by Barbara Nevins Taylor
In the 1980s Leona Helmsley styled herself as the queen of New York real estate. She posed for ads for the Helmsley hotels wearing an evening dress and sometimes a tiara on her short dark hair. “60 Minutes” profiled her luxurious lifestyle and featured Dunnellen Hall, the 21-room mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she and her husband Harry lived part-time. In the city, the Helmsleys lived in a penthouse at the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park. Their world came crashing down in 1988 when then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani and New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams brought indictments against them for tax evasion. A jury found Leona Helmsley guilty and she served 19 months in prison.
The indictment of Allen Weisselberg and Trump Organization companies echoes the Helmsley case. Weisselberg, the organization’s chief financial officer, is charged with evading taxes on nearly $2 million in compensation. Prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office allege that Weisselberg received fringe benefits that really were like salary payments and that he didn’t report them. The indictment charges he failed to pay taxes on a leased Mercedes, a rent-free apartment paid for by the Trump Organization and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
Look back to 1988 when a similar case played out, in federal court in Manhattan, against Leona Helmsley and two of her top employees. She and Harry had charged their Connecticut mansion as a business expense against their commercial properties. They added other extravagances to their business expenses, including a $1 million marble dance floor above the swimming pool, a $130,000 stereo system, a $45,000 silver clock, $500,000 worth of jade objects and a $210,000 card table. Helmsley even claimed her underwear as a business expense.
I was at the trial when a maid who worked at the Greenwich mansion told the court that Leona Helmsley talked with her about taxes. Elizabeth Baum testified that she and Helmsley were talking and she said, “You must pay a lot of taxes.” Baum recalled Helmsley’s reply: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
Harry Helmsley was also charged in the indictment, but because he suffered from dementia his case was separated from hers and he never stood trial. Donald Trump feuded with the Helmsleys about real estate and taxes. He called Leona “. . . a disgrace to humanity” in a letter he wrote to her before her trial began in 1989. He told Harry Helmsley in a separate note, “You are a great man who has been tarnished by, in my opinion, the actions of Leona.”
Leona hated Trump. She mocked him in private chats with reporters during breaks in the trial. When she was convicted that December, the trial judge chalked her conduct up to “naked greed [and] the arrogant belief that you were above the law.”
Now it’s 2021 and the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer face charges of “sweeping and audacious” tax fraud over 15 years. Trump himself isn’t charged, at least not yet, but he must be hearing echoes of the Helmsley case.
