Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump have asked a bankruptcy court for help in making sure billionaire rival Carl Icahn doesn’t shut them out of the voting on his plan for the New Jersey casinos that bear the Trump name.
Having filed $100 million worth of claims against Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., the Trumps say they are creditors of the embattled gambling company. That entitles them to vote “no” on Icahn’s plan and “yes” on the company’s own competing Chapter 11 plan.
A challenge to the claims could cloud the bankruptcy voting rights of former company chairman Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump, who resigned from the company’s board just before its February 2009 bankruptcy filing.
“To deny the Trumps the ability to vote their claims would be a perversion of essential principles of creditor suffrage,” lawyers for the ex-casino chiefs wrote in papers filed Tuesday in bankruptcy court.
In a preemptive move, the Trumps asked a judge to acknowledge their bankruptcy claims translate into at least $23 million worth of combined voting power when it comes to fighting a Chapter 11 outcome that puts the Trump casinos in Icahn’s hands.