How Roger Stone got Atlantic City to make its harbor deeper so Donald Trump could moor his mega-yacht The Trump Princess he bought from Jamal Khashoggi’s Saudi arms dealer uncle
Before Roger Stone advised presidential candidate Donald Trump, he pulled a number of levers for businessman Donald Trump early in his lobbying career.
He even had the Atlantic City harbor dug deeper so Trump’s megayacht could park there.
In their new book The Wolves of K Streetwrite journalist brothers Brody and Luke Mullins about the expansive growth of the lobbying industry.
They look at the creation of Black, Manafort & Stone – the Republican Party lobbying firm led by Charles Black and two known Trump associates: Paul Manafort and Stone.
Trump, then a real estate magnate in his mid-30s, was one of the company’s first major clients after President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory.
Donald Trump (right) and his then-wife Ivana Trump (left) pose in front of their new luxury yacht The Trump Princess on July 4, 1988 after it arrived in New York from the Azores
Trump wanted to park the Trump Princess at the Farley State Marina, but it was initially too shallow to handle the 285-foot yacht that Trump purchased in 1987.
Trump enlisted the help of Roger Stone (right), a Republican Party lobbyist who was a supporter of President Richard Nixon (left) even after Watergate, who would later advise his presidential campaign
The Trump Princess is photographed off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey on July 9, 1988. Trump wanted to build it in Atlantic City to appeal to his casino customers
Stone, who remained loyal to President Richard Nixon even after Watergate, had met Trump through Roy Cohn during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Cohn became known as Trump’s right-hand man after his death, but was best known at the time as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief adviser during the anti-communist hearings of the 1950s.
Stone wanted to build support for Reagan in New York.
“So Roy arranged a meeting for me with Donald,” Stone recalled in an interview. “Donald said, ‘Okay, give me the pitch,’ and I told him why Reagan would win.”
That was enough to convince Trump to become a Reagan backer, allowing the campaign staff to use his plane, office space and telephones, the book said.
After Reagan’s election victory, Stone convinced Trump to sign on as a client of his firm.
He said the new lobbying firm could serve as his “eyes and ears” in Washington, DC
The superyacht featured flashy photos of Donald and Ivana Trump, projected onto the mirrored ceiling of one of its many rooms
The Trump Princess had a number of themed cabins, including the red and white striped Ruby Suite
Chamois leather wall covering in a yellow lounge, designed by Luigi Sturchio, on board Donald Trump’s yacht, The Trump Princess
A photo of Paul Manafort (left), Roger Stone (center) and Lee Atwater (right) – a top adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush – in the early days of their lobbying careers
Enter the Trump Princess — an 280-foot yacht that Trump bought for about $30 million in 1987 from Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the uncle of slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The authors describe the yacht as having a “distinctly Trumpian aesthetic” with “onyx floors, mahogany walls, gilded pillars, a private elevator and an onboard disco.”
Photos from the period show pictures of Ivana and Donald Trump hanging on a mirrored ceiling in one of the cabins.
That room was equipped with purple couches with large gold pillows.
And that one of the staterooms, the Ruby Suite, was filled with Candyland-esque furniture with red and white stripes.
However, the boat was too big for the Farley State Marina in Atlantic City, where Trump wanted to dock it.
The future president poses in one of the gilded bathrooms of the luxury yacht, The Trump Princess, in 1988
One of the staterooms on Trump’s luxury yacht, The Trump Princess, which was initially too large to park near his casinos in Atlantic City
The Trump Princess even had a theater room.
A swimming pool on one of the decks of The Trump Princess, the luxury yacht that the then-real estate developer bought for about $30 million from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi
Then Stone came along.
He developed his political contacts and secured the necessary permits from the US Army Corps of Engineers to have the Atlantic City harbor dredged deep enough for the yacht to pass through.
“Those permits can take years,” Stone recalled, according to the authors. “I did it in months.”
In a 1989 distributed for Boat InternationalTrump said he was making the boat available to “very high rollers who spend millions of dollars a year in the casinos.”
“There’s a whole market there,” Trump said of Atlantic City — where he once owned three of the casino hotels. “While I was building Farley Marina, I tried to get the boat because I knew she would blow everyone’s mind. She would be a spectacle.”
Trump sold the yacht just a year later, in 1990.