Trump Family Business Eyes Hotel Deals in Israel - The New York Times
The Trump Organization discussed a branding deal involving the Haleom Hotel, under construction in Jerusalem.
The Trump Organization was in talks about Israeli hotels before the Hamas attack last year. It says it wants to resume them in the future, raising questions about the mingling of politics and money in the event of a second Trump term.
By Debra Kamin, Steve Eder and Ben Protess (NY TIMES)
Debra Kamin, who covers real estate, reported from Tel Aviv. Steve Eder and Ben Protess have written about the Trump Organization from New York for nearly a decade.
Oct. 9, 2024
In the heart of Jerusalem, a short walk from the Israeli Supreme Court and prime minister’s office, Donald J. Trump’s family business spotted a moneymaking opportunity.
The Trump Organization pursued a deal last year to open a luxury hotel on a former site of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to people involved in the previously unreported talks, as well as documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The property’s proximity to the nexus of governmental power evoked Mr. Trump’s erstwhile hotel near the White House, abuzz with dignitaries and supporters during his presidency.
Mr. Trump’s company also considered turning a rising skyscraper in Tel Aviv into another Trump-branded hotel, the documents show. That tower, which will twist with glass and steel, is near the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces and will have the most hotel rooms in the country when construction is completed.
Eric Trump, who runs the family business, embarked on the negotiations well after his father kicked off his latest presidential bid in November 2022, the interviews and documents show. And while he has not finalized either prospective deal — talks have not resumed since Hamas’s attack on Israel a year ago — the Trump Organization continues to express interest in opening an Israeli hotel.
The company’s efforts in Israel highlight longstanding ethical concerns about the mingling of the former president’s financial and political fortunes — this time in a warring country at the contentious center of U.S. and global politics.
The former president has made no secret where his sympathies lie in Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. This summer, he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, and he has dismissed those calling for an end to U.S. support for Israel’s war as “pro-Hamas thugs” and “jihad sympathizers.”
As president, Mr. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and ordered the U.S. Embassy moved there, upsetting Arab and European leaders because of fears it would stoke violence. Even before his political career began, he reportedly called Israel “one of my favorite places in the world” as he pursued a real estate deal there.
During a scouting trip in February 2023, Eric Trump met with Ilan Ben Hakoon, manager of the Dan Tel Aviv Hotel. Mr. Ben Hakoon later shared the photo on Facebook.
In interviews, Eric Trump confirmed that the company was in serious discussions last year to open hotels in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He said the Trump Organization pulled back after the Hamas attack. “The deal absolutely would have gotten done if not for Oct. 7,” he said, adding that after the attack, building a hotel “would have seemed trivial and tone-deaf in light of the horrific things that the country and region were experiencing.”
But the Trump Organization, he said, would “definitely” finalize an Israeli deal “when the current situation that we’re all witnessing on TV every day is resolved.”
For nearly two decades, the Trumps have sought to raise a banner in Israel. This time, they planned to team up with two Florida businessmen — both past political supporters of the former president — who would lease the hotels in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Both properties are owned by Nitsba Group, an Israeli real estate company.
If the deals moved forward, Eric Trump said, Nitsba would continue to own the properties while the Trump Organization would license the Trump name and manage the hotels, as it has often done elsewhere. It is unclear how the Florida men and their company, Lockwood Development Partners, planned to finance the projects.
Gil Eshel, a Tel Aviv-based commercial real estate broker who connected Nitsba and Lockwood and helped steer the negotiations, said the Trumps planned to start with Jerusalem before possibly expanding to Tel Aviv.
Before the talks were suspended, the two sides had “agreed about the price and almost everything” on the Jerusalem property, said Haim Tsuff, chairman of the controlling shareholder of Nitsba Group. The Trump Organization, he said, was even discussing the interior finishes, including the furniture.
What happened next is murky.
Although Eric Trump attributed the stalled negotiations to the war, Israelis involved in the talks said they were told something different. The discussions, they said, came to an abrupt end a few weeks before the Hamas attack — when Lockwood claimed on a video call with Nitsba that Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign prevented it from proceeding.
Eric Trump was not on that call and did not respond to a question about it. But in an email to The Times, a Lockwood representative confirmed that the firm “referred to the cancellation of negotiations as an ethical issue that had to do with Donald J. Trump as he was getting closer to being considered the Republican nominee,” and that “the Trump Organization didn’t want politics” to play a role in their private business affairs.
Yet that explanation belies the Trump Organization’s other recent deal-making. The company’s testing of the waters in Israel reflected a broader push to cultivate foreign business after Donald Trump left office in 2021, and is reminiscent of its expansive business activity during his run for president in 2016.
The Sarona Hotel, currently under construction in Tel Aviv, will have 880 rooms — more than any other hotel in Israel.
As Mr. Trump campaigns again, his company has struck a deal to put his name on a new tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. On the same day in July that he accepted the Republican nomination, it announced plans to establish a Trump Tower in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. And just this week, the Trump Organization announced a hotel and golf project in Vietnam.
The company had also partnered on golf tournaments with Saudi-backed LIV Golf, and licensed the Trump name to a Saudi company developing luxury villas and a golf course in Oman, before his campaign was underway.
The former president has criticized his past Democratic rivals for their family members’ foreign ventures. He has accused Hillary Clinton of trying to “profit from public office” through the family-run Clinton Foundation, and he assailed the overseas business ties of President Biden’s son Hunter, asserting that “Joe Biden is compromised.”
Yet the Trump Organization’s recent Middle Eastern deal-making signals that Mr. Trump might abandon his previous ethics pledges should he reclaim the White House. After he won the presidency in 2016, his company halted new international deals, hired an outside ethics adviser and made annual payments to the U.S. Treasury to compensate for profits earned from foreign government officials at the company’s U.S. hotels.
“I understood the optics, as you can’t build the tallest building in Tel Aviv and try to negotiate peace in the Middle East,” Eric Trump said in an interview at the time.
In the recent interviews, he indicated a possible change of heart. “The first term we did everything imaginable to avoid any appearance of impropriety, and frankly, we got crushed anyway,” Eric Trump said, arguing that the presidency had cost his father “an absolute fortune.”
“We can’t just sit out in perpetuity, and I won’t,” he added. “I’m not in government; I’m in private industry.”
While the company’s overseas deals wound down during Mr. Trump’s presidency, there were few constraints on the Trump Organization domestically. Many people with business before the government spent lavishly at Mar-a-Lago and at the Trump hotel in Washington, which was later sold.
Eric Trump’s ambitions in Israel gained steam on a trip there in February last year. The visit was reported in Israeli publications, and he later hinted at its purpose in an interview with a Brooklyn-based magazine for the Jewish community.
“There are a couple of really great things about to happen in Israel,” he said at the time, adding, “We’re working on something that I think will make you very proud.”
Photos posted to social media offered glimpses of the itinerary. In Tel Aviv, Eric Trump stayed in the presidential suite at the luxury Dan Tel Aviv Hotel, where a chef prepared a private meal that included filet mignon with Jerusalem artichoke cream for roughly 20 guests, according to a menu.
He shared the meal with executives from Nitsba Group — run for years by Mr. Tsuff and Kobi Maimon, an oil tycoon with ties to the country’s political elite — and visited at least four hotel properties owned by the firm.
In Eilat, the Red Sea beach town at Israel’s southernmost tip, he toured the once-grand Princess hotel. He and the mayor, Eli Lankri, posed for a photo with Charles Everhardt and Ed Dovner of Lockwood, the Florida real estate firm that was poised to participate in the Israeli deals. They have contributed to Donald Trump’s campaigns, and Mr. Dovner gave $25,000 to his inaugural committee in 2017. “We are hotel developers and don’t view this hotel transaction as a political issue,” Mr. Everhardt said in an email.
The Trump Organization ultimately passed on the Princess, according to the people involved in the negotiations. Instead, Eric Trump drilled down on Nitsba’s Jerusalem property, which has been under construction for years. (Hotels in Israel can take more than a decade to complete.) Known as the Haleom Hotel, it is expected to have roughly 400 guest rooms, conference space, a rooftop swimming pool, and a health club, according to its architects.
In Tel Aviv, the Trump Organization was interested in the Sarona Hotel, which when finished will have 880 rooms.
As recently as August, an email reviewed by *The Times* shows, Lockwood reached out to a Nitsba executive to convey Eric Trump’s desire to restart talks “when the timing becomes right.”
Eric Trump has had discussions with other Israeli developers, but details are not known. His family’s business efforts in Israel go back to at least 2006, when his father nearly had a deal to license a 70-story tower on the outskirts of Tel Aviv but ended up suing his partners. Donald Trump commenced other Israeli partnerships, mostly notably a joint venture to market a line of Trump-branded vodka and energy drinks.
Then, before his 2016 election, Mr. Trump flirted again with a real estate deal, this time a 61-story hotel and residence project, but the presidency got in the way. “We had to retreat,” a former Trump executive said in 2017, “because of the election.”
Israel played a leading role in the Trump administration’s foreign policy after Mr. Trump pledged to broker the “ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians, which did not come to pass.
An important player was Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, whose own family business has ties to Israel. Since Mr. Trump left the White House in 2021, Mr. Kushner has made investments in Israel, including a stake in a car-leasing and credit business.
“We have a very strong fan base there,” Eric Trump told Ami Magazine, the Brooklyn-based publication, in May 2023. “It makes it a bit easier when everyone in the country loves you.”
