President-Elect Donald Trump bought his son’s failed company, foreclosed on the property, and now South Carolina taxpayers are left to clean up the mess he left behind. President-Elect Trump won South Carolina by a little more than 14 points.
In early 2014, a company in Charleston, South Carolina was promising to “revolutionize” home construction, by manufacturing and selling “home construction kits.” First, it was called Titan Atlas Manufacturing, later being reorganized into Titan Atlas Global before shutting down for good in the spring of 2015. Part of this doomed venture was none other than Donald Trump, Jr., who faced millions in debt.
“In addition to Donald Trump Jr., Titan Atlas’ founding investors were Washington state farmer Lee Eickmeyer and Mount Pleasant resident Jeremy Blackburn, who was also CEO of Titan Atlas Global. Each of the three men personally guaranteed a $3.65 million Titan Atlas Manufacturing loan from Deutsche Bank — the loan that the elder Trump’s company later purchased – allowing the bank to pursue the three men together or individually if it were not repaid,” according to a January 2016 report from The Post and Courier. Eickmeyer also personally loaned the company just under $1 million.
In August, just when then-candidate Trump was trying to win the primary there (he did), he swooped in, bragging on the trail about the “interesting” investment he’d just made in the state. Of course, according to a Post and Courier report, Trump wasn’t investing in the state, he was buying the debt on the property, to foreclose on it.
Trump likely made a profit on this deal. He purchased the loan from Deutsche Bank, assets which are typically sold at deep discounts. “As owner of the debt, Trump could ignore loan guarantees made by his son and Titan co-founder Lee Eickmeyer, or pursue them after attempting to collect the full value of the debt through foreclosure on Titan’s assets,” the Charleston paper reported in August. Trump could even sue Eickmeyer while forgiving his son’s debt.
The factory in North Charleston? It sits empty, with a leaky roof, rusted equipment, and possible toxic pollution to deal with. It’s this that brought the story to Maddow’s show. Maddow reported that the company managing the site, run by the Trump organization, has filed an application requesting that the state should pay for the cleanup of the site, which the company wants to “redevelop.”
The irony here, of course, is that Donald Trump, Jr. is now, along with his brother Eric, the de facto leader of the company. Also, The New York Times reported, that a former tenant of the facility is suing Titan Atlas because the leaky roof damaged millions of dollars of their equipment.
The Trump organization denied that this was an issue, saying that there was a voluntary agreement to clean up the site and that at issue were previous owners of the property, not Titan Atlas. Spokespeople for the state of South Carolina denied that either of those things were true.
