It is no secret that President Donald Trump has no love for the proliferation of wind turbines, which he’s claimed drastically reduce property values and even cause cancer.
But in what may be a first in presidential foreign relations, the Scottish government is claiming that Trump’s family business is refusing to pay tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees accumulated after the president lost a protracted legal battle against an experimental eleven-turbine wind farm built adjacent to his Aberdeenshire golf resort, The Guardian reported Tuesday.
Trump initially filed a lawsuit to prevent the wind farm from being built in 2012, claiming telling the Scottish Parliament that the turbines would wreck the view from his resort and discourage patronage at the course. According to earlier reports, Trump famously insisted to Members of Scottish Parliament (MSP) that they did not need to call any expert witnesses to verify his claims.
“I am the evidence,” Trump explained. “I am considered a world-class expert in tourism. When you say, ‘Where is the expert and where is the evidence?’ I say: I am the evidence,” Trump reportedly said.
“I have won many, many awards. If you dot your landscape with these horrible, horrible structures, you will do tremendous damage,” he added.
Trump’s case made its way to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in 2015, where he eventually lost when the Court unanimously dismissed his appeal.
The Court of Session, Scotland’s supreme civil court, ruled in February that Trump International Golf Club Ltd had to pay the legal bills incurred as a result of the 2015 litigation. The sum was not publicly disclosed.
The Scottish government, however, is reportedly claiming the Trump Organization has “refused to accept the sum it put forward or reach an agreement on cost” associated with the litigation.
“As the amount of expenses has not been agreed, we are awaiting a date for the auditor of the court of session to determine the account. We expect payment when this has been completed,” a spokeswoman for the Scottish government told The Guardian.
Executive Vice President of the Trump golf resort Sarah Malone told The Guardian the allegations that the Trump Organization has refused to pay money demanded by the Scottish government are incorrect. “This is not in our control,” she said in a statement. “The matter is in the hands of the auditors of the court of session and the Scottish ministers.”
Law&Crime has reached out to an attorney for the Trump Organization for comment.
[Image via Ian MacNicol/Getty Images]
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