BUZZ
The spot of Donald Trump’s presidential library appears to be a done deal after the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees voted for a second time Tuesday to approve transferring a plot of land to the library foundation.
The action came after a historian filed a lawsuit contesting the public college trustees’ earlier vote, alleging transparency violations under Florida’s Sunshine Law.
The trustees unanimously approved the land deal again Tuesday, giving the president’s foundation a piece of property currently used as an employee parking lot, the Miami Herald reports. The site is located next to the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami.
About 100 people attended the meeting, including historian and retired Professor Marvin Dunn, who filed the lawsuit, according to the report:
Miami Dade Circuit Court Judge Mavel Ruiz previously blocked the college from transferring the deed for the land while Dunn’s lawsuit is ongoing. She indicated during court hearings that a new, publicly noticed vote — like the one Tuesday morning — would likely allow the college to circumvent that decision and move ahead with the transfer.
Dunn has said he plans to continue his legal fight over whether the college violated Sunshine laws in its initial vote. “We’ll conduct discovery depositions, document requests and the like and get the bottom of what happened here,” Dunn’s attorney Richard Brodsky told trustees during Tuesday’s meeting.
Meanwhile, details about the land deal remain slim.
The trustees have not released any “public documentation of specific benefits or concessions for the college” in exchange for the land, and little came out during the meeting this week, according to the newspaper:
Trustees insisted Tuesday that, despite the fact that there is no cash nor explicit agreements to benefit students in the terms offered to Trump’s library foundation, Trump’s billion-dollar high-rise legacy project will be a boon to the college. Tax filings show the foundation is planning to spend $3 million in 2025 on “architecture and engineering,” though no site plans or renderings were made public ahead of the trustees’ redo vote Tuesday.
Trustee Marcell Felipe also said the board spoke with Trump advisor Steve Witkoff about the land agreement, and learned that the library foundation chose Miami over “dozens of options where other cities would not only donate the land, but would pay to build.
“So Miami, we’re getting a pretty good deal,” Felipe said.
As The College Fix previously reported, Dunn’s lawsuit alleges the trustees’ first vote on the land in September violated the Florida Sunshine Act. The law requires specific transparency measures of government institutions, including advanced notice of meetings and public minutes.
Dunn told The Fix he does not believe the public college should be giving land away to any politician.
“That land belongs to Miami Dade county children unborn for whatever purposes the college Board of Trustees decides in the future to make use of it, including positive green space which wouldn’t be exactly a bad idea in downtown Miami,” he said.
Dunn, a civil rights activist and Democrat who once ran for Congress, has spoken out against Trump’s politics, but he said his lawsuit is not “anti-Trump.”
“This is not really about Trump. Frankly, this is about anybody who would take this land from Miami Dade College. I don’t want this to turn into an anti-Trump movement,” he told The Fix.
Several presidential libraries are housed at universities. The Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library is located at Mississippi State University. Lyndon Johnson’s is on the University of Texas at Austin campus, and Gerald Ford’s library is at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
MORE: Historian sues over college Trump library deal, alleging lack of transparency
