Lost Court Records Concerning Trump Tower's Undocumented Polish Workers Found By Lawyer

As President Donald Trump travels to Poland, lost court documents from a case Trump settled about the use of undocumented Polish workers have been discovered, according to the New York Daily News Wednesday.

During the 1980 demolition of the building where Trump Tower now sits on Fifth Avenue, Trump allegedly employed undocumented workers. A lawsuit was filed in 1983 where union members sued a union boss, Trump and his contractor for cheating the union by hiring undocumented immigrants called “The Polish Brigade,” according to Politifact.

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The Polish employees were off the books, worked grueling hours, promised low pay and in many cases stiffed of any pay, Time reported last year. After a 1991 trial, a federal judge ruled that the Trump Organization and its construction partners had indeed conspired to keep money out of union coffers to the tune of at least $325,000 plus interest, which meant about $4 million was at stake, the New York Times reported in 1998. The case was appealed by both sides and ordered retried. The case was settled in 1999 by both sides and court documents were ordered sealed.

“It has been resolved on terms agreeable to both sides,” Wendy Sloan, the lawyer for the union side, told the New York Daily News at the time.

Trump has long maintained that he didn’t know that the undocumented immigrants had been used on the site. Trump also railed against “illegal immigrants” throughout his time as president.

Time Magazine and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sought the paperwork detailing the terms of the settlement, and in their search, an appeals court overturned an order keeping the information secret. However, the transcript and brief from the lawsuit were thought to have been destroyed by the court in keeping with their retention policies — that is, until Sloan resurfaced them from her personal records last week.

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A lower judge must officially unseal the records now, and then they can be made public.

“I hire a contractor. The contractor then hires the subcontractor,” said Trump during a presidential debate last year when the issue was brought up. “They have people. I don't know. I don't remember, that was so many years ago, 35 years ago.”