PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump had a problem.

He’d met two people who seemed as stubborn as he: a feisty widow whose house stood in the way of his Atlantic City casino expansion, and her attorney.

Trump’s approach struck his adversaries as brazen. Even though the widow was suing him for damaging her house, Trump called her attorney, Glenn Zeitz, and, according to Zeitz, tried to hire him for a potentially more lucrative case.

Zeitz rejected the offer, which came as Trump was also pressing him to settle the dispute and persuade his client to sell her house. Zeitz said he couldn’t fight Trump in one case and represent him in another. It would have created “a tangled web of conflicts,” Zeitz said in a recent interview.

“It was like, ‘Wow!’ Just bizarre. The audacity,” recalled Julia Ingersoll, an associate in Zeitz’s office and one of five friends and former colleagues who learned of the call at the time and confirmed it in recent interviews. “It’s like, if we can’t beat you, we’ll buy you.”

The 1996 call was a shock to Zeitz — not just because it happened, but because of the case Trump wanted him to work on. Trump, who had been championing the use of eminent domain to take the home of Zeitz’s client, Vera Coking, suddenly wanted him to help fight the use of eminent domain for a project that would have benefited one of his rivals.

Trump declined to be interviewed, and his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in an email that “this story and these statements are completely false. Additionally, it is ancient history.”

The Coking case has gained wide attention in the presidential race because Trump’s critics in the Republican Party have pointed to his use of eminent domain as evidence that the GOP front-runner is out of step with small-government conservatives who cherish private property rights.

But new interviews and previously unreported documents from the case, including a 1996 deposition of Trump, offer a glimpse of Trump as a defendant, drawing on some of the tactics and personality traits that have made him a wily and unpredictable presidential candidate 20 years later. He was a dealmaker, and, according to Zeitz, eager to play both sides of the eminent domain issue as it suited his needs.

In his campaign, Trump has said he “loves” eminent domain and has argued that projects, such as roads and hospitals, could not be won without it.

“You should be so lucky to get hit with eminent domain because they pay you a fortune,” he told a Fox News interviewer.

The 1996 call was a shock to Zeitz — not just because it happened, but because of the case Trump wanted him to work on. Trump, who had been championing the use of eminent domain to take the home of Zeitz’s client, Vera Coking, suddenly wanted him to help fight the use of eminent domain for a project that would have benefited one of his rivals.

Trump declined to be interviewed, and his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in an email that “this story and these statements are completely false. Additionally, it is ancient history.”

The Coking case has gained wide attention in the presidential race because Trump’s critics in the Republican Party have pointed to his use of eminent domain as evidence that the GOP front-runner is out of step with small-government conservatives who cherish private property rights.

But new interviews and previously unreported documents from the case, including a 1996 deposition of Trump, offer a glimpse of Trump as a defendant, drawing on some of the tactics and personality traits that have made him a wily and unpredictable presidential candidate 20 years later. He was a dealmaker, and, according to Zeitz, eager to play both sides of the eminent domain issue as it suited his needs.

In his campaign, Trump has said he “loves” eminent domain and has argued that projects, such as roads and hospitals, could not be won without it.

“You should be so lucky to get hit with eminent domain because they pay you a fortune,” he told a Fox News interviewer.