Audacious: Our Principles PAC unveils a one-minute ad arguing that Trump supports amnesty,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Enw6Yx19qSg
The ad also calls attention to a long-forgotten, long-fought lawsuit contending Trump used illegal immigrants for the demolition work that preceded the construction of Trump Tower.
Eighteen years ago, Wojciech Kozak helped build Trump Tower, the skyscraper jewel in Donald J. Trump’s real-estate empire. Today, Mr. Kozak recalls that time with nightmare memories of backbreaking 12-hour shifts and of being cheated with 200 other undocumented Polish immigrants out of meager wages and fringe benefits.
“‘We worked in horrid, terrible conditions,” Mr. Kozak said of the six months he spent in 1980 wielding a sledgehammer and a blowtorch in demolishing the Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower. “We were frightened illegal immigrants and did not know enough about our rights.”
Trump insisted he never knew the workers were in the country illegally. The case was finally settled in 1999 and then sealed. Both sides described the resolution as “agreeable.”
[Harry] Diduck, the unlikeliest foe for the glamorous real estate tycoon, stuck to his guns and so did his lawyers, the late Burt Hall, a prominent labor lawyer and his partner, Wendy Sloan. After a trial in 1991, federal Judge Charles Stewart ruled that the Trump Organization and its partner, Equitable Life Assurance Society, conspired with a former union leader to withhold $325,000 in benefit payments plus interest adding up to about $4 million.
An appeals court ordered the case retried and that is where it was headed until last month’s settlement agreement, which was placed under seal. Neither side would give specifics. “It has been resolved on terms agreeable to both sides,” said Sloan who was joined by lawyer Lewis Steel. Diduck died in 1992. “He never stood to make a nickel,” Sloan said. “The money was to go to the [union] funds.
The ad calls attention to a July Washington Post story contending Trump still employs illegal immigrants:
“It’s something ironic,” said Ivan Arellano, 29, who is from Mexico and obtained legal status through marriage. He now works as a mason laying the stonework for the lobby floor and walls of what will become the Trump International Hotel.
“The majority of us are Hispanics, many who came illegally,” Arellano said in Spanish. “And we’re all here working very hard to build a better life for our families.”
Interviews with about 15 laborers helping renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion revealed that many of them had crossed the U.S-Mexico border illegally before they eventually settled in the Washington region to build new lives.
Some of Trump’s rivals might raise these points in tonight’s debate… where, of course, the billionaire won’t be around to defend himself.