NEW LONDON, Conn. – Donald Trump (search) got fired. Now he's asking for $500 million. The real estate mogul and television star is offering to drop his breach of contract lawsuit against the Eastern Pequot (search) tribe and the casino investors who replaced him in exchange for a half a billion dollars.
"The figure was arrived at very carefully by people in the Trump organization who determined what likely income would have been generated had the Trump organization gone forward with the Eastern Pequot casino," Trump's lawyer, Robert I. Reardon, told The Day of New London.
The Eastern Pequots' attorney, however, says the tribe is not interested.
"I think a more appropriate valuation is the one he (Trump) put in his bankruptcy filing, which is zero," Lawyer Robert D. Tobin said.
Trump invested more than $10 million through one of his subsidiary companies in an effort to help a faction of the tribe open a casino.
Assets for the subsidiary are listed as zero in last month's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc., which mainly consists of three Atlantic City properties and a riverboat casino in Indiana.
Trump and Amalgamated Industries of Windsor made a deal with the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, the smaller of two factions of Eastern Pequots, to finance the tribe's bid for federal recognition and ultimately profit from a casino.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (search) recognized both factions as a single tribe in 2002, and last year the unified council, dominated by the larger faction, voted to retain their backer, Eastern Capital Development.
The Eastern Pequots have been unable to proceed with their casino because the state and three towns have appealed their federal recognition.
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