Sledgehammer

How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East

David Friedman

• Publisher: Broadside e-books
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780063098121
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Trump administration's peace agreements in the Middle East were the greatest foreign policy accomplishment in decades. Now, for the first time, his ambassador to Israel explains how they pulled it off.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity. For decades, the U.S. State Department called it diplomacy.

David Friedman was an outside candidate when President Trump appointed him U.S. ambassador to Israel. He took office to find U.S.-Israel policy stuck in stalemate. For years, accepted wisdom was that extensive experience and detailed knowledge of Middle Eastern history and culture were necessary to negotiate treaties. In truth, Friedman realized, all parties played on that accepted wisdom to stall—expecting to get a better deal further down the road.

Tossing the State Department playbook aside and incorporating insights from his many years as a negotiator in the American private sector, Friedman and a small team with no prior diplomatic experience revamped American diplomacy to project "peace through strength." He emphasized the importance of leverage, the key to any good negotiation. After painstaking, behind-the-scenes work, the Abraham Accords were signed: a historic series of peace deals between Israel and the five Muslim nations.

In Sledgehammer, Friedman tells the true story of how the Abraham Accords came about. He takes us from the Oval Office to the highest echelons of power in the Middle East, putting us at the table during the intense negotiations that led to this historic breakthrough. The inside story of arguably the greatest achievement of the Trump Administration, Sledgehammer is an important, inspiring account of the hard, hopeful work necessary to bring long overdue—and lasting—peace to one of the most turbulent and tragic regions of the globe.

1

Donald and Me

Donald Trump and I first met at his office in Trump Tower in 2004 to discuss his New Jersey casinos. I enjoyed our first meeting. He was funny, smart, and strategic. Atlantic City had already proven to be a great investment for Donald—he had raised hundreds of millions of dollars in debt against three casino properties and had used a good deal of those funds to invest personally in New York City real estate just before values took off. He was, as they say in the casino business, already playing with the house’s money. But there were legal complexities that needed to be addressed.

Donald and I had been introduced by Howard Lorber, a close friend of Donald and part of a group of businessmen trying to save Western Union. I had handled the Chapter 11 case for Western Union, doing everything I could to keep at bay a group of aggressive creditors led by Carl Icahn and Leon Black, who had their sights on ownership of Western Union at a steep discount. I worked with Howard and his partner, Bennett LeBow, to keep Western Union in bankruptcy just long enough for the value of its new money-transfer business to replace its old telegram business, which had gone the way of the kerosene lamp. By 1994, they ended up selling the company, paying off all the creditors, and returning hundreds of millions to Mr. LeBow and Mr. Lorber.

Howard Lorber went on to become one of New York’s leading real estate players and maintained a close friendship with Donald Trump. When the Trump casinos in Atlantic City began to experience reduced cash flow in the early 2000s, Howard enthusiastically recommended that Donald and I speak. If not for Howard, I don’t know that I ever would have met Donald Trump and I certainly would not have taken the path that forms the subject of this book.

As we were chatting in his office in 2004, Donald told me that the best lawyer he ever used was Roy Cohn, the notorious sidekick to Senator McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt in the 1950s, who had become a “fixer” for many high-profile clients. I told Donald that I was nothing like Roy Cohn. I didn’t have a personal relationship with a single judge and I played by all the rules. What I brought to the table was simply a very smart guy who would outwork and outthink the opposition. I’m not sure if that resonated with him as much as the fact that just before we met, The American Lawyer, a magazine known for comparing the income levels of major law firms, had named my firm the most profitable in the country. Whatever the reason, I was hired on the spot.

Many have questioned Donald Trump’s business acumen given the bankruptcies of his Atlantic City casinos. The evidence is otherwise. No one could have made money in Atlantic City in the last fifteen years. Morgan Stanley lost over $900 million on its Revel project; Carl Icahn and Caesars lost fortunes as well. Between intense competition arising from new casinos opening in New York and Philadelphia and cheap flights to the Caribbean, coupled with the failure of local officials to create a welcoming environment, Atlantic City had become the loss leader for the gaming industry. No lawyer could make Atlantic City profitable, but I would try to extricate Donald as cleanly as possible from a hornet’s nest of angry creditors.

Before I even got started, I suffered a terrible loss. The greatest man I had ever known, my father, passed away. We were extremely close and I depended upon him for his wisdom and advice. A practicing rabbi for more than fifty years in one of the largest Conservative congregations in the United States, Rabbi Morris Friedman had the stature, the commanding presence, and the intelligence to be an outstanding trial lawyer and to command an income of ten to twenty times what he earned from the pulpit. But he dedicated his life to teaching and advancing the values of Judaism, and that calling gave him great satisfaction.

In the Jewish tradition, I observed seven days of shiva (literally translated as “seven”) or mourning for my father. During that period, my house was packed with friends and family offering consolation to my mother, my sister, my brother, and me. The last day of mourning saw a blizzard come to our small Long Island community. The phone rang off the hook as friend after friend, many living just a few blocks away, called to apologize for waiting until the last day and not being able to navigate the weather for an in-person visit.

Late in the afternoon that day, the house was almost empty. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some commotion in the foyer and even a hint of flash photography. Seconds later, into the living room walked Donald Trump, having spent four hours in his limo driving the twenty-five miles from midtown Manhattan.

I was surprised to see him. I would have been surprised to have seen anyone brave the weather but especially someone whom I had known only briefly. He spent over an hour with me as we shared stories of our respective fathers. He clearly revered his father, especially his acumen as a builder. He recounted how difficult it was to break into the construction business when his father was getting started; how it required enormous fortitude to stand up to unions, politicians, and even organized criminals, who each controlled aspects of the job. And while his father was engaged in all this tumult, he nonetheless created a safe and comfortable environment for his family.

Both of us seemed to have a strong need for paternal approval. I told him how my father used to boast about my brother’s score of 1570 (out of 1600) on the SATs and how my siblings (my sister also broke 1500) suggested that I must have been switched at birth when I barely broke 1300 (although, having skipped two grades, I took the test at fourteen and graduated from high school the next year). I didn’t feel that I had come equal with my brother the doctor until I was almost forty and I gave my father $250,000 and asked him to select the charities to which to donate the money. He reacted far more joyously than if the money had been given to him personally. That’s what it took to break even with Doctor Mark.

Donald had his own stories. He was one of five and his father, like mine, had high expectations for his kids. Donald wasn’t taken seriously as a kid and, like me, lacked the self-discipline and seriousness of purpose that autocratic fathers admire. But then he pulled off a huge and improbable deal, his first in Manhattan, by converting the decrepit Commodore Hotel, a dangerous eyesore, into the gleaming Grand Hyatt. And from that moment forward, Fred Trump Sr. looked at his son Donald in a very different way.

It was quite a conversation that day as I observed my last day of shiva. Donald and I became friends and remain so to this day. Being his friend does not mean that I approve of everything he does. In fact, I have offered my dissent on occasion and as recently as December 2020, when I urged him to accept the election results and focus instead on amplifying his extraordinary four years in the White House. I told him that few presidents had done in two terms what he had done in one.

That was one of the rare occasions where he did not take my advice.

On almost all levels, Donald and I have nothing in common, except for our devotion to family: We both have great respect for our parents and a limitless commitment to our children. Otherwise, Donald led a public life of conspicuous consumption and promotion, and I tried to maintain a modest existence based upon faith and fidelity. So why would I maintain a friendship with someone so different from me? Simply put, because I always saw in Donald the potential for great things. In our discussions, there was always a better angel sitting on one of his shoulders and I was confident that I could draw it out, at least on occasion.

When it came to the kids, I saw in Donald what I see in the mirror: a father who defines his success first and foremost by the quality of the lives of his children. Only one other person that I’ve known over the years impressed me the same way: Charles Kushner. Charlie is a few years older than me and his children are a few years older than mine. We didn’t know each other well when the kids were growing up, but we did overlap at the Wyndham Hotel in Miami Beach for several Passover holidays. I loved the way he treated his children with love and respect and how much pride he held in them. I felt exactly the same way about my family.

I got to know Charlie and Jared when I was representing them in restructuring their investment in 666 Fifth Avenue. When they bought it, the price paid set a record for a New York City office tower. It was after Charlie had suffered through his prison sentence for tax evasion and witness tampering. The crime he committed was the outgrowth of a family squabble that unfortunately was all too common among the second generation of prominent Jewish real estate families. I knew, without being told, how difficult the experience had been for the Kushner family, and I was impressed by Charlie and Jared’s determination to build back their business in the face of daunting challenges. The experience undoubtedly was foundational for Jared when he began work in the White House.

Jared was quite an impressive kid in those days. He was running the restructuring of 666 Fifth and met frequently, one on one, with some of the biggest real estate lenders and investors in the world. As Manhattan office rents were plummeting, Jared needed to keep tenants in place, attract new ones, raise capital, and negotiate with some of the toughest vultures in the real estate business, many salivating at the prospect of owning a trophy New York property at a steep discount. Jared never got discouraged—at least he never showed it publicly—throughout this very difficult process. He kept his head down and his proverbial eye on the ball and drove the restructuring to a successful conclusion. It would have been an impressive outcome for anyone, let alone someone not yet thirty years old.

Once, in 2005 or 2006, Donald and I were riding in his limo having left a meeting of Atlantic City creditors. As we passed a magnificent office building, he lamented that he had been in litigation over the ownership of the building for several years and had spent $2 million in legal fees with nothing to show for it. I asked him what he would take to settle and he said he just wanted his fees back. I asked him if I could call someone I knew who was on the other side of the dispute and he agreed immediately. I made the call from the car and put my cell phone on speaker:

“Jeff, it’s David Friedman. How are you?” We exchanged pleasantries and then I continued.

“Jeff, I’m thinking of representing Donald Trump on your fight with him. I think I’ve got a really good appeal.”

“David, why would you do that? The case is a complete loser. You’ll just spin your wheels and you won’t even get paid.”

“Possibly, Jeff, but Donald is giving me a huge piece of the upside if I win and I think I’ve come across a really creative strategy.”

“Will Donald settle?”

“I sure hope not. I want to take this all the way.”

“How about ten million dollars?” Donald’s eyes were as wide as saucers. He began violently nodding his head up and down. I smiled back at him.

“No way, Jeff. I’m in this for a big score. Don’t insult me.”

“David, the case is dogshit. Fifteen million dollars.” Donald was beginning to enter cardiac arrest. I smiled back at him again.

“Thirty million dollars, Jeff. And that’s only because I like you.” Donald was now looking at me like he was going to kill me. I put my finger up to my lips, warning my client not to make any noise.

“Done at twenty-five million dollars. Deal?”

“Deal.”

I hung up the phone and looked across the vehicle. Donald was stunned. He thought I walked on water. He has repeated this story in my presence in the Oval Office at least ten times; I can only imagine how many more times in my absence.

The truth is that I didn’t walk on water, and I had no delusions about the quality of the case. What I did know was that Jeff and his colleagues were about to make a fortune refinancing the property in one of the lowest interest-rate environments in history. My threatened appeal could potentially delay or disrupt that transaction at a cost that could be in the hundreds of millions. Buying off that risk made eminent sense to a group of hedge funds that were primed to earn an enormous profit. Why Donald’s other lawyers didn’t get this was beyond me.

When the call was over, Donald said he wanted to pay me a “bonus” for that success. He asked me what was my hourly rate. I answered that my hourly rate was irrelevant; even if it was $10,000 an hour, that wouldn’t compensate me for the value that I had provided him. He asked me what I wanted. I said, “Well, you wanted two million dollars and I got you twenty-three million dollars more, so give me a third of the excess.”

“For a ten-minute call! Who gets over seven million dollars for a ten-minute call?”

“Donald,” I said, “what would you like to pay?”

“Two hundred fifty thousand.”

“Fine, pay that and let’s always be on good terms.”

Our fee discussion on the Atlantic City matter was even more interesting. Back in 2014 we finished our last of several restructurings. By then, all the casinos in Atlantic City were virtually worthless. Donald no longer wanted to control the properties; what he wanted was to reclaim his name, which was owned by the company for gaming worldwide, some free ownership in case things miraculously improved, and a release from numerous lawsuits that were threatened by creditors.

We teamed up with a group of the casinos’ bondholders and filed a reorganization plan that achieved all of Donald’s objectives. The mortgage on the casinos, meanwhile, had been acquired by Carl Icahn and he filed his own plan to foreclose on the properties and bring lawsuits against Donald. The litigation in the Bankruptcy Court in Camden, New Jersey, over which plan would be approved was dubbed “the battle of the billionaires.” Preparing for the fight, I tried to get Donald’s attention so that I could prepare his testimony. He told me he needed no preparation and that he understood the issues perfectly well.

I told him the following: “Donald, in everything else that you do, you can be in charge. But when I have you on the witness stand, you belong to me. You prepare as I say and you do what I tell you.”

He prepared well, and we won the “battle of the billionaires.” About a week later he got wind that I was charging him a fee of $5 million. He got me on the phone.

“David, I need a discount. I’m not paying you $5 million!”

“Was there something unsatisfactory about our work?” I asked.

“No, the work was great. I just don’t pay retail for legal fees, never.”

“Well, Donald, there is a first time for everything. No discount, not one penny.”

“Well, then I won’t pay anything until you become more reasonable.”

“Donald, I’m not worried. I delivered to you a huge victory and you’re paying me in full.”

“Why, David, are you so confident?”

“Because I was paid yesterday. When we close...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue: Sledgehammer—Birth of a Metaphor
• 1. Donald and Me
• 2. Israel and Me
• 3. The Trump Campaign
• 4. Confirmation Controversy
• 5. Battling the State Department
• 6. Trump in Jerusalem
• 7. The Daunting Challenges of Daily Life
• 8. “If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem”
• 9. How to Build an Embassy in Three Months for Half a Million Bucks
• 10. Countering False Narratives
• 11. Saving Unknown Lives
• 12. Undividing Jerusalem
• 13. Peace: From the Outside In
• 14. The Storms before the Storm
• 15. A Vision for Peace
• 16. The Abraham Accords
• 17. Peace Progresses
• 18. Cleaning Up
• Epilogue: Peace Is Possible
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: The Abraham Accords Declaration
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher