Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard Law professor, had an adorable six-foot-tall stuffed bear in his daughter’s bedroom and a potential legal problem on his hands.
It was the early 1990s, and his client, hotel magnate Leona Helmsley, had gifted him the stuffed animal upon the birth of his baby girl. But Helmsley later admitted that she had stolen the bear from Donald Trump, keeping it when she sold him Rumplemayer’s, a now shuttered New York ice cream parlor famous for its stuffed bear collection – which was part of the deal.
Viewing himself as a paragon of ethical conduct, Dershowitz told her he no longer felt comfortable keeping the gift. Helmsley said she didn’t want the bear back and waved him off, telling him to take his problem to Trump.
“I called him and I said, ‘Mr. Trump, I have a bear that belongs to you,’” Dershowitz said in an interview on Wednesday. “He laughed and said, ‘I know Leona stole it. We have the inventory. Tell your daughter it’s from Donald.’”
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