Mar-a-Lago neighbors to Trump: Spend your post-presidency elsewhere https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-mar-a-lago-neighbors-dispute/2020/12/15/bc2ce1d0-3ed4-11eb-9453-fc36ba051781_story.html

Next-door neighbors of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., that he has called his Winter White House, have a message for the outgoing commander in chief: We don’t want you to be our neighbor.

That message was formally delivered Tuesday morning in a demand letter delivered to the town of Palm Beach and also addressed to the U.S. Secret Service asserting . . . (cont)

(cont.) . . . that Trump lost his legal right to live at Mar-a-Lago because of an agreement he signed in the early 1990s when he converted the storied estate from his private residence to a private club.

This could create a legal headache for Trump because he changed his official domicile to Mar-a-Lago, leaving behind Manhattan, where he lived before being elected president and came to fame as a brash, self-promoting developer.

Trump originally tried to register to vote in Florida using the White House in Washington as his address, which is not allowed under Florida law. He later changed the registration to the Mar-a-Lago address.

In the demand letter, obtained by The Washington Post, an attorney for the Mar-a-Lago neighbors says the town should notify Trump that he cannot use Mar-a-Lago as his residence.

Even before he was president, Trump created ill will in the town by refusing to comply with even basic local requirements, and frequently attempting to get out of the promises he had made when he converted Mar-a-Lago into a private club.

The current residency controversy tracks back to a deal Trump cut in 1993 when his finances were foundering, and the cost of maintaining Mar-a-Lago was soaring into the multimillions each year.

Under the agreement, club members are banned from spending more than 21 days a year in the club’s guest suites and cannot stay there for any longer than seven consecutive days.

Before the arrangement was sealed, an attorney for Trump assured the town council in a public meeting that Trump would not live at Mar-a-Lago.

At the time, the town’s leaders were wary of Trump because he had sued them after they blocked his attempt to subdivide the historic Mar-a-Lago property into multiple housing lots.

Placing the limitations on lengths of stays assured that Trump’s property would remain a private club, as he had promised, rather than a residential hotel.

Each year, the club is required to report whether at least 50 percent of Mar-a-Lago’s members live or work in Palm Beach; that the club has fewer than 500 members; and that no one is using the guest suites more than 21 days a year.

However, the town says it has no records of the reports for four of the past 20 years.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to change parts of his agreement. In 2018 he asked the town to waive a provision banning him from building a dock at the club, initially saying the Secret Service and local law enforcement officials needed the structure for his protection.

The reasoning was later changed to say the dock was for the private use of the president and first lady Melania Trump.

Trump withdrew the dock request early this year — three days after a Washington Post report that unearthed the details of his 1993 agreement with the town.

The 1993 Palm Beach agreement isn’t the only document that raises questions about whether Trump can legally live at Mar-a-Lago.

He also signed a document deeding development rights for Mar-a-Lago to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Washington-based, privately funded nonprofit organization that works to save historic sites around the country.

As part of the National Trust deal, Trump agreed to “forever” relinquish his rights to develop Mar-a-Lago or to use it for “any purpose other than club use.”