Former President Donald Trump has bills to pay. He’s appealing a $454 million civil fraud penalty in which a judge found he and his sons inflated the net worth of their companies. (Trump has had to post $175 million to avoid $112,000 a day in interest while he awaits his appeal.) He’s also appealing an $83.3 million judgment against E. Jean Carroll, who claims Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York dressing room decades ago.
It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to sell some of his assets, such as the nine-seater 1997 Cessna Citation X that private jet charter company XO calls “the world’s fastest transcontinental business private jet” and that Trump’s aviation website calls “another very special feature.”
First reported by The Daily Beast, citing Federal Aviation Administration and Texas Secretary of State records, Trump sold the jet to a limited liability company whose registered agent is Dallas developer Mehrdad Moayedi.
Moayedi’s Centurion American redeveloped the Statler Hotel in downtown Dallas, whose financing was once the subject of an IRS investigation, but is best known for building suburban housing developments along the Central Expressway and Dallas North Tollway up to the Oklahoma state line. The company is working on a $1 billion mixed-use development at the former Collin Creek Mall site in Plano and owns 1,500 acres near a huge semiconductor factory in Sherman. Centurion American is also building a 14-story apartment complex in Turtle Creek, with units to occupy the entire 8,000-square-foot floorplan.
As The Daily Beast points out, Moayedi donated $245,000 to the Trump Victory campaign between 2019 and 2020, and has also donated to the Republican National Committee and Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign. And now he owns a new jet, which he estimates the AvJet is worth between $8.5 million and $10 million. The purchase price was not made public. It’s irresponsible to speculate, but buying a jet from a cash-strapped guy who might be the next president seems like it would have benefits beyond avoiding TSA lines.
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Matt Goodman
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Matt Goodman is D MagazineHe writes about a surgeon who killed someone.
