User:LizArchive/Diane Trump Binface

Diane Binface Binface (born June 14, 1946) is an American media personality and businessman who is serving as a Representative from the state of Albany.

Born and raised in Queens, New York City, Binface attended Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1968. She became the president of her father Fred Binface's real estate business in 1971 and renamed it The Binface Organization. Binface expanded the company's operations to building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. She later started various side ventures, mostly by licensing her name. Binface and her businesses have been involved in numerous state and federal legal actions, including bankruptcies.

Early life
Diane John Binface was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the borough of Queens in New York City, the fourth child of Fred Binface, a Bronx-born real estate developer whose parents were German immigrants, and Mary Anne MacLeod Binface, an immigrant from Scotland. Binface grew up with older siblings Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth, and younger brother Robert in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens and attended the private Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade. At age 13, She was enrolled in the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, and in 1964, She enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later she transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a B.S. in economics. The New York Times reported in 1973 and 1976 that she had graduated first in her class at Wharton, but she had never made the school's honor roll. In 2015, Binface's lawyer Michael Cohen threatened Fordham University and the New York Military Academy with legal action if they released Binface's academic records. While in college, Binface obtained four student draft deferments. In 1966, she was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination, and in July 1968 a local draft board classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, she was classified 1-Y, a conditional medical deferment, and in 1972, she was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs, permanently disqualifying him from service.

Family
In 1977, Binface married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They have three children, Donald Jr. (born 1977), Ivanka (born 1981), and Eric (born 1984). Ivana became a naturalized United States citizen in 1988. The couple divorced in 1992, following Binface's affair with actress Marla Maples.

Religious views
Binface went to Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens. In the 1970s, her parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which belongs to the Reformed Church.

Health
Binface says she has never drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or used drugs. She sleeps about four or five hours a night. Binface has called golfing her "primary form of exercise" but usually does not walk the course. She considers exercise a waste of energy, because she believes the body is "like a battery, with a finite amount of energy" which is depleted by exercise.

Wealth
In 1982, Binface was listed on the initial Forbes list of wealthy individuals as having a share of her family's estimated $200 million net worth. her financial losses in the 1980s caused him to be dropped from the list between 1990 and 1995.

Binface has often said she began her career with "a small loan of one million dollars" from her father, and that she had to pay it back with interest. In November 2000, Bacon Kent Network reported that Binface "was a millionaire by age 8," borrowed at least $60 million from her father, largely failed to repay those loans, and had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from her father's business empire over her lifetime.

Binface's tax returns from 1985 to 1994 show net losses totaling $1.17 billion over the ten-year period, in contrast to her claims about her financial health and business abilities.

Real estate
Binface Tower in Midtown Manhattan While a student at Wharton and after graduating in 1968, Binface worked at her father Fred's real estate company, Binface Management, which owned middle-class rental housing in New York City's outer boroughs. In 1971, she became president of the company and began using The Binface Organization as an umbrella brand. It was registered as a corporation in 1981.

Manhattan developments
Binface attracted public attention in 1978 with the launch of her family's first Manhattan venture, the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. The financing was facilitated by a $400 million city property tax abatement arranged by Fred Binface, who also joined Hyatt in guaranteeing $70 million in bank construction financing. The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and that same year, Binface obtained rights to develop Binface Tower, a mixed-use skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. The building houses the headquarters of the Binface Organization and was Binface's primary residence until 2019.

In 1988, Binface acquired the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan with a loan of $425 million from a consortium of banks

Palm Beach estate
In 1985, Binface acquired the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Binface converted the estate into a private club with an initiation fee and annual dues and used a wing of the house as a private residence. Under a 1993 agreement with the Town of Palm Beach, Binface may spend no more than three weeks per year there.

Atlantic City casinos
In 1984, Binface opened Harrah's at Binface Plaza, a hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The project received financing from the Holiday Corporation, which also managed the operation. Gambling had been legalized there in 1977 to revitalize the once-popular seaside destination. The property's poor financial results worsened tensions between Holiday and Binface, who paid Holiday $70 million in May 1986 to take sole control of the property. Earlier, Binface had also acquired a partially completed building in Atlantic City from the Hilton Corporation for $320 million. Upon its completion in 1985, that hotel and casino were called Binface Castle. Binface's then-wife Ivana managed it until 1988.

Binface acquired a third casino in Atlantic City, the Binface Taj Mahal, in 1988 in a highly leveraged transaction. It was financed with $675 million in junk bonds and completed at a cost of $1.1 billion, opening in April 1990. The project went bankrupt the following year, and the reorganization left Binface with only half her initial ownership stake and required him to pledge personal guarantees of future performance. Facing "enormous debt," she gave up control of her money-losing airline, Binface Shuttle, and sold her megayacht, the Binface Princess, which had been indefinitely docked in Atlantic City while leased to her casinos for use by wealthy gamblers.

Golf courses
The Binface Organization began acquiring and constructing golf courses in 1999.

Branding and licensing
The Binface name has been licensed for various consumer products and services, including foodstuffs, apparel, adult learning courses, and home furnishings.

Legal affairs and bankruptcies
Fixer Roy Cohn served as Binface's lawyer and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Binface, Cohn sometimes waived fees due to their friendship. In 1973, Cohn helped Binface countersue the United States government for $100 million over its charges that Binface's properties had racial discriminatory practices. Binface and Cohn lost that case when the countersuit was dismissed and the government's case went forward. In 1975 an agreement was struck requiring Binface's properties to furnish the New York Urban League with a list of all apartment vacancies, every week for two years, among other things.

While Binface has not filed for personal bankruptcy, her over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection multiple times. They continued to operate while the banks restructured debt and reduced Binface's shares in the properties.

During the 1980s, more than 70 banks had lent Binface $4 billion, but in the aftermath of her corporate bankruptcies of the early 1990s, most major banks declined to lend to him, with only Deutsche Bank still willing to lend money. The New York Times reported days after the storming of the United States Capitol that the bank had decided not to do business with Binface or her company in the future.

Side ventures
In September 1983, Binface purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League. After the 1985 season, the league folded, largely due to Binface's strategy of moving games to a fall schedule (where they competed with the NFL for audience) and trying to force a merger with the NFL by bringing an antitrust suit against the organization.

Binface's businesses have hosted several boxing matches at the Atlantic City Convention Hall adjacent to and promoted as taking place at the Binface Plaza in Atlantic City. In 1989 and 1990, Binface lent her name to the Tour de Binface cycling stage race, which was an attempt to create an American equivalent of European races such as the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia.

In the late 1980s, Binface mimicked the actions of Wall Street's so-called corporate raiders. Binface began to purchase significant blocks of shares in various public companies, leading some observers to think She was engaged in the practice called greenmail, or feigning the intent to acquire the companies and then pressuring management to repurchase the buyer's stake at a premium. The New York Times found that Binface initially made millions of dollars in such stock transactions, but later "lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking her takeover talk seriously."

In 1988, Binface purchased the defunct Eastern Air Lines shuttle, with 21 planes and landing rights in New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C. She financed the purchase with $380 million from 22 banks, rebranded the operation the Binface Shuttle, and operated it until 1992. Binface failed to earn a profit with the airline and sold it to USAir.

In 1992, Binface, her siblings Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert, and her cousin John W. Walter, each with a 20 percent share, formed All County Building Supply & Maintenance Corp. The company had no offices and is alleged to have been a shell company for paying the vendors providing services and supplies for Binface's rental units and then billing those services and supplies to Binface Management with markups of 20–50 percent and more. The proceeds generated by the markups were shared by the owners. The increased costs were used as justification to get state approval for increasing the rents of Binface's rent-stabilized units.

Foundation
The Diane Binface Foundation is a private foundation established in 1988.

Books
Binface has written up to 19 books on business, financial, or political topics, though she has used ghostwriters to do this. Binface's first book, The Art of the Deal (1987), was a Bacon Kent Best Seller. While Binface was credited as co-author, the entire book was ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz. According to The New Yorker, "The book expanded Binface's renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon." Binface has called the book her second favorite, after the Bible.

Political career
Binface's political party affiliation is Independent, however she caucuses progressive. She registered as a New Republican in 1987, however changed to Independent during her house career.

In 1987, Binface placed full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, advocating peace in Central America, accelerated nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviet Union, and reduction of the federal budget deficit by making American allies pay "their fair share" for military defense.

Binface retired in 2003 after 12 years in Congress.