Florida Woman Bequeathed Donald Trump Condo In Senior Community

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A Florida woman with no apparent personal connection to Donald Trump bequeathed the former president a condo in a community for the 55-and-up crowd. Forbes staff writer Zach Everson joins "Forbes Talks" to discuss.

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2024/08/29/donald-trump-florida-inherited-florida-senior-condo/

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Transcript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now
00:07is my colleague, Forbes staff writer, Zach Everson. Zach, thanks for coming on.
00:13Thanks for having me on again, Brittany.
00:15Zach, your latest piece really reads like a Mad Libs, so I would love to read the headline
00:20and then you break it down for us. This is your headline. Florida woman bequeathed Donald
00:25Trump condo in senior community. So first, what do we know about this woman, Barbara
00:30Fisher?
00:32Not a ton of information. She, there was no trail of political donations. There was nothing
00:41that seemed to personally connect her to Donald Trump. She had served for two non-consecutive
00:46terms as the secretary of her condo board. And she left, you know, she did not have a
00:51lot to leave behind according to her will, but she gave the, uh, the former president
00:56substantial amount of it.
00:58She didn't have a lot to leave behind, but what else was in her will? And what was the
01:02message specifically to the former president?
01:06So she left, uh, her friend who was going to manage the state got $50,000 in the 2018
01:12Honda Accord. A worker at a nearby Publix grocery store got $3,000 to start a new happy
01:17life. There was an animal rescue organization in the Palm Beach area that got $100,000.
01:23And then there was Donald Trump address Mar-a-Lago who got the condo, uh, in the will. It said
01:27to sell as he, she, he sees fit, but originally it had said, hopefully the monies of which
01:32she'll be used to further the construction of the wall between the U S and Mexico.
01:36She did cross that part off though, and initial it. Um, so while that's, you know, not necessarily
01:41her intent anymore, it's kind of clear that was her intent at some point.
01:46So her revised intent was to sell as he see fit Donald Trump. Your reporting does know
01:53about the condo. How'd he find out? And what has he done with it?
01:58Um, they did not respond to inquiries. So the best we can tell is that he would have
02:04found out about a month before the will was filed. When, uh, the person who was managing
02:08the estate reached out to him, um, to inform him of this. And also there's an option where
02:14beneficiaries can contest, uh, who gets to administer the will. And he, he waived that
02:18right. So he got it there. Now, the reason we saw this was that looking at his annual
02:24financial disclosure, which my editor, Dan Alexander was going over line by line. He's
02:30the one who handles our, um, you know, Trump valuation. He noticed that there was a new LLC
02:35there that he had not seen before. And we started pulling the string and that's, you know, it showed
02:40that it was a condo in Palm beach, started looking up details on the condo in Palm beach,
02:45saw that had been transferred to him and that he had then transferred it to the LLC. So he has not
02:50sold it. He's, he's owned it for about a year and a half right now. And, uh, you know, has not sold
02:56it. So, or at least I did not sell it as of a month ago. Um, and it doesn't look like it's been
03:00on the market since. So he's still sitting on that right now. Condo in Palm beach. What else,
03:06what other details do you have aside from that regarding the property?
03:12Um, you know, it's, it's, it's in a senior sort of living area. Uh, members of the residents have
03:17to be 55 years old or, or up at least one resident of the place. They do not allow anybody under 18
03:23to live there full time. You do have to get approved by the condo board, uh, to become a
03:29member. Uh, the approval form does ask potential new members slash home condo buyers to check off
03:35a box if they've ever been indicted or ever been convicted of a felony. So, um, you know, I think,
03:42uh, president Trump, if he was in fact required to fill out those forms, I think at the time he
03:46would have been required to fill it out, it would have just been indicted. Um, but I did reach out
03:50to the condo association, multiple members on it. I did not get any responses. Uh, you know,
03:56I'm curious if they actually knew that he lived there and if they actually made him complete the
04:01background check. So, uh, those, those are two questions that remained unanswered sadly.
04:05But he's still sitting on this condo. So how much is it worth?
04:10Um, it's worth about $150,000. You know, we didn't do a full on valuation of this one. Typically
04:15I'd look at some of the comps and all this other stuff. He valued it at between, um,
04:20I think it was 150,000 and, or excuse me, between 100,000 and $250,000 on his financial disclosure.
04:27And the person who handled the estate valued it at about $150,000. And I looked at some of
04:32the comps and that, that seemed about right. Zach, you've been covering money in politics
04:38for a while now. And normally when you think about people's inheritances, people's wills,
04:43they normally don't bequeath their properties to former presidents or other politicians.
04:48Have you ever seen anything like this? I haven't, but I want to start looking for it more. I just
04:55don't know an easy way to go through it. I mean, if you think about it, it does kind of make sense
05:00that maybe some of these, you know, seniors who are, you know, like, like Ms. Fisher, childless,
05:06never got married, uh, no surviving siblings, maybe they would do something like this. You know,
05:11it's a substantial amount of her estate. It's a drop in the bucket for Trump, who's worth,
05:16you know, billions of dollars. So, uh, sadly I can't think of any way to just
05:21search will, you know, search databases of wills to see, you know, if Donald Trump pops up,
05:27but you have to kind of know who to look for. So, uh, you know, that said, we have not found
05:31any other items on his financial disclosures that would make us think he's received any other,
05:37you know, that would show he's received any other gifts like this. Well, if you do,
05:40I'm sure you'll be back on and give us all the details, but for now,
05:44Zach Everson, thank you so much for your reporting. I appreciate you coming on.
05:47Thanks, Brittany.

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