4015Area of
detailCALLLIFOIFOOORNIRNIRNR AAARIRRIRIZONZONZONNAAANEVNENEVN ADAADADADAVictor ValleyPacific OceanLas
VegasLos AngelesPROPOSED ROUTE
FOR XPRESSWEST TRAINCalif.BarstowKingman
BakerPalmdaleBakersfieldRiversideAnaheimExperts in tax and campaign-finance
law consulted by The Times said that
while more information was needed to
assess the legitimacy of the payments,
they could be legally problematic.
“Why all of a sudden does this com-
pany have more than $20 million in fees
that haven’t been there before?” said
Daniel Shaviro, a professor of taxation at
the New York University School of Law.
“And all of this money is going to a man
who just happens to be running for presi-
dent and might not have a lot of cash on
hand?”
Unless the payments were for actual
business expenses, he said, claiming a
tax deduction for them would be illegal.
If they were not legitimate and were also
used to fund Mr. Trump’s presidential
run, they could be considered illegal
campaign contributions.
In response to questions about The
Times’s findings, a White House spokes-
man, Judd Deere, referred to this article
as “yet another politically motivated hit
piece inaccurately smearing a standard
business deal.” He added that “during
his years as a successful businessman,
Donald Trump was longtime partners
with Phil Ruffin and earned whatever
payments he received.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Ruffin, Jenni-
fer Renzelman, said Mr. Ruffin was not
involved in the day-to-day operations of
the hotel, adding that “all tax statements
go to the people who work on his taxes.”
It is fair to say that, over the years, Mr.
Ruffin has been very generous to his
friend. When Mr. Trump took the Miss
Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013, the
two men flew over together on Mr.
Ruffin’s private jet. He would contribute
more than $2.5 million to Mr. Trump’s
campaign, his ill-starred foundation and
his inaugural.
And after the inauguration, Mr. Ruffin
would ask for a favor. Would the presi-
dent help revive a dormant project of
great importance to a lot of powerful
people in Las Vegas — a bullet train that
would whisk gamblers from Southern
California to the Strip in less than 90
minutes?
Four years earlier, Barack Obama’s
administration had considered, but ulti-
mately decided against, a $5.5 billion
loan for the train. Mr. Trump loved the
idea, Mr. Ruffin told Forbes in a 2017 in-
terview.
“Obama wouldn’t approve it, but may-
be Donald will,” Mr. Ruffin said.
What Mr. Trump did after that is not
clear. But around Las Vegas, word of the
president’s interest was gratefully re-
ceived. “Anybody having the president’s
ear genuinely — not just to have a meet-
ing and have it fall into an empty basket
that is 12 miles deep — I am all in favor of
it,” the Las Vegas mayor, Carolyn Good-
man, said in an interview.
This past March, a panel composed
largely of Trump appointees gave the
train company permission to sell $1 bil-
lion in tax-free bonds to private invest-
ors. Authorities in California and Neva-
da fell in line, approving additional
bonds. Trains could begin running as
soon as 2024.
Among the train’s chief beneficiaries
will be Mr. Ruffin and the other grandees
of gambling who became a vital font of
political money for Mr. Trump when he
needed it most.
And, of course, Donald Trump himself.
A Friend of the President
In business, Phil Ruffin was a kindred
spirit: a wealthy transplant to Las
Vegas from Kansas. In politics, he would
be a crucial cheerleader.
Mr. Ruffin’s patronage of the president
has been less lavish, and less examined,
than that of his Las Vegas compatriot
Sheldon Adelson. But he has long been a
wingman for Mr. Trump’s political ambi-
tions — urging him to run, burnishing
his image and promising financial sup-
port.
In July 2016, he took the podium at the
Republican National Convention in
Cleveland to sing the nominee’s praises.
“Donald’s word is his bond. If Donald
tells you something, you can put it in the
bank,” he said. “I love the man.”
Mr. Ruffin loved the man so much that
when Mr. Trump was considering a
White House run back in 2011, he donat-
ed the venue for a Las Vegas rally: a ball-
room at his Treasure Island Hotel and
Casino. After Mr. Trump decided that he
would indeed run, in 2015, it was at an-
other Treasure Island rally that Mr. Ruf-
fin expounded on his friend’s charitable
good works.
“You won’t hear this in the media, but
Donald gave $20 million to the St. Jude
children’s home,” he said. “He could
have used that $20 million for television
ads, but he decided to give it to the chil-
dren of cancer.”
The Washington Post later reported
that it had found no evidence of any such
donation. More definitively, there is no
mention of it in Mr. Trump’s tax records.
Also in 2015, Mr. Ruffin gave $1 million
in seed money to the Make America
Great Again super PAC, only to have it
refunded when the group was dissolved
after news reports that it had improp-
erly coordinated with the Trump cam-
paign.
The two men had been brought to-
gether in the early 2000s by Mr. Ruffin’s
belief that his business needed some
Trump-branded glitter. Mr. Trump,
whose Atlantic City casinos were flail-
ing, was looking to expand to Las Vegas.
The result, built on the former site of a
mall parking lot: a “64-story tower of
golden glass” that “soars above The
Strip,” according to the hotel website.
Plus, a friendship between men from
very different places but with parallel
trajectories: Mr. Trump to boldface-
name Manhattan from “outer borough”
New York; Mr. Ruffin to Las Vegas from
Wichita, Kan., where he had become
wealthy as a pioneer in self-service gas
stations and as owner of the world’s larg-
est manufacturer of hand trucks.
It was Mr. Trump who introduced Mr.
Ruffin, now 85, to his third wife, Oleksan-
dra Nikolayenko — like Melania Trump,
a much younger former model. In 2004,
Ms. Nikolayenko represented Ukraine
at the Miss Universe pageant. The cou-
ple were married in 2008 at Mar-a-Lago,
Mr. Trump's private club in Palm Beach,
Fla., with him as best man. The men’s
wives are quite close, Mr. Ruffin has
said, “like peas in a pod.”
When he flew Mr. Trump to Moscow
for the 2013 edition of Miss Universe, Mr.
Ruffin also became a bit player in an
episode that would, over time, spawn
some intrigue and much speculation. In-
vestigations into Kremlin interference
in the 2016 election would detail how the
president’s Russian partners in the
pageant wooed him and then helped bro-
ker the meeting where Donald Trump Jr.
hoped to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
The partners’ willingness to underwrite
the entire pageant made it Mr. Trump’s
most profitable Miss Universe. His per-
sonal payday, according to his tax
records, was $2.3 million.
A report from the Senate Intelligence
Committee this August, looking exten-
sively at the pageant, included a “Dear
Phil” letter sent by Mr. Trump days after
the event.
“It was great spending time with you
in Moscow and making the rounds of the
city in the hopes of the purchase or de-
velopment of a project,” Mr. Trump
wrote, before concluding, “Let’s see how
it all turns out — it is important that we
make a good decision.”Other People’s Money
The campaign was strapped for cash,
and many big donors still weren’t sure
about Mr. Trump. Then Las Vegas came
around.On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump fre-
quently boasted that he was so rich he
did not need other people’s money. As
president, he promised, he would be be-
holden to no one.
“He’s driving me crazy,” Mr. Trump
said of Mr. Ruffin at a February 2016
rally after winning the Nevada cau-
cuses. “He said, ‘Donald, I want to put
$10 million into your campaign.’ I said:
‘Phil, I don’t want your money. I don’t
want to do it. I’m self-funding.’ Every
time I see him, it’s hard for me to turn
down money, because that’s not what
I’ve done in my whole life. I grab and
grab and grab.”
In fact, he needed Mr. Ruffin’s money,
and then some.
Mr. Trump had promised to pour $
million of his own money into the cam-
paign, but after an early infusion of more
than $35 million in 2015 and early 2016,
the flow eventually slowed to a steady $
million or so near the end of each month.
What was at first described as a series of
loans became a donation amid the politi-
cally uncomfortable perception that the
populist billionaire was hoping to have
his grass-roots supporters pay him back.
For even as his campaign was build-
ing its vaunted internet-powered small-
donor operation, much of the Republican
fund-raising establishment hung back,
still stunned that Mr. Trump had
emerged as the party’s standard-bearer.
At the low point, in June, the campaign
had just $1.3 million in the bank, accord-
ing to its financial disclosures.
After the convention, the Republican
National Committee began pulling in its
traditional big donors, but the Trump
fund-raising machine still sputtered
heading toward Election Day, especially
after the release of the “Access Holly-
wood” tape that showed Mr. Trump
bragging about groping women.
Then, on Oct. 28, came his surprising
$10 million contribution. (That brought
his total spending to more than $60 mil-
lion.)
It was in those final, decisive weeks,
too, that the weight of Las Vegas fell in
behind him.
After months of hesitation, Mr. Adel-
son — gambling magnate, Republican
megadonor and strident voice for Israel
— became the candidate’s biggest con-
tributor. Often along with his wife, Dr.Miriam Adelson, he donated $20 million
to Mr. Trump’s campaign and political
action committees supporting it. He lat-
er gave $5 million more to the inaugural.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which
he had recently purchased, gave Mr.
Trump a rare newspaper endorsement.
Others gave, too, including the Fer-
titta family, owners of casinos and the
Ultimate Fighting Championship, who
contributed more than $1.5 million.
Steve Wynn, the candidate’s old Atlantic
City casino rival, moved over to the
friend column after the election, giving
$729,217 to the inaugural and becoming
the finance chairman of the party. (He
resigned in 2018 amid a sexual-assault
scandal.)
As for Mr. Ruffin, he didn’t give the $
million that Mr. Trump had complainedwas driving him crazy. But he and his
wife did contribute almost $1.6 million
during the campaign and to the inaugu-
ral. And he gave another $1 million in
2016 to Mr. Trump’s foundation, before it
shut down amid an investigation into al-
legations of self-dealing.Moving the Money
After draining much of the cash he had
on hand, Mr. Trump received over $
million in one-time payments from the
hotel he owns with Mr. Ruffin.Behind the campaign’s fund-raising dis-
array lay a personal financial storm.
Mr. Trump’s tax records reveal that
when he decided to leverage his brand inthe political arena, its true bottom line
bore little resemblance to the gold-
plated success story he was hawking to
the American people.
Most of his core businesses were los-
ing money. The deep draughts of cash
from “The Apprentice” and the resulting
fame that had sustained him for a dec-
ade were steadily running dry.
It did not help when NBC, which aired
Miss Universe and “The Apprentice,”
cut ties with him after he announced his
candidacy in 2015 with racist comments
about immigrants. Nor did it help when
Deutsche Bank turned down his request
for a loan for work at Turnberry, the
Scottish golf resort that he had bought
for roughly $60 million in 2014 and that
was on its way to gobbling up almost $
million more by the end of 2016, accord-TRUMP
INTERNATIONAL
HOTELLas
VegasLAS VEGAS
STRIPPROPOSED
TERMINAL
LOCATION15Low on Cash in 2016, Trump Generated Windfall
From Page AA20 Y ++ BW THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2020
THE SOURCEDonald J. Trump received highly unusual payments from the Las Vegas hotel that bears his name.TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMESDavid Enrich and Kitty Bennett contrib-
uted reporting.
PHIL RUFFIN ASKED THE PRESIDENT TO HELP REVIVE A PLAN FOR A
BULLET TRAIN FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA TO THE LAS VEGAS STRIP.THE NEW YORK TIMESTHE NEW YORK TIMESPROPOSED BULLET TRAIN TERMINALThe 45th PresidentThe Tax Returns