Abraham Lincoln once said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” but he never met Donald Trump. Even within the glittering black monolith he calls home, Trump—the litigious Republican presidential nominee and heir to the Party of Lincoln—has repeatedly bullied the small businesses that occupy the ground floor of his namesake Fifth Avenue skyscraper, jacking up rental prices and then suing tenants when they fought back. Court documents reveal a pattern of legal disputes within Trump Tower over the years, in which the billionaire real-estate developer routinely deployed lawyers to harass the very people funding his extravagant and ostentatious lifestyle on the 66th floor.

Although Trump Tower now exists more as a temple to its vainglorious owner, replete with several eponymous restaurants and stores hawking Trump merchandise, the ground floors of the glass-and-concrete high-rise was once full of luxury boutiques and kiosks, billed as a shopping mall for the Fifth Avenue set. Early tenants included Abercrombie and Fitch, a Harry Winston salon, and several art galleries. Upon its opening in 1983, Paul Goldberger, then the architecture critic for The New York Times, wondered whether New Yorkers would be inclined to overcome their “natural disinclination [to] enter shopping malls,” and that the “serious and determined-to-spend rich must fill Trump Tower if such luxurious shops as Asprey, Loewe, and Lina Lee are to survive.”

At first, the indoor mall appeared to be a moderate success, with some retailers reporting among the highest sales per square foot in the United States. But with rents in the atrium ranging as high as $450 per square foot—the highest on Fifth Avenue at the time— operating a storefront in Trump Tower didn’t come cheap, as Charles Jourdan discovered the hard way. In 1985, the high-end fashion company sued Trump for over-billing its flagship store more than $300,000 for operating expenses in 1983. While the shoe-seller paid the bill under protest, in 1985 Charles Jourdan sued Trump’s real-estate holdings company to recover $231,000 in overpaid expenses, with interest, claiming that Trump had inflated their costs in order to increase his profits. According to court documents filed on his behalf, Trump claimed that Charles Jourdan had violated the lease by paying their operating expenses more than seven months late, and still owed Trump’s company $19,000.

The two eventually settled, working out a monthly payment schedule for operating expenses through 1991. Charles Jourdan left Trump Tower shortly thereafter. In an interview with The New York Times, Charles Jourdan chairman Max Imgruth cited the exorbitant costs of operating there. “Even though we did $6 million in shoe sales, we made no profit,” he explained. (The Trump Organization did not response to a request for comment.)

“I tried to stand up to him everywhere I could but it’s exhausting. ... To him, it’s a sport. To him, it’s fun.”

A few years later, the owner of La Petite Etoile, a high-fashion children’s clothing boutique, also sued Trump, claiming that he was trying to evict her after she rebuffed his attempts to claim that she owed him back rent. “For more than 2 1/2 years I have paid, and the landlord has accepted, 20% of my gross sales as being full and complete payment of my rental obligations to the Defendant,” wrote owner Scooter Robison in an affidavit filed in 1990. Robison claimed that the 20 percent agreement was made in lieu of a fixed rent, which she renegotiated after learning that few people actually shopped in the atrium: “It quickly became apparent that despite the glowing assertions made by the Defendant’s organization and the glowing assessments of the business atmosphere in Trump Tower, [they] were so much hot air.”

All told, she had already paid $148,000 in rent before Trump demanded $280,000 in alleged back rent, sending letters to her holding company, Divine Expectations, claiming that the agreement had only lasted six months. When she refused, Trump terminated her lease, signing the demand letters himself. In her affidavit, Robison speculated that Trump was trying to “extract any sums of money possible from any sources possible in an effort to bolster [his] sagging finances,” well-known to the public at the time. “I have poured my resources and based my future upon the continued existence of this store. If I am dispossessed . . . I will be forced out of business and possibly into bankruptcy.” (The case was eventually settled after a court ruled that Trump could not terminate the lease.)