Supporters of Hillary Clinton’s campaign pounced on a USA TODAY Network report Friday that showed Donald Trump has been accused by hundreds of workers of not paying them for their work.
The story featured a Philadelphia family that landed a $400,000 contract to build slot machine bases for Trump’s Atlantic City casino. When Trump reneged on the final $83,600 bill, the Edward J. Friel Company began a spiral into bankruptcy in 1989, according to the family's account.
The USA TODAY Network report found at least 60 lawsuits and hundreds of liens, judgments and other filings paint a picture of dishwashers, glass companies, plumbers, painters and workers that say Trump failed to pay them for work.
Trump is scheduled to visit Pittsburgh on Saturday. Clinton’s campaign lined up the Democratic Attorney General candidate Josh Shapiro to speak out against Trump and his trail of business practices ahead of the trip.
“Trump will have people believe he’s a successful businessman, but the reality is we’ll hear more and more stories like Ed Friel that paint a picture of him defrauding and taking advantage of people,” Shapiro said. “We’re forced to look at his past behaviors to predict what he’d do as president.”
For his part, Trump told USA TODAY in an interview that he pays his bills on time, but acknowledged he’ll make deductions for inferior quality.
“Let’s say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t finish, or a job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract, absolutely,” Trump said. “That’s what the country should be doing.”
Trump on the campaign trail says that he sometimes complains about product quality to get a discount. He stopped at Wausau Window in Wausau, Wis. in April and said the vendor provided thousands of windows for his 40 Wall Street building in New York.
“And there are no leaks, we have no leaks,” Trump said at the window manufacturer. “I should say, ‘They leak like hell’ and get a refund, right? I do that sometimes.”
Trump has been sued by workers, including most recently by 48 workers at his Doral Miami resort for not paying overtime wages. U.S. Department of Labor records show the agency cited Trump 24 times for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005.
That record is cause for concern, said Gabe Morgan, a Pennsylvania state director for the Service Employees International Union.
“In his businesses he’s deprived workers of their wages and not honored contracts with small businesses that workers depend on to keep them afloat,” Morgan said. “His actual track record is making money by exploiting the actual people he’s claiming in this election to represent.”
The trail of legal actions is part of 3,500 revealed by the USA TODAY Network project that spans three decades and more than a dozen states. But those lawsuits aren’t cause for concern given the volume of Trump’s business, said John Phillips, a Trump supporter and KABC Los Angeles radio host.
“We live in a litigious society where Judge Judy is the highest paid personality on television,” Phillips said. “I just assume that anyone who has been in business as long as he has gets sued every 20 minutes.”
