Rejected by Co-op, ‘Fire and Fury’ Author Michael Wolff Sues for Deposit

(Bloomberg) -- Author Michael Wolff is directing his own fire and fury at the founder of a Utah investment firm, claiming in a lawsuit that he’s been stiffed out of a $375,000 security deposit for a New York apartment.

The author of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” filed a lawsuit Monday in New York against Western Heritage Capital founder David W. Glenn. Wolff and his wife, Victoria, had contracted to purchase apartment 2A at 130 East End Avenue in Manhattan from Glenn.

The four-bedroom, four-bath unit was valued at $4.2 million, according to a listing posted by Realtor Douglas Elliman. Glenn has refused to return the Wolffs’ security deposit after the couple was rejected by the co-op board in April, the suit alleges. The escrow holder was also named as a defendant.

Wolff said he was forced to lower his financial projections in his application to be accepted into the cooperative. Several projects planned for the next two years would have meant “substantial income,” but those were postponed indefinitely or canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

“Mr. Glenn was unhappy with purchasers’ revised financial projections and in an angry phone conversation with purchasers’ broker expressed indignation that purchasers’ financial projections had changed as a result of the pandemic,” Wolff said in the lawsuit. “Despite lacking any basis to do so, Mr. Glenn made the absurd statement that purchasers were trying to sabotage the deal by accurately reporting their updated financial circumstances.”

Glenn founded Salt Lake City-based Western Heritage Capital after stints at Cerberus Capital Management, Lightyear Capital and Greenhill Capital Partners.

Richard Menaker, an attorney representing Glenn, said Wolff provided financial information to his client about his wealth, citing a lengthy career and multiple books, and even has a separate entity that collects his royalties for him. But Wolff presented a financial package to the board that said he had no income “when he decided he didn’t want to do the deal because of the covid crisis,” Menaker said.

There is a clause in the contract that said the deposit would be returned unless there was bad faith on the part of the purchaser, and the package of information that was submitted to the board “differed markedly from what was provided to the seller,” Menaker said.

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