When the initials “DJT” flash on Felix Lasarte’s cellphone, there’s business to discuss with a once and future president.

The veteran Miami lobbyist and land-use lawyer took on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Doral resort as a client weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by supporters of Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Two other prominent land-use lawyers declined Trump’s business at the time, but Lasarte said he happily signed on to help the former president pursue a new luxury condo and retail complex on the resort’s 650-acre footprint in Miami-Dade County.

“I had zero hesitation. I knew we would click,” said Lasarte, 54, who said he voted for Trump three times. “For me, it’s been the honor of a lifetime.”

After joining Trump’s orbit at a political nadir, Lasarte now sits on a short list of political players in Miami-Dade with direct access to the incoming president’s inner circle and, at times, the president-elect himself.

“He’s somebody my father has a lot of trust in,” said Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and a son of the president-elect. “He’s a lot of fun to be around.”

When Trump held a July campaign rally at the 10th hole of his golf resort, the Trump National Doral, Lasarte said he met him backstage and suggested adding the names of Doral City Council members to the part of the speech where Trump planned to recognize elected officials and other notables.

Trump agreed and said he wanted Lasarte’s name in the script, too.

“Where is Felix — my lawyer?” Trump said to the cheering crowd that night, right after a shoutout to the far-right activist Laura Loomer. “Am I getting the damn zoning done?... He’s doing a great job.”

Lasarte’s Trump trappings include access to Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect’s private club in Palm Beach where membership now costs $1 million to join. Lasarte said Trump gave him free access to the club, where the two have chatted with Miami-Dade politicians and huddled over plans for the Doral resort expansion.

“There’s no detail too small for him,” Lasarte said in an interview over $32 wagyu hamburgers on Mar-a-Lago’s patio.

He recalled how Trump peppered architects from the Doral firm of Pascual, Perez, Kiliddjian, Starr about how shade patterns from the new mid-rise towers at the resort might keep the grass from thriving on a nearby golf green.

“He would say: ‘Put the building in this direction because of the way the sun moves,’” Lasarte said. “He is micro-focused on golf and gets into granular detail.”

Lasarte grew up in Hialeah to working-class parents who came to the United States from Cuba in the 1960s.

His father drove a milk truck, and his mother worked in the J. Byrons department store. Lasarte attended Hialeah’s Champagnat Catholic high school before majoring in political science at Florida International University and then graduating from the St. Thomas University law school in 1994. He pursued a land-use practice after getting appointed to the Hialeah zoning board while still in law school, the result of hitting it off with a City Council member who was knocking on doors for votes in Lasarte’s neighborhood.

“When he wants something, he’s very persistent,” said Christi Fraga, Doral’s mayor. “To be honest he hasn’t always supported me. But we always have a good relationship.”

Walking through Mar-a-Lago on a recent afternoon in a blazer and golf shirt, Lasarte pointed out the door where agents found alleged classified documents that led to one of two federal prosecutions against Trump (since dropped after he won the 2024 election).

He recalled a meeting with Trump and the architecture team when the former president suggested using coquina stone in the design of the new Doral complex and led the meeting over to his family’s quarters to see how the material looked on a porch.

Lasarte described where the televisions were set up on election night for the campaign’s command center, where he mingled with Trump’s friends as the crowds awaited a victory party in the nearby ballroom.

“You had Dana White,” Lasarte said of the Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive. “You had Elon Musk.”

With a speciality in pursuing government approval for developments, Lasarte’s list of past clients include local builders Lennar, Shoma, Terra and Century Homebuilders.

Lasarte said the Trump account came after one of the most prominent land-use lawyers in Miami-Dade, Juan Mayol, declined to take on Trump as a client in 2021.

Lasarte was the Trump Organization’s third choice: Mayol had gotten a referral from another land-use heavyweight, Jeffrey Bercow, who also turned down the business. Mayol said knowing that Lasarte was a lifelong Republican made him an easy pick to work for Trump. “I knew it would be a match made in heaven,” Mayol said in an email.

As the owner of one of Miami-Dade’s largest hotels since 2012 and the center of power in the Republican Party for most of the last eight years, Trump has ample ties to local politicians even without Lasarte’s connections.

Trump’s spring endorsement of Miami-Dade’s Sheriff-elect Rosie Cordero-Stutz came through the family of Trump ally Carlos Gimenez, a Republican congressman and former county mayor whose son and daughter-in-law, C.J. and Tania Gimenez, were Cordero-Stutz’s campaign managers.

Republican County Commissioners Juan Carlos Bermudez and Kevin Cabrera secured 2022 endorsements from Trump through their own history with the president-elect: Bermudez as the longtime Doral mayor and Cabrera as Trump’s Florida director in 2020.

But Lasarte has been a behind-the-scenes facilitator for Trump’s dealings with other local politicians.

He arranged a Mar-a-Lago visit by Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo in 2023 for a meeting with Trump weeks before the city voted to name a street after the former president.

When Bermudez was still mayor of Doral, he also joined Lasarte at Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Trump to talk about the proposed resort expansion that is now on the verge of final approval by the City Council.

“Felix definitely has been a conduit,” Bermudez said in a recent interview.

Lasarte’s most high-profile Trump work started on election night with a call from Bermudez as Lasarte was heading to Mar-a-Lago for the watch party.

The county commissioner, whose district includes Doral, said he’d gotten word from Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava that she planned to recommend building the county’s new garbage incinerator in Doral, saying it was the most cost-effective site.

That’s been the trash-burning facility’s home since its construction in 1982, but Levine Cava had previously recommended a more remote location in northern Miami-Dade for a replacement after a 2023 fire damaged the incinerator.

With a bipartisan coalition on the County Commission already signaling their preference to keep the incinerator in Doral, Bermudez said he wanted to bring the city’s largest hotel owner into the fight.

“I’ve known Trump since I was the mayor,” Bermudez said. “He and I had talked about this incinerator” over the years.

Lasarte arranged multiple calls and meetings with Eric Trump and county officials, including Levine Cava, a Democrat who was reelected in August.

Multiple sources also said the Trump camp floated the possibility of the president-elect lobbing a social-media swing at Levine Cava herself.

Two sources said language was shared with Levine Cava’s camp of a draft Truth Social post in Trump’s voice calling out Levine Cava by name and warning that a Doral incinerator was a bad idea.

In the end, Trump never posted anything about the incinerator.

Lasarte declined to address talk of the would-be attack on Levine Cava. But he did emphasize his effort to avoid a confrontation on the incinerator fight — despite representing the most prominent brawler in American politics.

“My advice was let’s try to deal with this in a direct but peaceful and thoughtful manner,” he said. “My idea was not to be bombastic. Not to create fights.”

By the time the County Commission met on Dec. 3 for what was supposed to be a final vote on the incinerator’s location, Levine Cava asked for a delay to consider options.

The retreat from the Doral vote left some Democratic commissioners fuming at the possibility of county households paying more for trash pickup if Miami-Dade had to spend millions more on a plan just to accommodate the president-elect’s resort. But it was a win for Lasarte and the Trump Organization.

“His advice regarding the incinerator was on point,” said Ed Russo, a longtime consultant to Trump on environmental issues at his projects. “Felix is the guy who brings in reason and rationality.”

With his most famous client weeks away from becoming president again, Lasarte said he’s thought about the possibility of joining the second Trump administration if given the chance. It’s a would-be scenario that’s already earned him a nickname in Miami.

“Ambassador,” said Mario Pascual, a partner at the Doral architectural firm Trump hired. “That’s what we call him.”

Lasarte said he thought his background with the development process could serve him well in a Housing post or a position aimed at reducing red tape.

“If they think I could be helpful with something,” he said, “I’d be interested in that.”

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