Trump vs. the book author update

Alex Frangos of The Wall Street Journal writes Monday about real estate mogul Donald Trump’s deposition in his defamation suit against New York Times Sunday business editor Timothy O’Brien.

O’Brien wrote a book about Trump several years ago and estimated his net worth at much lower than what Trump believes the number is.

Frangos writes, “The deposition reveals he told his bankers and New Jersey casino authorities in 2004 and 2005 that he was worth approximately $3.6 billion. In 2005, Deutsche Bank evaluated his net worth as part of underwriting a $640 million construction loan it made to Mr. Trump’s Chicago condo and hotel project. The bank said his worth was $788 million, according to information presented by the author’s lawyers present during Mr. Trump’s deposition.

“In his testimony, Mr. Trump discounted that and other low-ball evaluations as ‘ridiculous.’ And he noted, ‘They [Deutsche Bank] still come up with numbers that are many times’ what the book’s author, Mr. O’Brien, reported. In his interview Sunday, he said Deutsche Bank looked at some of his assets, not all of them, and didn’t do independent appraisals. A Deutsche Bank spokesman couldn’t be reached.

“Mr. Trump said Sunday that Mr. O’Brien, author of ‘TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,’ will ‘wish he never heard of that God damn book’ and predicted that ‘the publishing company will pay me hundreds of millions of dollars’ as a result of the suit.

“Mr. O’Brien, who is an editor at the New York Times, declined to comment through his attorney, citing the ongoing litigation.”

Read more here.