Poor Robert De Niro claims lockdown is crimping his lifestyle

Analysis by FPI / July 13, 2020

Poor Robert De Niro. Due to the ravages of the coronavirus outbreak, the leftist actor won't be able to afford that solid gold toilet seat this year. You see, he will be "lucky" to make a paltry $7.5 million in 2020.

De Niro, who has an admitted worth of $500 million, said in court proceedings that he had to cut his estranged wife Grace Hightower's American Express monthly limit from $100,000 to $50,000 because he has been financially devastated by the coronavirus crisis.

Hightower objected, but a judge allowed the buddy-can-you-spare-a-million De Niro to continue to cut the Amex allowance to $50,000 a month as long as he paid Hightower $75,000 so she can find a summer home for their two children, while De Niro and his other children remain in his three-house compound in upstate New York.

Oh, the sacrifices being made during pandemic times.

Lawyers for De Niro said he cut Hightower’s credit card limit because he’s taken a huge financial hit as the restaurant chain Nobu and Greenwich Hotel, both of which he has stakes in, have been closed or partially closed for months with barely any business.

De Niro’s lawyer, Caroline Krauss, told the judge that Nobu lost $3 million in April and another $1.87 million in May. And he had to pay investors $500,000 on a capital call, which he borrowed money from his business partners to make, “because he doesn’t have the cash,” Krauss said.

The suffering of the man worth $500 million seems too much to bear. Won't anybody help this working class hero?

Krauss also explained that under the terms of their 2004 prenuptial agreement De Niro is only required to pay Hightower $1 million a year as long as he’s making $15 million or more in income and if his income declines his payments to her proportionally do too.

“His accounts and business manager … says that the best case for Mr. De Niro, if everything starts to turn around this year,… he is going to be lucky if he makes $7.5 million this year,” Krauss said.

Krauss added that proceeds from Netflix’s “The Irishman” have mostly already been paid out and he is likely to get just $2.5 million in 2020 and 2021.

Just $2.5 million?

Krauss actually went on to claim that “in spite of his robust earnings,” De Niro has “always spent more than he has earned so this 76-year-old robust man couldn’t retire even if he wanted to because he can’t afford to keep up with his lifestyle expense.”

Hightower’s lawyer, Kevin McDonough, added a touch of reality to the situation, saying “the idea that Mr. De Niro is tightening his belt is nonsense.”

“Mr. De Niro has used the COVID pandemic, my words would be, to stick it to his wife financially,” McDonough said.

“I’m not a believer that a man who has an admitted worth of $500 million and makes $30 million a year, all of a sudden in March he needs to cut down [spousal support] by 50 percent and ban her from the house,” McDonough said.

De Niro — who had been with Hightower on-and-off since 1997 — filed for divorce from her in 2018.

Free Press International