Mr. Crow, 61, manages the real estate and investment businesses founded by his late father, Trammell Crow, once the largest landlord in the United States. The Crow family portfolio is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and includes investments in hotels, medical facilities, public equities and hedge funds.
A friend of the Bush family, Mr. Crow is a trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation and has donated close to $5 million to Republican campaigns and conservative groups. Among his contributions were $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group formed to attack the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and $500,000 to an organization that ran advertisements urging the confirmation of President George W. Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court.
The Crow and Rollins empires intersect in several ways. John Rollins built two hotels that were sold to Wyndham Hotels, which is owned by the Trammell Crow company. Both Rollins and Crow were in the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), American Friends of Jamaica and the Horatio Alger Society.
Michele Rollins, John Rollins' widow, ran as a Republican in 2010 for a Delaware Congressional seat, narrowly losing to Glen Urquhart. Before becoming a corporate attorney and marrying John Rollins, Michele Rollins worked for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Justice Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Interior.
During her time in D.C., Michele Rollins got to know Clarence Thomas--and the Supreme Court justice served as master of ceremonies at John Rollins' 80th birthday party and roast at the Dupont Circle Hotel. In his opening remarks, Thomas talked extensively about his friendship with Michele and John Rollins.
How do certain members of the Rollins family view the American justice system? Public documents indicate that Ted Rollins, for one, treats it as his personal plaything.
Mrs. Schnauzer and I got to know Sherry Rollins when she contacted me in spring 2010 after doing a Google search related to injustice in Alabama and stumbled upon my blog. Sherry Rollins told us that she had filed for divorce in Greenville, South Carolina, but was forced to flee to Alabama, with her two daughters, when Ted Rollins ignored a court order to maintain payments on the family home.
After settling in Alabama, where she had family, Sherry Rollins discovered that her husband had sued her for divorce here, in Shelby County Circuit Court. I'm not a lawyer, but that sounded strange to my ears, that a judge in Alabama could snatch a case that already had begun in South Carolina.
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