An Irish society, an unpaid loan and the hypocrisy of Letitia James

An Irish society, an unpaid loan and the hypocrisy of Letitia James (nypost.com)

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, here is a tale of financial shenanigans at the American Irish Historical Society, in which Trump-deranged New York Attorney General Letitia James is hoist with her own petard.

It involves a grand old building on Fifth Avenue, an unpaid loan, a fading family dynasty, a James Joyce theatrical production which almost ended in fisticuffs, and hypocrisy from the AG as obvious as a glass of green beer.

It all began when James Doyle, a wealthy Georgia businessman with a love of his Irish roots, joined the board of the nonprofit Society, whose jewel in the crown is a rare Gilded Age mansion at 991 Fifth Avenue, right across from Central Park and The Met. 

Over the years, financial mismanagement and misfortune had befallen the Society, and it was facing foreclosure. So, in 2017, the board turned to Doyle for a $3 million loan, structured like a private mortgage. He was told that the Beaux-Arts townhouse was worth $80 million that included valuable air rights.

However, the Society only made a few repayments and Doyle soon found things weren’t quite as they seemed.

The Society had been dominated for half a century by the Cahill family, and President Emeritus Dr. Kevin Cahill was accused of treating the townhouse as his own “private club,” with one of his four sons, Christopher, becoming its “well-compensated executive director,” according to the New York Times. Christopher earned $88,459 in 2020, and between $134,768 and $179,402 in previous years, according to IRS returns.

Cahill, a tropical-disease specialist said to have treated Pope John Paul II after he was shot, reportedly raised the money to renovate the mansion to its former glory when he took over in the 1970s. A stocky man with bushy white eyebrows, he would dress each year in morning coat and Irish tri-color sash to preside over the St. Patrick’s Day parade from its Fifth Avenue balcony. He held a grand annual gala where he would hand out gold medals to the great and the good.

Then, in 2019, his son Christopher, then 55, got embroiled in an ugly confrontation with the director of the Irish Repertory Theater, which was staging a play in the townhouse, adapted from the James Joyce short story, “The Dead.” 

“I’m going to kill you, Ciaran!” yelled Christopher, while lunging at the director after the performance, according to The Times.

The centre was facing foreclosure.

The Society’s financial woes and dysfunction had reached crisis point by 2021, when Cahill tried to sell the building for $52 million (later reduced to $44 million).

He died the following year, and in stepped the New York Attorney General, citing a petition she had received opposing the sale. 

She announced that, by state law, any sale of a nonprofit asset had to be approved by her, effectively kyboshing the plan.

“It’s an amazing place,” James gushed to the Irish Voice. “We had to save it, had to save it … One day people can come in there and enjoy it again.”

Which was all very well, but Doyle still was owed $3 million.

The AG appointed an interim Board of Directors and Doyle was persuaded not to try to collect his money or foreclose on the mortgage before July 2023. 

But by August 2023, he still hadn’t been repaid, so he initiated foreclosure proceedings — and promptly was blocked by the AG, who claimed the mortgage was invalid because he was a board member.

On Friday, Doyle launched a lawsuit against the Society and requested a subpoena be issued against James requiring her to produce a raft of documents, including anything relating to campaign events hosted at the townhouse or any contributions to her political campaigns from the Society or any of its members or directors. 

Doyle’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, alleges that James’ enthusiastic involvement in the Doyle case may be driven by “connections with the Defendant.”

And he points out the uncanny similarities between his client’s predicament and the notorious case James brought against Donald Trump for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get a better mortgage, “although her office is now taking a polar opposite position.”

The lawsuit alleges that Doyle was given “fraudulently inflated valuations” of the townhouse, putting its market value at over $80 million. Dr. Cahill and the Society’s current President-General, James Normile, “made representations to [Doyle] that the building had ‘air rights’ and could be built, or rebuilt, higher than its current height. 

“In reality, there were no ‘air rights’ and the actual value is closer to $20 million. [The Society] made a gross over-valuation” of the townhouse, which induced Doyle to make the $3 million loan.

“Tish James said, ‘nobody is above the law,’ which should include Tish James, who seems to have actively aided and abetted in the Art of the Steal,” Parlatore told The Post.

“This organization fraudulently inflated the value of their building to induce my client into giving them a mortgage which Tish James is now trying to help these fraudsters avoid having to repay. 

“The theory of fraud Tish James accused the Trump Organization of engaging in is identical to the fraud she is aiding and abetting here.” 

James has come down on the side of the Society against its lender, Doyle. And yet, in her signature case of People v. Trump, she took the opposite position, holding that “where an organization inflates the value of a property to obtain a loan, that is fraud, even where the lender was aware of the actual value and was paid in full,” Doyle’s lawsuit says.

Trump was punished with a $355 million fine. So delighted was James by the verdict last month that she started live-tweeting Trump’s daily interest bill: “+$114,553.04.” 

Parlatore points out that the Society inflated the value of its property to obtain a loan, just like Trump was accused of doing, but the difference was that Doyle could not conduct the sort of “sophisticated due diligence” that Deutsche Bank did. Therefore, unlike Trump’s lenders, Doyle didn’t know the true value of the townhouse. 

An even more important difference is that Trump paid back every penny he owed, but the Society never paid back Doyle. 

As the old Irish proverb says, forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.