the city that helped give rise to the city's place as a gambling powerhouse.

But Trump's casino fortunes declined over the past 20 years just as the resort fell into rough shape - and now a blockbuster New York Times report spells out how the billionaire, ironically, benefited even as his own casinos failed, and the city began to crumble.

Here are 10 takeaways from the report:

1. The Trump Taj Mahal, now under new ownership, is all that remains of the casino empire Trump assembled here more than a quarter-century ago.The carpets are frayed and dust-coated chandeliers dangle above the few customers there to play the penny slot machines, according to The Times.
2. A close examination of regulatory reviews, court records and security filings by The New York Times shows Trump’s casino business was a protracted failure. Even as his casinos were overtaken by the same problems that brought down Atlantic City, in reality, he was failing in seaside resort long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
3. Even as those casinos failed, Trump put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen, according to The Times.
4. His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders, according to The Times. Trump also avoided personal destruction by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
5. Before the Taj Mahal opened, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission was concerned about the casino’s viability because of its rapidly escalating costs and considered revoking its operating license. Trump told the commission in 1988 that he could rein in expenses, and that he was opposed to using junk bonds to finance it. He quickly reversed course, issuing $675 million worth of junk bonds.
6. In December 1990, when Trump needed to make an $18.4 million interest payment on his casinos, his father, Fred C. Trump, sent a lawyer to the Castle to buy $3.3 million in chips, to provide him with an infusion of cash. Donald Trump made the payment, but the Casino Control Commission fined the Castle $65,000 for what had amounted to an illegal loan.
7. In the 1990s, his casinos continued to fail, and his casino holdings posted losses of $66 million in 1996, $42 million in 1997 and $40 million in 1998. Trump still made money, however, receiving $1 million a year for what was essentially a part-time job. In 1996, he was paid a $5 million bonus.
8. Trump’s casinos had consistently lagged behind their competitors’ for a decade before the entire Atlantic City casino industry began to fail. Revenues at other Atlantic City casinos rose 18 percent from 1997 through 2002; Trump’s fell by 1 percent, according to The Times.
9. In the 2000s, as Trump began to lose or dump his ownership stake in his casinos, the mogul bought 10 percent of the shares in Riviera Hotel and Casino, a company based in Las Vegas, Trump was required to grant an option to purchase the shares to his public corporation. Trump ultimtely sold the Riviera shares in April 2004, but the transaction contained “material omissions of fact” in its filings by the Trump company that could have resulted in criminal charges, James D. Cox, a professor at Duke University Law School, told The Times.
10. When Trump has been pressed on his casinos’ performance during his presidential campaign, he has has said he left Atlantic City at the right time. That would suggest Trump willingly left sometime around 2006, the year that revenues peaked in Atlantic City and that Pennsylvania allowed its first casino to open, according to The Times. But in early 2009, as Trump casinos headed toward bankruptcy for the fourth time, Trump was still trying to hang on. But 2009 was when Trump essentially ended his relationship with Atlantic City.

Photo: By Kevin Wong - Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46940300