When a biz reporter took on Donald Trump

Paul Farhi writes about when Timothy O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times and now running Bloomberg View, was sued by Donald Trump for reporting what he thought was the real estate operator’s real net worth.

Farhi writes, “O’Brien concluded that Trump was worth substantially less than what Trump publicly claimed, an assertion that prompted the business mogul to sue O’Brien and his publisher, Warner Books. He claimed harm to his business and sought $5 billion in damages.

“The lawsuit is one of many that Trump has leveled at adversaries and former business partners over the years. But this one may have gone straight to the heart of Trump’s ‘brand.’ Trump pursued it for five years, spending more than $1 million in legal fees, apparently to protect a fundamental aspect of his identity and mythos: That he is not merely very rich but clearly, most sincerely, super rich.

“More than a decade later, the issue still clearly stings Trump. O’Brien, he said in an interview Tuesday, ‘is a whack job, a total nut job … one of the sleaziest people I’ve ever done business with. He wrote a book knowing it was totally false. He didn’t know what the assets were, and he disregarded their value. He really did set out with the intent to harm.’

“To Trump’s great exasperation, O’Brien showed that there are good reasons to doubt Trump’s assertion that he was worth ‘five to six billion’ dollars in 2005. (In a campaign-disclosure form filed in July, Trump claimed he is now worth more than $10 billion.) Based on documents and interviews with Trump and his associates, O’Brien estimated that Trump had inflated his bankroll as much as 20 times over. Subtracting debts and other liabilities, O’Brien says, Trump’s net worth was pegged at $150 million to $250 million, based on estimates by people with direct knowledge of Trump’s finances.”

Read more here.