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Day 21

What happened today?

Trump’s impeachment trial kicked off in the Senate with House Democrats playing a video montage of Trump whipping up a crowd of supporters, encouraging them to march to the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell,” showing the pro-Trump mob violently breaching the Capitol, attacking police officers, and invoking Trump’s name as they tried to disrupt the certification of the November election. “Senators, this cannot be our future. This cannot be the future of America,” Rep. Jamie Raskin said in opening remarks. “We cannot have presidents inciting and mobilizing mob violence against our government and our institutions because they refuse to accept the will of the people.”


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2021/02/09/day-21/
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Palm Beach City Council will discuss today Feb 9th whether Trump should remain at Mar-a-lago. It will be videotaped…and there is a lawyer the City is hiring.

What kind of day is Feb 9th - Impeachment and Palm Beach City Council discuss/debate T’s future. :smile:

  • Palm Beach officials will discuss whether Trump can continue to live at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
  • Some neighbors say Trump can’t legally live there because it is a members’ club.
  • Trump’s attorneys say he can because he is an employee of the club.

Palm Beach, Florida, officials will formally discuss whether former President Donald Trump is allowed to remain living at his Mar-a-Lago resort after some of his neighbors complained that he wasn’t legally entitled to because of a decades-old agreement.

Meeting notes for the Palm Beach Town Council meeting on February 9 show officials are due to discuss the matter on Tuesday via videoconference after a presentation on the subject from John C. Randolph, Palm Beach’s town attorney.

The move came after an attorney for neighbors of Trump wrote to Palm Beach authorities last month requesting that the town council inform the former president he was not allowed to live at the resort, saying it would avoid an “embarrassing situation” in which he is evicted.

The neighbors say that a 1993 agreement converting the site from a private residence into a members’ club prevents the former president or anyone else from living there for more than three times a year for up to a week each time.

Trump has lived at the luxury resort, which he billed as his “winter White House,” since leaving office in January. He was a lifelong New Yorker but last year switched his primary residence from Trump Tower in Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago. The move was said to be primarily tax-related, but Trump spent a large amount of time at the Florida resort during his presidency.

Randolph indicated in a memorandum sent last week to Palm Beach’s mayor and town council that Trump’s legal right to reside at Mar-a-Lago could hinge on whether Trump is technically employed by the club. Local laws say “a private club may provide living quarters for its bona fide employees only.”

“This issue, therefore, hinges primarily on whether former President Trump is a bona fide employee of the club,” Randolph wrote.

Randolph added in the memorandum, dated January 28, that Trump’s neighbors, their attorneys, and representatives for Trump should all be able to make presentations at the meeting.

Trump’s attorneys said the legal case had “no merit” because the 1993 usage agreement for Mar-a-Lago did not say the owner of the property could not reside there.

In a January 28 letter sent to Randolph, they said Trump had previously lived at Mar-a-Lago for extended periods without protestation from Palm Beach authorities.

They added that while the agreement prevented the use of guest suites for more than three nonconsecutive weeks a year, Trump used the owner’s suite, which is not subject to the same limits.

The attorneys also insisted that Trump was an official employee at the club, given his role as club president.

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and the results…yes, he probably can live there.

So much for signing off on his rights in 1993. Trump powers through this one as well.

Can Trump Live in Mar-a-Lago? Palm Beach Leans Yes - The New York Times?

PALM BEACH, Fla. — The relationship between former President Donald J. Trump and his adopted Florida hometown has been uneasy from the start, with Mr. Trump seen by staid Palm Beach officials as a bull in a china shop whose presence they once barely tolerated. Things improved somewhat while he was in the White House, with the town deferring to its most famous part-time winter resident.

Now that he has been back for three weeks as a private citizen, Palm Beach has been forced to deal with a question it turned a blind eye to while Mr. Trump was in office: Is he allowed to reside full time at his private Mar-a-Lago club?

The answer appears to be leaning yes.

On Tuesday, as Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial began in the U.S. Senate, the Palm Beach Town Council met via Zoom to discuss if Mr. Trump was in violation of a 1993 agreement that allowed him to convert his Mar-a-Lago estate from a private residence into a moneymaking club.

Lawyers for preservationists and some of his neighbors argued that the agreement required Mar-a-Lago to operate as a social club that no one could live in.

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