Mafia Don: Donald Trump's 40 Years Of Mob Ties 3o2h24

‘MAFIA’ DON: Donald Trump’s 40 years of mob ties

By H. B. Glushakow

APRIL 24, 2016

Copyright © 2016 by H.B. Glushakow. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Readers are free to use ages, sections or diagrams of this book for educational purposes only in assisting and informing politicians, voters, and the public at large in the run up to the 2016 presidential election. In all such uses “‘MAFIA’ DON: Donald Trump’s 40 years of mob ties” must be cited as source.

Check for current news at: www.trumptrophy.com

Smashwords Edition

This book is dedicated to all AWC wherever they may be. It’s a family.

Foreword

Originally this book was conceived as neither a hatchet job on Donald J. Trump nor, as family and friends have sometimes accused, an endorsement. This book takes an approach to Mr. Trump that transcends issues of party or political viewpoint and focuses on a dozen important things he’s neglected to include on his résumé including 40 years of continuous Trump connections to organized crime.

Trump has touted the “strength” and “independence” he would bring to the Presidency, but you’ll find in this book how time and time again he caved in to demands of common criminals.

Back on a chilly day in early autumn 2015 I ed a TV audience of tens of millions of bored Americans to watch one of the early presidential debates. Seventeen Republican hopefuls monotonously facing off against each other were stretching the concept of “same old, same old” to epic dimensions. I was only watching to get a glimpse of Donald Trump despite the fact that at that time “everybody knew” he had no possible chance of winning out. Trump’s “maximum 20% electability ceiling” had placed long odds in favor of one or another of the senators or governors in the race. Up to that moment I’d not taken more than an indifferent attitude towards the election. But then Mr. Trump appeared on the screen and he was captivating. I mean really captivating. He had taken ownership of the Republican Party without asking permission; and nobody had seemed to notice. I turned to my wife and told her that this guy was absolutely going to wipe the floor with the other Republicans sharing that stage; and that he was just as likely to flatten Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Jump ahead two weeks: a quick survey of European, Latin American and Asian friends disclosed them to be somewhere between bemusement and disbelief on

the subject of Donald J. Trump but all in full accord that he had no chance of becoming president. Independent and Republican friends wondered if he might not be good for the country, but spent little time worrying about it because of the certainty that he had not one chance in a hundred of besting his establishment rivals. Democratic friends and family were generally aghast at the mere thought of Mr. Trump and were already on the warpath yet were unanimous in their cavalier assertions that Mr. Trump would be the safest and best possible opponent for Sec’y Clinton in the general election because he had no chance whatsoever of getting any closer to the White House than a Manhattan mile. The only voices of caution to be heard were those of Bill Clinton, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, but at that point they were being largely ignored. I just shook my head. Why wasn’t it more obvious?

At that point I knew nothing more about Mr. Trump than I’d read in the papers; maybe he could indeed be a great president. Lord knows that we as a country were facing daunting enough challenges that our politicians had proven unwilling or unable to fix. I had no intention or interest to get any further involved; I was busy, in the middle of a project that was claiming all my time. But suddenly the skies erupted, lightning flashed and I found myself trapped. Just as he’d grabbed the attention of the entire American public and garnered over a billion dollars in free advertising from the media, Mr. Trump had also captured my attention. With that realization I laughed, put aside my other work and decided to devote some energy to gain a better understanding of him.

Initially I had 4 points of focus. 1) What was the cause of his popularity and why was everyone not taking what seemed to me his inexorable path to the presidency more seriously? Conventional wisdom blamed it on a general dissatisfaction running through the electorate, but that seemed to me more a commentary than a cause. It needed a simpler and more basic explanation. 2) Mr. Trump’s assertions that he was “self-funding” his campaign to demonstrate freedom from ties to vested interests seemed great if true, but a little too incredible to be believed. It was in need of checking. 3) Mr. Trump was very politely (almost delicately) criticized by one of his Republican rivals for interacting with 1 or 2 of organized crime while involved in New York’s construction industry in the 60s and 70s. Strangely (to me) Mr. Trump

vociferously, bombastically and categorically denied any such ties. I sat up straighter in my seat. I had also been involved in New York’s construction industry in the late 60’s and there was no way a tin shack, much less a Trump Tower, could have possibly been erected in Manhattan without navigating through and dealing with a cesspool of organized crime and a maze of mobconnected politicians and unions. It was just a fact of life. My first thought was that it was to Trump’s credit that he had been able to complete major projects in such an environment. But Trump’s insistent denial of the existence of mob ties set off alarm bells in my ears. What was he hiding back there? 4) The last point seemed trivial but caught my attention. Trump claims to be a self-made billionaire, but one of his rival Republicans challenged him with the claim that he started his career with a $200 million handout from his father, which would have made him hardly “self-made.” I thought, so what? But then Mr. Trump vehemently denied it, insisting he only received $1 million from his father, which he personally parlayed into many billions of dollars. It seemed to me he protested a little too loudly. The truth of the matter seemed like an easy enough thing to establish.

My search started with a few gentle tugs on the above four strings. But gentle tugs soon proved inadequate and transitioned into more serious digging. A few hours of Google searches in the effort to decide whom to vote for evolved into over 8 months of adventure and discovery that led into the seamy world of mob hit men, extortion, assassinations, political influence-buying, cocaine smugglers and the tawdry scenes of Atlantic City casinos, prostitution, and illegal drugs. This book was written to share these findings.

Mr. Trump’s mob ties should not come as any surprise. Several fine writers had earlier taken it upon themselves to write about Mr. Trump. The half-dozen or so major Trump works noted in the bibliography were all written in the 80’s and 90’s and so have been available to the public for decades. None of those writers missed the existence of mob ties, and it should be noted that Mr. Trump hasn’t usually appreciated the efforts made to report on his life or activities. In fact he has warned off and/or threatened to sue many of these writers (some of them more than once.) Those threats were only once followed up with action, Trump’s five billion dollar lawsuit against O’Brien, which Trump lost.

We are not talking about a few “brushes” with one or two criminals in the normal course of business. We are talking about decades of continuous social and business connections all the way up to 2016 including some of his most senior advisors. No presidential candidate in the history of the United States had such widespread and continuous connections to the Mob.

This book sheds the light of day on the four topics mentioned above, plus more things that were revealed in my investigations. Moreover it warns Mr. Trump, his followers and his detractors alike of a sinister vulnerability. Two of the most vicious mafia dons in history, known to be responsible for scores of murders between them, sit in prison with intimate knowledge of Trump’s activities and connections from both his New York construction and Atlantic City casino days —connections which Trump has allegedly denied in official investigations (including under oath) and apparently continues to deny to this day. These particular prisoners are undoubtedly sitting in their cells right now, rubbing their hands in anticipation, mindful that a Trump presidency would be their only chance for a “get out of jail free” card. And they are far from the only persons from Trump’s past who might come calling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW for their pound of flesh. Long before he was trash-talking Mexicans, veterans, and fellow Republicans Mr. Trump was sticking up for and publicly defending his buddies in the mob.

Despite the above, and notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s quasi racist and nationalistic approaches to many issues, Mr. Trump displays more star power than any of his competitors as shown by how easily he dispensed with the large and formidable field of Republican rivals facing him. It should be pointed out that this achievement is more an indication of how well he can get rid of people rather than how well he might govern the country. But still, it can be regarded as a type of potential. The question for voters is whether this potential is enough to compensate for the vulnerabilities he’s created for himself and the nation through his unacknowledged ties to criminal elements. After all, when we talk of presidents, we must consider the matter of national security.

I have ignored material that seemed based on lies or opinions rather than fact. Similarly I paid no mind to data where contrary facts existed that I could not unravel. This is the first time that all of the Trump-mafia-dots have been connected in such direct and comprehensive fashion, and the first time Mr. Trump’s mafia connections have been traced all the way up to 2016.

Mr. Trump has always attempted to deflect accusations of mob connections by boasting of the licenses he was granted by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission (CCC) in order for him to run casinos in Atlantic City. This book, for the first time, reveals the extent of criminal influence within CCC itself, thus denying any legitimacy to Mr. Trump’s “proof of untaintedness.”

Do these ties to corrupt politicians and organized crime disqualify him from holding the office of president? Not necessarily. Later on in the book is suggested a strategy that could vaccinate him against potential blackmail and coercion from criminal elements. But as Mr. Trump has shown no appetite for such medicine, these ties may be the one strategy the Clinton campaign could effectively use to stop Trump in his tracks.

One thing is for sure. The Justice Department should be showing some interest.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Trump Trophies

Outsider Or Trumpsider: The Clinton Example

1. The Trump Star: Hot, Bright & Indomitable

2. Special Interest Groups

The Criminal Mind

3. Trump and His Connections

The Case of the Undocumented Immigrant Workers

Background to Trump’s Alleged Mafia Ties

Casino Cartel: Its Not So Glorious Past

Casinos: Gambling, Prostitution, Alcohol and Drugs

4. Trump-Terrific People

The Company He Keeps

“We’re Going to Have Terrific People, the Best People.”

Wounded Warrior Event

Anonymous Mystery Man

J. J. Cafaro

Carl Icahn

Phil Ruffin

Isaac Perlmutter

Sheldon Adelson

Roy Cohn

Roger Stone

John Staluppi

Joseph Weichselbaum

Salvatore Testa

Mayor Michael Matthews

George Ross

Goldman and Dilorenzo

Dreyer and Traub

Don King

John Cody

Fat Tony Salerno

Nicky Scarfo

Vito Pitta

Kenny Shapiro

Danny Sullivan

Felix Sater

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano

Robert Libutti

Magnifica Porta

Integrity Trumps All: What Mr. Trump Could Do About It

5. “Proof” That Mr. Trump Is Not Mobbed Up

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission

Dennis Gomes

Gov. Thomas Kean

CCC’s Confusion Between ‘Oversee’ and ‘Overlook’

Why the Australians Rejected A Trump Casino Bid

CCC & Colombian Drug Cartel

6. Atlantic City Casinos

Sin City

Zero Tolerance towards Prostitution

The Real Impact Casinos Have On Their Local Economies

Mob Connections to Trump Casinos

What Trump Casinos Gave to Atlantic City

Insider Reveals Redeeming Qualities of Casinos

Trump Casinos and Drugs

7. Trumpisms

Deal Making the Trump Way

Winning in Central Park: The Wollman Skating Rink

Trump’s All-Time Best Deal: Harrah’s

How Mr. Trump Beat the NFL

Trump Genes

“I Only Got One Million Dollars From My Father.”

8. Trump Debt-Handling Model: Bankruptcy

#1 –1991-The Trump Taj Mahal

#2 – 1992-Plaza Hotel Bankruptcy

#3 – 2004-Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc.

#4 – 2008-Trump Entertainment Resorts

#5 – 2014-Trump Entertainment Resorts

Who Were the Real Losers?

No Shame, No Regret, I Do What I Do Just to Pare A Little Debt

9. Trump School of Scandal

The 600-Pound Ape with the Dunce Cap Sitting In the Corner

10. Trump: “Mexico is not our friend.”

American Trade with Mexico

Do Walls Work?

Mr. Trump’s Mexican Wall

Will A Mexican Wall Ease America’s Drug Problem?

Latinos for Trump

11. China and the Currency Manipulation

12. Trump Wins #6 Spot on Economist Global List

13. The Man on TV Who Fires People

14. How Much Is Trump Worth?

There Is More to Trump Than Greed

Who Or What He Is

15. Making America Great Again—What Does That Even Mean?

16. A Personal Appeal to Mr. Trump

A Word to Foreign Leaders

A Word to Fellow Americans

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Introduction

Trump Trophies

We all know Donald J. Trump as the self-made 70-year old billionaire with the beautiful young wife, the real estate mogul whose name adorns so many prestigious properties, the Atlantic City casino king, reality TV Show Host, owner of golf courses, and now self-funding presidential candidate.

If that description were complete, Trump would be unassailably captivating. But they are not complete. Depending on your point of view, the picture he has painted of himself is cleverly, unfortunately or catastrophically incomplete.

Donald J. Trump likes trophies. His office is full of them including scores of framed magazine covers where his photos have been featured. A trophy is something one collects to enhance prestige or social status and is usually used attributively—such as “a trophy wife.” Note the following:

Mr. Trump is now working on his third trophy wife.

Refusing to accept sound business advice, he went deeply into debt to acquire five trophy casinos in Atlantic City, two of which he sold and all of which he ultimately lost, driving him to the brink of bankruptcy.

New York’s grandest hotel, The Plaza, was another trophy, which he grabbed for $407 million (even he agreed it was far too high a price), and on which he took a substantial loss when forced to sell.

He established a trophy Trump University making promises that he failed to keep and ending up being sued by thousands of disgruntled students and the District Attorney of the State of New York.

He bought his trophy New Jersey Generals Football Club, which after one good year disappeared forever.

He bought a $32 million dollar trophy yacht from an arms dealer who’d fallen on hard times replete with 11 guest suites, gold-plated door knobs, two waterfalls, a sun deck surrounded by bullet-proof glass, and sleeping quarters for a staff of 52. As phenomenal as it was, Trump never got to spend a night there before being forced to sell it as part of one of his bankruptcy settlements.

He bought his trophy airline in 1989 for $365 million of borrowed money. Trump Shuttle never made a profit and he defaulted on the loan payments just one year later and was forced to give the airline back to the banks.

Perhaps the trophiest of all was his purchase of the Miss Universe contest, an annual beauty pageant held in more than 190 countries and watched by more than 500 million people every year on NBC Television. Trump was forced to sell it in 2015 when NBC abruptly ended its business relationship with Trump and refused to air the pageant as a result of disparaging statements Trump made about illegal Mexican immigrants.

On the flip side of that, before he became enmeshed in the seedy world of casinos Trump was a developer. He really developed things.

You can’t travel far around Manhattan without running into one of these magnificent Trump Trophies:

Riverside South (a Trump brainstorm from the 1970s on Manhattan’s west side) Trump International Hotel at Columbus Circle The Wollman Skating Ring in Central Park (which he completed for the cost of labor and materials after the city had closed it down for years) His restoration of the landmark building at 40 Wall Street Trump Plaza on E. 61st Street The Trump World Tower at United Nations Plaza The Grand Hyatt (Trump’s first project, next to Grand Central Station on 42nd Street) Trump Tower (his signature headquarters on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street)

Forget about whether he actually owns the properties on this list or not. Trump’s career is marked by these great successes, even if later overshadowed by his repeated failures and bankruptcies. The above-listed projects were all fabulous developments and made a terrific contribution to the resurgence of New York.

And though he is often characterized as being an unrepentant hater of women, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and just about anyone who disagrees with him, those who know him well say that heartless, he’s not.

But?

He’s now making a grab for the White House, the greatest trophy yet. This is a trophy that must be put into a category of its own. The effects of swapping a wife, screwing up a real estate deal or defaulting on a billion dollars of junk bond debt are infinitesimal compared the stakes of running the executive branch of the U.S. government.

The question must be asked: What might be the result of his acquiring that trophy?

Despite his positives, do we dare vote for a candidate who is so closely connected to criminal elements, has regularly found himself in bankruptcy, who is so quick to resort to force in (often unsuccessful) negotiations and who seems to regularly go out of his way to alienate business associates who need not have been alienated?

Mr. Trump recently broke the all time world alienation record by pissing off 600 million Latin American Hispanics and 1.2 billion Muslims in the course of a single week. If you add all the Chinese he’s promised to antagonize on his first day in office, he will have managed to disaffect over half the peoples of earth even before his first day on the job.

A few sections further we’ll look at why many folks will not care about any of that.

Outsider or Trumpsider: the Clinton example

Mr. Trump has told us many times that he is the only candidate to whom the White House can be entrusted because he’s the only true independent, an outsider who is not owned by or obligated to special interests.

Look at the proof that Trump has provided that he’s outside:

His campaign money comes from a rarified source that makes him immune, unable and impervious to special interests. He speaks his mind where everyone else is either too nice or too politically correct. He is a winner, while almost all other Americans are losers. Greatness such as he possesses can only be bestowed at birth and can never be learned and is certainly not part of the gene pools of other Americans, Mexicans, Russians, Chinese, Iranians or North Koreans. The accumulation of his vast personal wealth attests to his superior business acumen.

“The grass is always greener….” is a phrase common to all languages and times to express the allure of being outside. Outside is always better than inside. So shouldn’t we all be voting for the ultimate outsider in the 2016 election?

Maybe. Maybe not. This book will not tell you who to vote for.

Mr. Trump is certainly not the consummate insider-establishment-pawn that it’s become so popular to demonize in the 2016 election; but neither is he so much the outsider that he would lead people to believe. Mr. Trump’s “far side” turns out to be neither “inside” nor “outside.” Let’s call it his “trumpside.”

This “trumpside” is what keeps Mr. Trump so poorly understood by both those who him and those who seek to bring him down.

This “trumpside” has confounded political analysts of every complexion in the run-up to the 2016 election.

It’s a kind of magical quality that has persuaded significant segments of today’s voters to like things that political correctness and popular culture had been telling them not to like.

Long before he was persuading millions of people to vote for him he was successfully persuading customers to like gold and brass and over-the-top ritzy decors, and firing people.

People who use the expression “Trump’s message is resonating” miss the point.

Trump’s star power, his trumpside, whatever you call it, enables him to cause things. That is a great gift. It has been called many things in the past: charisma, crowd-allure, leadership, magnetism; and even witchcraft.

Trump causes things; the so-called resonances are merely the effect of that

cause. Mr. Trump can and does influence others to believe and do what he wants them to do and believe. That is why its disingenuous for him to say something like “if they steal the election from me, the people are really not going to like it. There could be riots in Cleveland.” Everyone knows that, were riots to occur in Cleveland, the sole cause would be Donald J. Trump. Luckily there is unlikely to be a riot.

Having said that, it must be pointed out that people who cause things are almost always a better choice than people who don’t. That’s what’s so appealing about Mr. Trump. At the same time, you have to know how he would likely use this ability; sometimes a person’s history can give a clue.

To truly understand someone, or to make correct decisions about him, all relevant information must be known. Without it, all you get is crazy illogic.

So we look into several aspects of Mr. Trump; the first one is the extent of his independence.

The list of past mafia connections he denies he ever had is likely to get the most attention. There are enough of them to fill the shelves of a New York Italian bakery. But these are largely in the past and if he would only acknowledge and renounce them, voters would likely agree, no harm, no foul.

When Bill Clinton was under fire for his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky, what ultimately landed him in the political soup was not the playing around— they got him for allegedly not telling the truth under oath. Mr. Trump’s mafia connections are far more serious. Here is a clear case of Mr. Trump needing to hold himself able to the same standard, come clean of these old Mafia connections and be forgiven by the American public.

Past connections like the ones recounted in this book have a tendency to come back and haunt. Mobsters operate by threats and blackmail. Only a full and complete disclosure by Mr. Trump can proof him up against the nasty side effects that could arise from those past associations.

Past Mafia connections aside, just as important are some of the current ones. When Mr. Trump paraded out a short list of top ers in early 2016 at his Wounded Warrior event, at least one of them had direct links to organized crime. (You’ll read about that later in this book.) This is arguably a really bad habit for a prospective presidential candidate, and one he should fix. Damage-control recommendations can be found in a later chapter.

To appreciate these connections, there are brief histories of the mafia, the casino industry and the connections that link them. It is impossible to mention the “C” word without recalling the unbelievable pain that casinos (including the five owned by Trump) have inflicted upon Atlantic City and continue to inflict. As you will discover in later chapters, a casino, rather than being a gift that keeps on giving, is actually a rapist that keeps on raping. Although his connections to the casino industry and the effects his casinos caused are arguably more problematic to his candidacy, even they need not be a deal breaker. Strategy is suggested here that would allow Mr. Trump to put this liability behind him and probably earn him extra votes while doing it.

Finally, since Mr. Trump has promised us nothing less than magical results from his negotiation skills, his deal-making history is explored. You can decide whether he deserves the reputation of super-hero-negotiator after seeing some of his monumentally failed attempts at cutting a deal.

Trump justifies his criticisms of Chinese, Muslims and Hispanics by stating he’s “brutally honest.” But is he now?

It has been said that only the truth shall set you free. But it must be ALL the truth.

Running for President of the United States requires full disclosure. Candidates owe that to the people who will elect them. Honesty means revealing the exact times and places and forms and events of one’s past.

Full disclosure: Tax returns. Whereas Hillary Clinton has released 38 years of tax returns, Trump refuses to release his. Many have suggested the dark secrets that might be hidden therein. We don’t care what they might be. The simple fact is that every presidential candidate in the past 35 years has released his tax returns. Mr. Trump has no reason not to follow that tradition. He has a duty to do so.

Full disclosure: Atlantic City. Mr. Trump says he loves Atlantic City and did great there. Ask the population of Atlantic City how well the city did while Trump was there and how they personally made out? Trump likes to say he failed in Atlantic City because of competition from other casinos, but his casinos were poised to fail long before that (caused by his own hand) as is shown in this book. Nothing but the true and complete disclosure of Trump’s debacle in Atlantic City and its effect on the city’s population should be accepted. This book will give you an inside look.

Full disclosure: Mr. Trump’s mafia and criminal connections. There is no Presidential candidate in history that has had the number of close business and social connections with of organized crime as Mr. Trump. He has always tried to deflect such accusations, and has never allowed any disclosure whatsoever. But there are just too many to ignore. See the website: www.trumptrophy.com to see Mr. Trump being interviewed by ABC news. When the subject of his mafia connections came up, Mr. Trump

showed what a touchy subject it is to him by suddenly standing up, abruptly ending the interview, and rapidly exiting the room. A Presidential candidate should WANT to give full disclosure to show people he’s clean with nothing to hide. But if he won’t do it voluntarily, he must be required to do so. This book is revealing in that regard. No one would be surprised if the Justice Department requires an FBI investigation before allowing him a security clearance or access to confidential materials.

From Whitewater, to Libya, to the handling of her emails, Hillary Clinton has been put under such vigorous and critical scrutiny as could be expected to dampen the enthusiasm of most mortals to remain in public office. Yet she persists in her desire to work for the greater good.

Mr. Trump likes to accuse Hillary of being “treated according to a different standard.” Low as that standard may be, let’s at least equal that standard for him and require full disclosure from Mr. Trump on his taxes, his Atlantic City failures, and his connections to organized crime.

1. The Trump Star: Hot, Bright & Indomitable

Star light, star bright; do we elect a star tonight?

Donald J. Trump does not follow the political laws of gravity. That is because he bears so many resemblances to a Star. A real star—like those you see shining by night up in the sky- can get pretty hot—more than 20,000° C hot. Get in Trump’s way and you will find out how hot he can get. One handy way of measuring a star is by its brightness—how much light does it emit? Watch Trump on the stump. He’s clearly flashier than any other candidate to share a stage with him.

But what most draws people to Mr. Trump is another attribute of a star: a star is pretty much indomitable. Large planets can crash into it, or a pope can spit into its eye—all to no effect. The star goes on burning as brightly as before—paltry impacts such as from a colliding planet may even cause it to flicker with even greater intensity.

Like him or not, hate him or not, Donald Trump exhibits these star-like qualities. And lots of people like that. Those qualities underlie his popularity far more than the usual arguments advanced to explain it such as the tired “people are tired of Washington.”

You can call Mr. Trump a liar, you can call him a cheat, you can prove he’s flipfloppety, treasonous, manipulative or immoral—but, by actual test, he goes on filling the space around him with fire brands that he sends out in every direction.

Blanche Sprague, who worked as a project manager for Trump shared a related

observation about him: “He could talk to you, and I saw him do it to famous and important people, and these people felt like they were the only person in the world. It was like he hypnotized them. I don’t know how he did it, and I never saw anybody replicate it. He didn’t make it up, he didn’t hone it; he was always that way. He was born that way. He didn’t become Donald Trump. He was always Donald Trump.” (See O’Brien.)

The USA has become a spluttering candle. By 2007 the roots had rotted enough to send us into a financial crisis. The burst of the housing bubble triggered conditions worse than any since the great depression of 1929. A decade later, we still totter perilously on the brink.

Occurrences such as a drop in oil prices or the devaluation of the Chinese currency (which experts earlier promised would be cause for celebration were they to occur) now seem to threaten the foundations of our economy.

China builds a football field half-a-planet away and suddenly the knickers of American politicos become soiled.

Many see Mr. Trump as the candidate most likely to succeed in this challenging environment. You mention the economy, and most politicians (Democrats or Republicans alike) melt. Actually they first put on a brave face, give you some rhetoric, and then melt.

Not the case with the Trump. He’s apparently unmeltable. Throw any flotsam or jetsam at Mr. Trump and watch carefully. He does not cringe, he does not shirk, he does not shrink. Nothing happens. If anything, the perpetrators get it back in their faces with even greater force. This is not a bad thing, and many American voters obviously approve it.

But the approval does not derive from Mr. Trump’s solutions, simplistic or otherwise. It comes only because he doesn’t melt.

Mr. Trump has created the image that he is the best candidate to fix America’s problems because he is not a part of that which created the problems. People want to believe he is the right man for the job and it’s an easy thing to believe.

Those of either party who still do not take him seriously should recall that Ronald Reagan was treated as a joke right up to the moment he was elected President. But there is a danger here that did not exist with Ronald Reagan.

Trump’s NFL story gives a clue. How many people try to get into the NFL? Probably no one you know. But Donald didn’t hesitate. You’ve got to love him for that. The thing is his attempt to break into the NFL failed abysmally—they wanted nothing to do with him. And the way he went about it was so illconsidered and so rude that many believe it resulted in Mr. Trump almost singlehandedly destroying the United States Football League (USFL) a story you can read about later in this book.

Mr. Trump has a knack of promoting his failures as wins. He believes this to be a strength though it is actually one of his biggest weaknesses and one he’s not done very well at either confronting or controlling in himself. So far no competitor has done very well at calling him on it. If he is to fail, it is this that is likely to be his undoing. But this is far from inevitable. Nobody can “always win.” Claiming success when you’ve rightly won is called pride. itting failure when you’ve failed is called honesty.

Trump often shows great energy. This is a plus. But just because he’s ABLE to

exert tremendous force, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be required to moderate that force. If you have a tub of spring water you want warmed up for your bath, you need a source of energy with enough potential to heat it, and yet enough control that it doesn’t turn the tub dry in a millionth of a second. This is a vital trait for someone who may be called upon to deal with a bunch of small, already insecure, sovereign nations. Our biggest situations can be solved—every one— but a Sherman flamethrower tank will not very often be a useful tool.

The different sections of this book should leave no doubt that Mr. Trump has not yet achieved super hero status. “Why do this?” some will ask. “To rain on his parade?” “To elect a more conservative Republican or a more progressive Democrat?” “To hasten the ascendency of President Putin or the Peoples Republic of China?”

Nope. None of the above.

People believe that Mr. Trump operates perfectly and wonderfully because he’s a Star and stars can never stop shining brightly, and should always be believed, and stars always win, and Mr. Trump is a winner.

Good as that sounds, it’s not even close to being the whole story.

Mr. Trump has not always won, and in important instances he’s lost big-time. Despite his talk of “win-win negotiations,” that’s rarely how he’s operated. When his “Star power” proved ineffective, and to justify his need to win, he’s resorted to activities and connections that can only be described as sleazy and unbecoming of a real Star. This is a vulnerability that Mr. Trump seems oblivious to.

Mr. Trump has continuously denied his earlier connections to the mob; yet he's maintained ties to them and now basks in the of the inheritors of mob morality: The Casino Cartel.

And yet, despite all of the above, there is the hope he could become a great president. Despite everything, he commands attention much as a bright star on a dark night.

When Prince died in April 2016, it appeared, at last, that an event had occurred that might be bright enough to eclipse the Donald. And it was. For about a day, until someone ed that Prince had written a song entitled “Donald Trump.”

Donald Trump, maybe that’s what you need. A man that fulfills your every wish, your every dream. Donald Trump, come on take a chance. A 2016¹ love affair, the real romance.

This book will show you a Donald Trump that is different from the glitzy TV personality and casino owner you are familiar with; different but just as real.

To understand Mr. Trump’s potential downside and vulnerabilities, some introduction to the Mafia and its derivative, the Casino Cartel, is necessary.

Some people won’t care about any of that. That’s OK; it is their right. But the next few chapters are short and I suggest you read them for just a brief

orientation before moving on to the gory guts.

1 Author’s note: I substituted 2016 for the original 1990.

2. Special Interest Groups

Trump is right to point out the potential dangers of special interests. A politician, whose campaign is actively ed and funded by a teachers union, the NRA, a farmers association, an oil company, Citibank, or a specific minority group, might be expected to do his best to the rights of said organization or group.

And as he lets us know, with a sideways smile, Mr. Trump has long been an expert at using this mechanism to wrangle favors out of politicians.

Special interest groups are as old and natural as the hills and have thrived in every corner of human society for the last 10,000 years. That’s because that something seen as security by one group can be a threat to other groups. Abundance is really the only guarantee of both survival and harmonious coexistence. It is where abundance is lacking that conflicts between special interests usually arise.

If there were an abundance of water, shepherds and farmers could live together in harmony. If there were an abundance of good jobs available, the different categories of unemployed workers would not be so much in each other’s teeth.

That’s the rationale for drug companies, banks and oil companies contributing to all candidates and all parties in an election: “You can never tell when such a relation will come in handy.” No one will raise an eyebrow if the local real estate brokers’ association gives a candidate’s campaign $2500 because they like his stand on 30-year mortgages. When Wall Street banks, or defense contractors start funneling huge sums of money into the coffers of a particular candidate

one’s feelers might start twitching.

But there is one category of special-interest group connection that must ring every alarm bell in the land when it is found to exist. That is the special interest called Organized Crime—otherwise known as the mob, the Outfit, La Cosa Nostra, or just plain Mafia.

Connections to those folks need special attention for at least three reasons.

They are motivated solely by greed and care not a whit for the greater good They have no respect whatsoever for the rule of law; and Their modus operendi includes threats and violence

For Mr. Trump to say he’s more independent and therefore less vulnerable because he’s “self-funding” his campaign is disingenuous. As is shown throughout this book he has in the past and continues to maintain connections, direct and indirect, to criminal elements and casino interests. There are too many to ignore or deny. And those connections bring with them vulnerability. The odds of Mr. Trump becoming a great president without disavowing these interests are about the same as the odds of you winning a million dollars in one of Mr. Trump’s now defunct Atlantic City casinos.

The criminal mind

“To skim or not to skim? That is the question.”

The criminal mind is not a new concept. Fortunately it exists in only some 2-½ percent of people. It can be seen in the bank robbers and horse thieves of the old west and the gangs that held up stagecoaches and trains. With a knife to a neck, or a gun to a head, the threat of violence was often effective in obtaining what was called “ill gotten gains.” The important thing here is not that the perpetrators carried guns. The important thing is that the ‘gains’ weren’t paid for. Thus one of the most fundamental aspects of social relationships was violated: the principle of exchange. Exchange simply means that which is given or received in return for something else.

A decent man or woman raises chickens and sells the eggs at market, or sets up a factory that employs thousands of others to manufacture cars or computers which he then sells across the world for money; or becomes a doctor who spends years learning his craft and then charges people for patching up their broken arms. These people want to make a profit, but at the root of that motivation is the desire to provide something of value in return for that profit.

The criminal doesn’t operate on that basis. He will obtain money or goods just by casually pointing a gun or otherwise threatening or blackmailing or tricking. He gets, but he does not give anything of value in return. His only business strategy consists of how to get as many people as possible to give him as much stuff and money as possible in return for nothing.

Although the practices and strategies of crime have become more evolved, more sophisticated and more refined, the basic goal remains: “to skim the maximum amount of money off the maximum number of people while avoiding attention from law enforcement.” This has been the modus operandi of every common thug, the great Mafia families of the past, and the glitziest 21st century casino mogul. It’s what every criminal mind since the beginning of time has tried to accomplish.

The evolution of the casino can be seen in the Skimming Triangle shown here. The casino is the ultimate skimming operation, far superior to the more violent racketeering operations from which it evolved.

At the bottom, in the gray area, are the violent activities of common outlaws and Mafiosi. There are many featured in the pages of this book owing to their connections to Mr. Trump. Some have already died and others are in jail. But if any of these people (or those in their circle) retain personal knowledge of activities or events that could compromise Mr. Trump, you can bet they’ll try to cash in on it were he to become president. Blackmail and extortion is what they do.

The emergence of organized crime (mid section of triangle) brought with it more systemic crime although still predicated on threats and violence. 100 years ago Mob-influenced unions crowded the piers of New York, extracting a 10% “tax” on all cargo coming off a ship before that cargo would be loaded onto trucks. Racketeers would visit restaurants and demand thousands of dollars a month to protect the restaurateurs from “bombs.” In New York’s construction industry, because delays of construction materials could cost a developer hundreds of thousands of dollars and put a building project months behind schedule; it was the rule, not the exception, for New York mobsters to demand (and get) payoffs on every major project for almost the entire 20th century. The police were often complicit as were the politicians and judges. It was said for much of the 20th century you couldn’t get appointed to a judgeship in New York without mob approval. This racketeering was a much more organized and smarter approach to skimming. Less violence was required—just the threat of violence was usually enough—more money was extorted, and political connections kept the “heat” off mob operations for decades. Mr. Trump did all his major construction projects in New York during those years.

At the top of the triangle is the most clever and elegant skim ever devised: the casinos. They are now legal and get hardly any attention from law enforcement.

But as will be shown in this book, a casino is only an electronically-coated, noisy, hypnotic, and addictive means of skimming ever greater amounts of money off ever greater numbers of people. The American “Gaming” industry and its elite Casino Cartel are direct outgrowths of, and the next evolutionary step up from, the mob. And Mr. Trump has been promiscuously in bed with these guys.

3. Trump and His Connections

One of Mr. Trump’s special characteristics is that he looks almost exactly the same today as he did 30 years ago. Same height. Same build. Same haircut. Same outfit of nicely tailored suit with unbuttoned coat, dress shirt and a silk tie that always hangs just shy of 2 inches lower than would be truly chic. It’s no coincidence that he has cultivated an image that connects Trump the Candidate with Trump the New York real estate mogul of 30 years ago.

Trump’s campaign attacks Hillary Clinton for a man she befriended over 40 years ago, a political activist named Saul Alinsky. Alinsky, who ed away in 1972, is best ed for creating radical organizing tactics used in a campaign to improve the conditions of Chicago’s poor in the mid 20th century. Clinton met Alinsky shortly before his death, when interviewing him for her senior thesis at Wellesley College in 1969. She personally liked the man but her paper was critical of some of his methods.

The attack from the Trump campaign was followed by: “No one sympathetic to a man like that should become President of the United States.”² The campaign never clarified what “like that” was supposed to mean. In any event, Mr. Trump considers it neither fair nor relevant to bring up things he may have done 30 years ago or people with whom he may have been connected. He’s no doubt right as regards fleeting or unimportant relationships.

But when partially hidden and possibly criminal behavior and connections are found to exist, yet are continually denied, it is more than relevant to shine some light upon them.

The case of the undocumented immigrant workers

For example, Mr. Trump recently took issue with one of the other Republican candidates who brought up that Trump had hired illegal immigrants to work on the Trump Tower project. The incident happened in 1980 when Trump was demolishing the Bonwit Teller building to make way for Trump Tower. Eventually Trump was found guilty and made to pay four million dollars over it. Mr. Trump’s rebuttal to this in the debate was that “things were different then” and “it all worked out fine.” (Meaning he got his project built cheaper because of being able to pay the illegal immigrant laborers less.)

Maybe he’s right about things being different then, but they couldn’t have been that different if he was found guilty and made to pay such a stiff fine.

In any event, let’s allow that almost every builder in New York at the time would have done almost anything for the chance to use cheap illegal labor on his job sites. New York construction costs were the highest in the nation and every developer wanted to reduce them. Using cheap, non-union labor was an obvious way to do it. The only thing preventing them from doing so was Mob-controlled labor unions.

But wait. The more important part of this story is not that Trump was using illegal immigrant labor, but that he was able to do it without incurring trouble from the labor unions—no picketing and no strikes.

How did that happen? Twelve to fifteen of the Housewreckers Union Local 54 of the Laborers International Union, including its president, John Senyshyn, were working side by side 150 or more undocumented Polish workers at the site. The first thing to be noted is that the Laborers International Union has been cited by the FBI as having long been tied to Organized Crime families in

both Chicago and New York.

Trump hired a Polish immigrant named John Kaszycki to supply undocumented Polish workers Kaszycki’s wife would recruit in Poland and send to the U.S. for the price of a transportation ticket.

Trump and union president Senyshyn had an ‘arrangement’ for the non-union to be allowed to work there so long as union contributions for the 12 or so union on the site were not jeopardized. Whatever other compensation Senyshyn might have received personally from this arrangement is not known. What is known is that Kaszycki at first was making the required union payments, but when he fell behind, Trump took over making the payments directly.

The Polish workers were forced to handle asbestos and work on live electrical lines without even being supplied with the obligatory hard hats. They were paid in cash, irregularly, at less than half the rate of the union workers with no benefits and no contributions to the union health and welfare fund. Sometimes they were not paid at all. And many slept on the site.

Then trouble erupted. A competing faction in the union challenged Senyshyn for not insisting that Trump pay welfare benefits into the union fund for ALL the workers, including the Poles. At the same time the Poles themselves began protesting the poor conditions and sporadic pay and began engaging in wildcat strikes. Desperate to complete the demolition on schedule, Trump hired his “old friend” Danny Sullivan as a labor consultant to sort things out. With his connections to many mob connected unions, Sullivan quickly brought the situation at the site under control, and went so far as to chastise Trump for jeopardizing his Atlantic City casino license application by using illegal immigrants. (See Section on Danny Sullivan.)

The union eventually filed suit against Trump to collect the missing contributions to its welfare fund. At trial Trump denied knowing about the Polish workers. The Judge rejected Trump’s assertion, owing to the fact that Trump’s office was directly across the street from the site and it was easy to identify the Poles as “the ones without the hardhats.” The jobsite foreman also testified under oath that Trump once visited the job site and told him, “The Polish guys” were “good hard workers.”

The New York Times reported that after the trial in 1991, Federal Judge Charles Steward ruled that the Trump organization conspired with a former union leader to withhold $325,000 in benefit payments to the Union welfare fund. With interest plus fine this amounted to $4 million. At first Trump appealed this decision, but later settled with the Union out of court for an undisclosed amount estimated to be about $4 million.

During the Trump Tower project in the early 1980s the Housewreckers Union Local 54 was beset with internal conflict and charges of racketeering. Harry Diduck, the union plaintiff named in the winning case against Trump, was also instrumental in successfully ridding the Housewreckers Union of its president, John Senyshyn, amid charges of extortion and corruption.

Bottom line: it was only the mob connection that made it possible to use those illegal laborers in the first place.

Background to Trump’s alleged mafia ties

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.” –Don Trump and Don Corleone

Mr. Trump likes to use this all-time #1 Mafia quote to justify why he does the things he does. The quote appears in his books and accompanies his name at the beginning of every episode of his famous Apprentice TV show.

The Godfather? Maybe it belongs on the syllabus of Trump University.

My wife once shocked a class of George Washington University Executive MBA students we were hosting by telling them that Mario Puzo’s classic was her favorite business management textbook. She wasn’t entirely kidding. Just imagine one man taking a bunch of disorganized immigrants who spoke only Italian and molding them into a juggernaut that not only protected themselves, their positions and their families, but also served as the backbone of a $10 billion a year enterprise. And did it with style, an organization chart and a code of ethics. There would something to be said for that, and maybe something to emulate, except for the fact that the above narrative is pretty much totally false in every respect—a complete fiction.

Most Americans largely ignore the existence and influence of the Mafia. One reason is that the mob has spent millions of dollars over the past 70 years on public relations activities geared to camouflage its existence. The other reason is that what most of us think we know about the mob comes from crime novels like The Godfather, the movies that dramatize those novels, and blockbuster TV series like The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire.

The Mafia did and does exist. Only the truth about it is several orders of magnitude more sordid than the glamorous portrayals given by the likes of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. The common myth is that the mob pervaded Las Vegas only through the 1960s after which “Wall Street” bought the casinos and the new casino “regulators” gave them religion.

That claim is far from the truth. First, it was largely Mob money that bought the casinos from the Mob. As you’ll read later in this book, one of the most famous mob-fighters, Dennis Gomes, had his investigations into organized crime derailed by mob-influenced politicians in the late 1970s in both Las Vegas and New Jersey. Coupled with that is the fact that the FBIs biggest and most important indictment of organized crime (including casino related activity) occurred as recently as 2007. But that indictment was limited to the activities of the Chicago crime family, only one of fifteen dominant mob families still in operation. (See Section on Dennis Gomes.)

There is a common thread visible in the activities of criminals. Whereas the better people often try to give more and better than they get, criminals have quite a different outlook. For them, the flow is always one way:

“You give me something, I give you nothing.” (Except possibly threats or other coercion)

The word mafia is generally understood to refer to a secret criminal organization of mostly Italian-Americans involved in racketeering, gambling, prostitution and drugs. In America it is called Organized Crime.

At the core of the original Mafia were the 5 New York crime families. These criminal gangs got their start against the backdrop of the great influx of immigrants that ed through Ellis Island (home of the Statue of Liberty) in the late 19th and early 20th century.

By the 1960s the mob was making over $7 billion per year (according to a U.S. government estimate) and had grown to fifteen associated families throughout

the major cities in the US including New York (the original 5 families also included New Jersey) Buffalo, Boston (controlling all of New England), Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, New Orleans, SFO/LA, and Miami (though much of Florida was also controlled by the New York families). Each family ran all criminal activities within its own area. But “open cities” existed where any family could enter, the most important of them being Las Vegas and Atlantic City. At one time or another every one of the 15 main mafia families had some kind of illegal activity going on there. The larger activities—such as operating casinos—were “t ventures” sponsored by two or more families. Cash would be skimmed, profits unreported, and the unreported excess moved elsewhere. Each partner would receive its proportionate share of the skimmed casino winnings.

New York’s Mafia woke up to a shock in the 1980s when Rudi Giuliani became District Attorney. Pursuing them with a vengeance, Giuliani succeeded in obtaining convictions against the heads of all 5 of the major families in the famous Mafia Commission Trial. Giuliani rode the success of his crime fighting spree to eventually become Mayor of New York. But significant as Giuliani’s success in New York was, as you’ll see in later chapters, it was limited in effectiveness.

Historically, mob business evolved from the streets to sophisticated production and distribution of illegal alcohol during the prohibition and the gaming industry shortly thereafter. Drug pushing, prostitution and the numbers rackets remained mainline mafia activities regardless of whatever else they were up to. But the mob proved no match for the advanced electronic surveillance increasingly used against them by Mr. Giuliani and others in law enforcement. More and more of the dumber bosses found themselves in jail. The smarter ones did their best to blend in, receding into the background with their millions of dollars, getting into real estate or gaming and sending their kids to ivy league schools.

At first the mob’s legal operations were just a way of laundering their illegal monies. At the same time income from legal activities continued to grow.

Between the 1930s and 1980s virtually every Las Vegas casino worth controlling had ties to organized crime. As early as 1945 the mob gave J. Walter Thompson his first contract to promote Vegas tourism. Vegas was to be billed as a family destination.

The mob had already done its best to make Vegas “safe for business” by declaring it ‘off limits for hits.’ Hit-men hired for assassinations hung around Vegas like a bunch of chauffeurs awaiting the arrival of a transcontinental flight, with time on their hands until their targets took off for somewhere other than Vegas.

The mob was not then, nor had it ever been composed of any kind of nice guys. From its inception the New York mob or La Cosa Nostra was a bunch of backbiting, drug peddling, extortionists who never hesitated to inform on one another when it suited their purposes. Their stock in trade was drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and gambling with violence and extortion always just below the surface. There was little honor. There was no “we don’t deal in drugs.” The ones who most loudly touted their anti-drug stance (like Lucky Luciano) were found to be the most complicit.

Oh yes, let’s not forgot about the murders. “We only kill each other!” was a downright lie. People were killed who wouldn’t cooperate, who got in the way, out of plain revenge, or for not moving over in the booth of a diner. Innocent family were often threatened to “seal a deal.” Many mobsters thought a spate of murders every ten years played an essential role in Mob life much the same as the forest fire plays in nature: to clean out the dead wood.

Bosses ordered juniors to be assassinated and the favor was returned when under-bosses revolted and killed their bosses. The references in the bibliography are available should you have an interest in augmenting your knowledge about wiseguys.

The above brief intro is included to give a backdrop to Mr. Trump’s mob connections. He was doing business in a time and place where the mob wielded considerable power. They were dangerous, they increased the price of doing business, and they were unavoidable if you wanted to do business in New York.

But, arguably, even worse than his mafia connections are Mr. Trump’s connection to the Casino Cartel.

Casino Cartel: its not so glorious past

“The system is totally rigged, folks.” –Donald Trump

When he said that Mr. Trump was referring to the Republican Party’s nominating procedure for choosing a presidential candidate, but he should have been talking about gaming. The Casino Cartel is nothing more than an outgrowth of the mob composed of a bunch of secretive billionaires who have persuaded the world to pay for the opportunity of being robbed. The myth that Wall Street displaced the Mob in Las Vegas and Atlantic City has been more than discredited by the revelations in the book Boardwalk Jungle by Ovid Demaris and in David Johnston’s Temples of Chance.

Let’s look at the origins of just a few of the star names of the casino world.

Pritzker & The Hyatt

Abe Pritzker was an obscure lawyer in Chicago before, seemingly overnight, becoming the patriarch of a financial dynasty so vast and so well hidden in a corporate maze of holding companies and trusts that it is literally impossible to measure its full extent. But there are enough strings sticking out to draw a pretty clear picture.

By the time Pritzker appeared before the Casino Control Commissions of Las Vegas and Atlantic City in the early 80’s, he was 86 years old and his industrial empire was generating $3 billion a year. He began his business in the 1940s with good friend Arthur Greene, named in a Chicago crime commission report as supposedly being “the brains of all Chicago rackets.. financial advisor to Jack ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik and the entire Capone Syndicate. He controls a half dozen business organizations through which he engages in his money making operations.”

In 1958 the L.A. District Attorney’s office reported that Greene “has for many years been the investment agent for Meyer Lansky, Charles and Rocco Fischetti (cousins of Al Capone and high ranking Chicago Mafiosi in their own right)…” One more of his many other activities worth noting is that he was the owner of record of Meyer Lansky’s casino in pre-Castro Havana.

The D.A.’s report linked Greene to Pritzker and went on to enumerate the Mafiosi represented by Pritzker’s firm and how the law firm suddenly began “swallowing up” numerous but well-known and profitable companies. Another report, this one from the LA Police Department’s Intelligence Division, opined that Abe Pritzker was “active locally, that is in Los Angeles, as a front for eastern hoodlum money to be invested in the Los Angeles area.”

Pritzker’s office was at the same address as Sidney Korshak’s, characterized in a 1978 report from California’s Organized Crime Control Commission as “an active labor lawyer, an attorney for Chicago organized crime figures and the key link between organized crime and big business.” Korshak was “often delegated to represent the Chicago gang, usually in some secret capacity.” One mobster, shortly before he was murdered, testified that when he was introduced to Korshak by a higher level mobster, he was advised that “Sidney is our man, and I want you to do what he tells you…He is not just another lawyer but knows our gang and figures our best interest. Pay attention to him, and , any message he may deliver to you is a message from us.” The FBI also believed him to have control over the Teamsters Union welfare fund.

Which brings us to the issue of how Abe Pritzker became so rich so fast. Pritzker itted to knowing Korshak but denied he ever had anything to do with mobsters. However, one of the lawyers in Pritzker’s firm, Stanford Clinton, represented Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters Union. Clinton left Pritzker to become general council for the Teamsters, and that year Pritzker started receiving large “loans” from the Teamsters welfare fund. The first loan was $2 million; in 1966 he received two more loans totaling almost $5 million that he used to buy out the Hyatt Hotel chain. In the next 15 years, leading up to Abe’s testimony before the Casino Control commission, he received $54 million in loans from the Teamsters welfare fund and at the time of his interview owed $49 million of it. That money had gone into the purchase of Pritzker’s Las Vegas casinos. An IRS memo later confirmed it was mob money that was behind his purchase of the Hyatt Hotel chain and his casinos.

With Hyatt Hotels worth about $5 billion dollars by the mid 70’s, Pritzker decided to take the company private. He’d prepared for this in advance by setting up the Elsinore Corporation in 1972 as the Casino arm of Hyatt.

He bought the Hyatt shares back from the other shareholders with some cash and shares in the newly spun off and already debt-ridden Elsinore Corporation. Pritzker made hundreds of millions of dollars on this transaction; the other

shareholders, nothing. Adding to its debt, the Elsinore Corporation went into partnership with Hugh Hefner to build the Playboy Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. When the Casino Control Board unexpectedly denied Hefner a casino license, Elsinore bought him out which further increased its debt.

Elsinore changed its name in 1984 to Atlantis Hotel and Casino and shortly thereafter filed for bankruptcy.

A few years later Donald Trump purchased the struggling casino and renamed it the Trump Regency.

An IRS memo made public two years before Hefner sold his share out to Pritzker stated “that the Pritzker family of Chicago, through their Hyatt Corporation, received their initial backing from organized crime.” Another IRS memo reckoned the Pritzkers had a current tax liability of $11 million.³

Keep this in mind when you get to the section of Atlantic City’s Casino Control Commission. You’ve got to wonder how Pritzker and his Elsinore Corporation ever make it through its oversight process.

Bally’s

In 1980 Bally’s was the world’s largest manufacturer of slot machines. Before it was called Bally’s it was called Lion’s Manufacturing. When it became Bally’s one of its major stockholders was a New York mobster named Jerry Catena.

When Catena’s connection to Bally’s was discovered in 1965, Bally’s bought him out, but continued to sell slot machines to a company set up and controlled by Catena named Runyan Sales Company. Those sales continued at least into the 70s.

Catena had other responsibilities. As head of the New Jersey faction of the Genovese crime family he was in undisputed control over the Port of Newark, New Jersey, a waterfront that moved $9 billion worth of cargo every year. His lieutenants were officers in the International Longshoremen’s Association.

He was indicted in 1970 for extortion and other crimes and spent 2 years in prison. When he got out and casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City he was ready to sell Bally slot machines to all the new casinos. But that wasn’t all.

Bally’s Entertainment became interested in Atlantic City as soon as casino gambling was legalized and by 1979 Bally’s Park Place was ready to apply for its license. The Casino Control Commission Chairman was Joe Lordi, already tainted with mob connections to Joe Catena. (See Section on Casino Control Commission.)

What could not be totally overlooked, even by Lordi, was the fact that the Chairman of Bally’s Corporation (also the President and largest stockholder) was William T. O’Donnell.

O’Donnell was the Sales Manager for Lion’s Manufacturing Corp when it was only possible to sell its products legally in the state of Nevada. At the same time, Lion’s partner Joe Catena and the Genovese Crime family were selling thousands of illegal slot machines to poolrooms, bars, and grocery stores outside Nevada.

Lion’s founder, Raymond Moloney, died in 1958. Up to then Lion’s was just a company supplying slot machines to the mob. But when the company was put up for sale it was purchased by Catena’s company, Runyon Sales. From that time onwards, it was owned by the mob. By 1968, Bally’s had cornered 90% of the worldwide market in slot machines. (How does a company acquire a monopoly on such a vital item as slot machines in an industry infested by criminal elements?) It was in that year that it changed its name to Bally Manufacturing Corporation to disguise the connection to its actual roots. (See Demaris.)

Which must have worked out OK since shortly thereafter, on a sunny day in Vegas, the SEC gave it a clean bill of health and approved its application for a public stock offering.

By the mid 80s, among other ventures, the now “public” Bally’s corporation had acquired casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, and Atlantic City.

In Vegas, Nevada Gaming Commission required Sam Klein, Bally’s second largest shareholder and voting trustee, to resign when his association with Catena was discovered. Klein denied the connection but he was in fact one of Catena’s original mob-connected crew that bought Lion Manufacturing. Klein had been involved with the mob even before that—he was originally set up in the vending machine business by Sam Schrader, characterized as a “junior partner” of Meyer Lansky. Klein was also involved in a Kentucky Casino with Carl Glickman, another reputed mob associate whom Klein considered his best friend.

In the 90s Bally Entertainment was purchased by Hilton Hotels, which became Park Place Entertainment, which became Caesar’s Entertainment, which in 2005 was acquired by Harrah’s Entertainment.

That brings us full circle. In the 1950s Bill Harrah’s original casinos in Reno and Lake Tahoe were two of Nevada’s biggest moneymakers. He achieved notoriety by personally providing prostitutes to his high rollers and then trying to write off their “fees” as tax deductions.

When he died in 1978, his company was purchased by the Holiday Inn for $300 million.

Holiday Inn, before its purchase of Harrahs, was a conservative Christian company that had taken vocal public stands against gambling on moral grounds. When it suddenly “decided” to become involved in the gambling business its Chairman and two of its board loudly resigned and left the company. There’s doubtless a back-story there, but it’s needless to delve into it. Links between the mob and Bally’s, Harrah’s, Hilton, Caesars, Hyatt., Holiday Inn… etc. are clear.

It’s hard to imagine a more criminally incestuous industry; or one that makes so much profit for so few at the expense of so many.

Casinos: Gambling, Prostitution, Alcohol and Drugs

“It’s immoral to let a sucker go home with his money.” –Mafia boss/Casino operator

A casino is like a spider, luring people into its parlor with a shiny, sticky, exciting and mysterious web. The Casino Cartel that what they’re selling is excitement, allure, glitz, and the mysterious promise of great riches. This is not totally accurate. The actual Four Horsemen of the Casino Cartel (as shown in later sections of this book) are gambling, prostitution, drugs and alcohol and they always go together.

You may hold out some hope that you’ll “make a killing” at the baccarat table, or at the slots, but the casino operators have made sure that will not happen. The games you are playing in a casino are run by software that is programmed to make sure you lose. The longer a gambler stays at it, the more certain it is that he will never come out ahead of the house.

At the same time, the casinos will ply him with plenty of alcohol, and even supply girls if the casino’s computer identifies him as one of its better customers. And there are always drugs available just a few feet away. Why? Maybe a casino patron likes to think he’s getting something for all that money he’s spending.

That’s why “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” and “What happens in Atlantic City stays in Atlantic City.”

Your money surely stays, and behind it is the ever-present greedy and criminal casino operator.

How lucrative is a single slot machine to the casino operators? More than 1/2 of casino profits now come from these modern one-armed bandits. In 1991, Harrah’s Marina Casino in Atlantic City had 1,739 slot machines. Each of them cost about $5,000. In that single year they each made over $103,000 for Harrah’s. (See Johnston.)

The casino operator tells the local community that he is providing jobs and tax revenues in exchange for being allowed to operate within its borders, but as shown in a later chapter, for every $1 of tax revenues a community receives from a casino, it will pay out $3-4 in regulation expenses, infrastructure, higher social services, and increased law enforcement costs due to the inevitable increase in crime attendant on the casino.

The casino operator tries to addict the visitor, often making him spend more money than he can afford and ending him up in bankruptcy and a broken home.

Although casino gambling has been “legalized” in twenty U.S. states and 2 territories, it yet meets the simple criteria of a criminal act: the casino operator takes the visitor’s money without giving the visitor anything of value in return.

The casino industry makes a big deal out of the fact that “the mob is gone and gaming is now being run by Wall Street.” It’s more like “The Mob is dead. Long live the Mob.”

The title, Casino Operator should be seen as anything but salutary. These are not nice people, folks. They are not even neutral.

Is Mr. Trump still a card-carrying member of the Casino Cartel? We’re not sure since the casino industry apparently ground him up before spitting him out some years ago.

Yet he continues to number these casino guys amongst his top ers and

advisors. To demonstrate he is really independent, he would need to disavow the Casino Cartel and all its nefarious activities.

Or, if Mr. Trump is actually running on the “Casino Ticket” he should tell us now.

There are sections below on some of the important of the Casino Cartel, and the ones with whom Mr. Trump is connected. After reading about them you can decide for yourself whether relying on such guys for advice on domestic or foreign policy would be such a good idea.

To repeat, if Mr. Trump would just come clean about all these connections, and divest himself from the Casino activities that created so much damage to Atlantic City, voters would be likely to forgive him.

But as he has not yet seemed disposed to do that, this book will stick its nose into places Mr. Trump would probably rather not have it stuck.

2 Ben Carson endorsement of Trump. March 11, 2016

3 See Demaris.

4. Trump-Terrific People

The company he keeps

The proverb that a man is known by the company he keeps is based on the fact that because a person tends to associate with people who are much like himself, his friends are often a glimpse into his character. A kid who surrounds himself with druggies and partygoers is likely to be a partygoer himself. If you want to know what kind of person Sally is, look at her friends. The whole practice of background checking is based on this principle. It’s even in the Bible.⁴

In the following sections we take a look at some of the important people in Mr. Trump’s world, past and present. These are his mentors, the people he’s worked with, the people he praises, and the ones from whom he seeks advice or help.

Many of the mob connections are from 20-30 years ago and are either dead or in jail. It’s unlikely Mr. Trump has had any with most of them for a long time. The problem is he denies their existence. This is disingenuous since there are just too many of them to ignore. And there’s no telling how many others were indirectly connected or had personal knowledge of Mr. Trump’s dealings with these people. Not only that, as is shown in the following chapters, he does still maintain with some of the more sinister of these, including some from the Casino Cartel.

Privacy and blackmail. In his book, TRUMP: Surviving at the Top, Mr. Trump bemoans the difficulties experienced by celebrities trying to live normal lives and protect their privacy. We can sympathize with that difficulty. But we are not talking about the right to privacy here. We are talking about national security as well as Mr. Trump’s personal safety. Blackmail and extortion are the mob’s tools of choice. Any secrets concerning ties between a presidential candidate and the mob are an open invitation to wickedness. It is obvious that were Mr. Trump to become president, any mobster who knew any smallest secret about him would come calling to extract his pound of flesh. It takes no great imagination to see what a bad position this would place him as president. And it is needless. Mr. Trump could make himself impervious to any such threat just by coming clean with regard to them.

“We’re going to have terrific people, the best people.”

This is a promise we’ve heard repeated many times in Trump speeches. This goes along with the idea that most all Democratic and Republican politicians, past and present, are losers and Mr. Trump alone can tap a source of really terrific people. He says he’s already picked one of his terrific people for Secretary of the Treasury and another to head negotiations with China. It is true that owing to his inexperience in both foreign and domestic matters, Mr. Trump will need terrific people to advise him if he becomes the president. But his idea of “the best” people may not always turn out to be so great.

He made the same promise eleven years ago in the promotional videos for his, now defunct, Trump University. Students were told they’d receive their training from “experts” personally selected by Mr. Trump: “We are going to have Professors and Adjunct Professors. We’re going to have terrific people… the best people, the best brains.” But as is pointed out elsewhere in this book, those

terrific people never materialized.

Respectfully, it must be mentioned that Mr. Trump has a history of describing some really weird people as “terrific”.

What follows are some of the key of Trump’s inner circle. They fall into roughly three categories. There are the long time advisors, consultants, and (shall we say it?) consiglieres—people from whom he gets his advice and on whom he relies. Then there are the mob Trump would rather deny he ever worked with.

Finally, there are the recent connections—those in the Casino Cartel and those major ers he introduced at his Wounded Warrior Event.

Wounded Warrior Event

On a chilly day in February 2016, Mr. Trump withdrew from a televised election debate over a spat with a Fox News anchor, Megyn Kelly. It was just before the Iowa primary and he ended up losing that primary. What seemed an act of brilliance at the time was Mr. Trump’s organizing his own event down the street (on literally a moment’s notice) to coincide with the time of the mainline FOX News debate. The Trump event was billed as a “Wounded Warrior Event.” Mr. Trump himself allegedly donated a million dollars to the Wounded Warriors program and got a bunch of his cronies to cough up a few million more. The event began with the heart wrenching: “Our vets are being mistreated” and continued with Trump introducing the friends he had tapped to donate. The event made great publicity.

But the evening was more important for what it left unsaid about the donators. The next few sections fill in some missing data.

Anonymous Mystery Man

Mr. Trump made clear in his narrative at the Wounded Warrior Event that when he phoned prospective donors to the event, he wasn’t necessarily asking for of veterans, but rather for his campaign. He introduced the largest donor (who pledged one million dollars) as:

“A very, very rich man in New York and a very good friend of mine who wants to be anonymous.

“He’s become a little bit reclusive, obviously.”

I said: “Do me a favor. Could you give me a million bucks for this? “

He said, “What?”

I said, “No no, don’t worry about it. Could you give me 1 mill?

He said: “At least tell me.”

I said, “It’s for the Vets.”

He replied: “You got it.”

This “anonymous donor” had to ask several times before Mr. Trump would even tell him what the money was for.

And isn’t it a little ironic that the largest donor at the Trump event remained anonymous?

Taking money from hidden special interests is one of Mr. Trump’s most frequent criticisms of other candidates.

We can say nothing further about that one. Anonymous is anonymous.

J. J. Cafaro

John J. Cafaro was another good friend introduced that night by Mr. Trump. Trump described Cafaro as a “fantastic man” who “made a lot of money in Cleveland.” Close, but not exactly Cleveland.

J.J. comes from Youngstown, Ohio, dubbed “Murdertown USA” by its own residents, and arguably the most corrupt mid-sized city in America.⁵ A report in the New Republic in 2000 described Youngstown as “The city that fell in love with the mob” and listed a “chief of police, the outgoing prosecutor, the sheriff, the county engineer, of the local police force, a city law director, several defense attorneys, politicians, judges, and a former assistant U.S. attorney” as “controlled by the Mob.”

J.J. and his brother William M. Cafaro evidently had no trouble thriving in that environment, turning the small company they started in 1949 into one of the largest real estate developers in the USA—the Cafaro Company.

Some years ago J.J. was ousted from his post of Vice President of the company. That may have had something to do with his difficulties with the authorities for things like bribing of a mafia-connected congressman, James A. Traficant, Jr., lying under oath in a federal trial, and (most recently) lying about giving $10,000 to his daughter Capri’s campaign for congress.

That last occurred in 2011 and the conviction cost him a $250,000 fine and 150 hours of community service. His parole period ended in 2013.

At Congressman Traficant’s Federal Bribery and Racketeering Trial in 2002, a former Cafaro employee Richard Detore, told the Ethics Committee that J.J.’s family had also made illegal gifts to another Mafia-connected politician, exSenator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, and one of Torricelli’s girlfriends.

J.J. gets touchy when the subject of the mafia comes up. He was on the Board of Directors of the National Italian American Foundation when it made headlines in

1998 for organizing a demonstration in front of the Manhattan Offices of the producers of the HBO series THE SOPRANOS. Cafaro’s organization charged that the award winning series “reinforced negative stereotypes about ItalianAmericans.” This wasn’t an original strategy.

Mobster Joseph Colombo, Godfather of one of New York’s five mafia families, created the Italian-American Civil Rights League in the early 70s to protect the Mafia by claiming they were being falsely vilified because of their ethnic background. Among other things it was Colombo who “persuaded” the producer of the Godfather movie to remove any mention of Mafia or La Cosa Nostra from the film’s dialogue. After Colombo was shot at a League rally in New York’s Central Park, his group disintegrated to be replaced shortly thereafter by Cafaro’s National Italian American Foundation.

Anyway, J.J.’s 1998 demonstration was cancelled when media reports revealed that the key organizer of the event, a Mr. William Fugazy, was a convicted felon (securities fraud and racketeering) named in Court proceedings as another alleged Mafia associate.

J.J. completed the probation period stemming from his Federal conviction in 2013.

It was to this “fantastic man” that Mr. Trump turned when in need of help.

Carl Icahn

Carl Icahn, richer by far than Donald Trump, has been often mentioned by Trump as the man he’d appoint to the post of Secretary of the Treasury. Icahn has been vague in his responses, most of the time politely refusing the cabinet offer, but occasionally seeming to consider it. Who is Mr. Icahn and what are his business practices?

Icahn’s early money making facility was at beating customers at card games as a teenager working as a cabana boy at a Long Island beach resort. He brags he “knew poker 10 times better than the best of them.” He now holds a dozen casino properties including some in both Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

In 1985 he developed the reputation of a ruthless corporate raider after his hostile takeover of TWA Airlines. Selling off major assets of the airline to repay the debt he’d incurred in buying it, Icahn accrued a profit of close to a billion dollars for himself while leaving the airline strapped with $540 million dollars of debt. Burdened with that debt, TWA went through 3 bankruptcies before being acquired by American Airlines which subsequently laid off most of the TWA employees.

His other claim to fame was his use of the mechanism of greenmail. Greenmail, a variant of the word (and action of) blackmail, is the practice of purchasing enough shares in a company to threaten a takeover and/or make a radical change in it, and then using that leverage to pressure the targeted company to buy back those shares at inflated prices in return for abandoning the takeover.

One of the most famous examples of greenmail was Icahn’s blackmail, sorry, greenmail, of Viacom International in 1986. Icahn purchased 3.5 million shares (17%) of Viacom stock and threatened to take it over. Viacom Management panicked. Icahn had given them no choice but to buy the stock back from him. Experts estimated that it took Icahn only two weeks to make a minimum of $21

million on the deal. In purchasing back the Icahn stock, Viacom exhausted all its borrowing capacity and saw its stock fall by 20%.

The practice of greenmail was deemed so odious that some states, including New York, ed regulations restricting it. Crain’s New York Business has called Mr. Icahn “the world’s pre-eminent activist investor, a man who has built a $26 billion fortune by bullying management teams at Apple, eBay and many others to do whatever it takes to lift their stock price.”

Martin Lipton, pre-eminent New York corporate lawyer, calls Mr. Icahn’s actions “a form of extortion” because they “create short term increases in the market price of their stock at the expense of long-term value.” Lipton has been instrumental in thwarting many of Mr. Icahn’s hostile takeover attempts, working with such corporations as Phillips Petroleum (1985), Dell Computer (2012), Clorox (2012) and CVR (the oil processor.) Andrew Feinberg, writing in Investing magazine described Mr. Icahn’s dealings as “a screw-the-shareholder form of activism of dubious morality.”

No one uses the greenmailer or blackmailer anymore. The far more neutral and politically correct label “active investor” has replaced them.

Does that mean that greenmail is a thing of the past? Not at all. Greenmail made a comeback in 2013 when Icahn targeted the WebMD Corporation and became its largest shareholder after purchasing over 10% of its shares. A few months later he nearly doubled his investment when the company agreed to buy back all of Icahn’s shares for $177.3 million dollars. Around the same time he dumped $2 billion into Apple and then demanded that Apple do a stock buy-back which would have doubled the value of Icahn’s holding. “Apple had too much money on its books,” he is quoted as saying. Maybe true, but as pointed out in a New York Times editorial, Icahn had contributed absolutely nothing to Apple’s success and he did not have the best interests of Apple at heart.

Icahn has long held major interests in Casinos, most recently purchasing the bankrupt Atlantic City Trump Taj Mahal and is currently considering the purchase of the adjacent Showboat Casino.

“It all comes down to price, valuation and long-term potential returns,” says Mr. Icahn. But whose? The community’s, the country’s, or just Icahn’s?

One last comment on Mr. Icahn: It has been reported by Bess Levin in NewsBank that in the past 5 years Carl has nominated 42 people to fill 94 board seats at public companies he was trying to influence including EBay and Herbalife. Not a single one was a woman.

One wonders what will happen to all those Department of the Treasury secretaries of the female variety should he the Trump istration.

Phil Ruffin

Another Las Vegas billionaire casino operator, Phil Ruffin donated $1 million at the Trump Event.

Ruffin was introduced by Mr. Trump as “another great friend of mine, one of the most brilliant men you’ll ever meet, a phenomenal world class poker player. You cannot make a deal with this guy and come out on top. It’s impossible. In fact, I’m thinking about him for China. He bought a piece of land in Las Vegas for 110 million and sold it a few years later for 1.3 billion.”

Great credentials. A world-class poker player with whom it is impossible to play and win.

Trump mentioned that Ruffin made $1.2 billion on the sale of one property. It’s true. How did he do this? The property in question was the New Frontier Hotel and Casino and Ruffin bought it from Margaret Elardi and her family for $165 million in 1998. One of the reasons he got it so cheap was that real estate prices were down; but far more important was the fact that the casino had been mired in a 6 year, sometimes violent, strike with the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, one of the most powerful unions in Las Vegas.

As early as 1978, the Culinary Workers Union had been cited by the FBI as one of the three international unions most heavily infiltrated by organized crime.

Apparently no major problem for Ruffin. Before he even physically took possession of the New Frontier in 1998 the labor problem had gone away.

Isaac Perlmutter

Ike (Isaac) Perlmutter was also on the list to pledge 1 million dollars at the Trump event. You can hardly say he’s anonymous since he’s been the CEO of Marvel Entertainment since 2005. Yet if not anonymous, he is certainly secretive. He was born in the British Mandate of Palestine in 1942 and thought to have fought in the Six Day War in June 1967 (presumably on the Israeli side.)

He’s 73 years old. Doesn’t look that old in the picture, right? It’s not his diet or his exercise program.

It’s because he has only ever allowed this one photo of himself to be released— taken in 1985 when he was 43 years old.

According to the Financial Times, Perlmutter takes great pride in never having given an interview over his entire career despite being in the public eye due to his many court battles and bankruptcy fights. He’s been called “one of the most feared and secretive men in Hollywood—routinely described by employees and observers as a ‘tyrant.’”

Perlmutter was accused of racism in 2013 for firing 3 black senior female employees and allegedly being heard to say words to the effect that no one would notice if they replaced African-American actor Terrence Howard with another African-American actor Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2 because all black guys ‘look the same’.” The suit brought by the 3 employees was settled out of court.

He is also alleged to have told Marvel’s former editor-in chief Bob Harras that if his kids turn out to be gay that he ought to murder them.

Mr. Perlmutter is currently involved in another lawsuit in Florida. In this instance, a neighbor in Perlmutter’s gated community is accusing Mr. Perlmutter and his wife of mounting a hate campaign against him in an effort to force him to move out of the community.

In particular, Mr. Perlmutter is accused of sending over 1,000 slanderous letters, unsigned, that say the neighbor sexually assaulted an 11-year old at knifepoint and murdered a local couple.

Despite several attempts by Perlmutter attorneys to have the suit quashed, the judge says there is enough evidence to proceed.

At the Wounded Warrior event, Mr. Trump said of Perlmutter: “ He did such an unbelievable job. One of the great, great men of our country in of business and talent.”

Sheldon Adelson

Sheldon Gary Adelson is, according to Forbes, the 18th richest person in the world with a net worth of $28 billion. He’s often referred to as the “Casino Mogul.” The nickname stems from the fact that Adelson has made his billions through his gambling enterprises. His company, The Las Vegas Sands Corporation, is the world’s largest casino company. Adelson owns casinos around the world including the Venetian and the Palazzo in Las Vegas and resorts in Macau and Singapore.

Among the radical political positions he takes, he believes we should drop a nuclear bomb or two on Iran.

Looking to quash potential competition, he launched a coalition in 2013 to ban online gambling, saying the practice “is a danger to society and could tarnish the industry’s traditional model.”

In 2012 Adelson made campaign history when he became the largest-ever single donor to a campaign—alleged to have channeled over $100 million into the coffers of the Republican Party and an assortment of Republican PACs in an unsuccessful attempt to deny the White House to Barack Obama.

Early in that election, Adelson made a decision to give a majority of his donations to conservative nonprofits that do not disclose donors. At the time, Adelson said he believed the media’s use of the phrase “casino mogul” when discussing his contributions was not helpful to the people he was trying to elect.

It’s expected that as the 2016 election approaches, he will once more open up his wallet for the Republican Party. And with Donald Trump as the expected Republican Nominee Adelson would be his largest er. Adelson met with

Trump shortly before the Las Vegas debate and announced he would him should he win the Republican nomination.

A few months earlier, after reaching the top of the polls, Trump had sent Adelson a personally inscribed glossy booklet showing Trump being honored at the Algemeiner Jewish 100 Gala dinner last February “ for his continued of Israel and the Jewish people.” The inscription said: “Sheldon…no one will be a bigger friend to Israel than me!” Adelson ranks the of Israel as his #1 political priority,

Although Trump has stated publicly that he doesn’t want Adelson’s money, Politico Magazine reported that Trump’s campaign has already reached out to Adelson. An unnamed source close to Adelson told Politico that Trump’s campaign made “a very clear ask for money”.

Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn was Mr. Trump’s mentor and lawyer for several decades. It is often noted in the various Trump biographies, that Cohn exerted a greater influence on Trump than anyone other than his father, Fred.

Cohn achieved notoriety as the widely despised chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy in his relentless hunts to find subversives in the U.S. government in the 1950s.

He is best known for prosecuting accused spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In his biography Cohn bragged it was he who persuaded Judge Irving Kaufman (in illegal, out-of-court conversations) to impose the death penalty on Ethel. After her death, evidence came to light that Ethel had not been involved in the espionage, and had only been brought into the case by the prosecution as a means of putting pressure on her husband.

Cohn grandstanded on the “dire threat” that foreign communists were blackmailing closet homosexuals in the U.S. government into giving them secrets. Cohn was responsible for the firing of scores of gay men from government service that ultimately resulted in President Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, which allowed the government to deny homosexuals employment. What Cohn neglected to mention was that he himself was gay and would later die of AIDS.

In his tenure in Washington, Cohn followed a vigorous program of actions designed to disassemble the Bill of Rights. For example, when Cohn wasn’t hunting witches he was traveling around the world visiting the libraries operated by the U.S. Information Agency and burning books with which he disagreed. He also delighted in exposing the homosexual backgrounds of of the American Foreign Service he felt might have slighted him.

After McCarthy’s fall, Cohn left Washington and moved to New York where he quickly became a world-class political fixer. In his law career in New York, Cohn was a walking ment of every form of graft. He was the attorney (and silent partner) in Studio 54, described as “perhaps the most glamorous fashion setting nightclub to popularize drug use among white-collar people. Cocaine was its mother’s milk.” (See Von Hoffman’s Citizen Cohn.) Donald Trump became a “regular” of Cohn’s at Studio 54 and was known to have attended at least one of Cohn’s wilder parties held in the relative privacy of the club’s basement.

At the time they met (about 1970) Cohn was under indictment in both Chicago (for banking irregularities) and in New York (for bribery and conspiracy). He ended up beating both of those raps.

Shortly after Donald met Cohn, the Justice Department filed a civil rights suit under the Fair Housing Act of 1969 charging Trump-owned projects with racial and sexual discrimination in the renting of their apartments. Trump wasn’t being singled out for this housing discrimination scrutiny. Other developers (Such as Sam LeFrak) faced similar charges. But the Trump’s civil rights violations were among the most blatant and the best documented. As confirmed by four superintendents or rental agents working for Trump, all rental applications were coded according to race and doormen were told to discourage applications from blacks by telling them there were no vacancies. Although Donald was in charge of all the company’s rental activities according to the application for a real estate license he made the same year, one of his staff testified that the discriminatory policy originated from the top of the Trump Organization; from Donald’s father, Fred. In other words, the suit came from Donald’s execution of father Fred’s policies. (See section on Fred Trump regarding his KKK ties.)

The Justice Department was not looking for a fight. They were quite willing to resolve these cases quickly and easily such as was done with Sam LeFrak who only had to agree to mend his ways. Not so with the Trumps. In Roy Cohn they

had found a new soul brother whose policy was never to it wrongdoing but fight back instead. In collaboration with their new lawyer, Cohn, the Trumps counter-sued the Justice Department for $100 million dollars claiming they (the Trumps) were the actual victim. One month later the Judge called it “a waste of time and paper” and threw it out. The effect of the counter suit was to delay the Justice Department’s resolution of the matter, but after 1 1/2 years the Trumps agreed to a settlement. By the decree issued by the court, the Trumps were required to in minority papers, promote minority employees, and provide the Urban League with preferential vacancy listings. The Justice Department called the agreement “one of the most far reaching ever negotiated.” Cohn derided it as “a spit in the ocean.” Cohn and the Trumps called it a win for them and after that Cohn became a second father to Donald.

The nature of many of Cohn’s legal services to Trump is reflected in this excerpt from a 1980 article in the Village Voice by Wayne Barrett, writing about a politician named Ted Teah’s ing Cohn’s law firm. Teah left public service and ed Cohn just a few months after helping gain approval by the City Planning Commission for a controversial Trump plan to demolish the Bonwit Teller building and replace it with a 58-story apartment complex.

“Teah becomes the second in-house Bronx potentate, ing Bronx county leader Stanley Friedman, who became a Cohn partner immediately after he closed up shop as Abe Beame’s deputy mayor at the end of 1977. “

Barrett goes on to explain how Friedman, in the final days of the Beame istration, pushed through a $160 million dollar, 40-year tax abatement on the Commodore Hotel. D/Mayor Friedman, already promised a position in Cohn’s law firm, was working on behalf of Cohn’s favored client Trump while still holding public office. Teah was just following in Friedman’s footsteps.

The book Citizen Cohn documents a slew of colorful incidents where Cohn took money to bribe city officials and violated attorney-client privilege to forward his

own interests.

One of the best is the New York parking garage scam through which he skimmed thousands of dollars of cash every week from a half dozen corruptly managed city parking lots.

Cohn once sat a senile and nearly comatose millionaire up in bed, put a pen in his palsied hand and urged him to sign legal papers. (This was one of the incidents that ultimately lead to his disbarment.)

Cohn insisted all his business be done in cash. He never paid a cent to the IRS and died with a $7 million dollar tax debt.

In his biography Cohn bragged about his role in assisting the Mafia in campaigns against crime-fighting Senator Thomas Eagleton and others. He also voiced pride about secret conferences with judges ruling on cases he had before their courts and the influence he was able to bring to bear on those cases. “Don’t tell me what the law is,” he used to say, “just tell me who the judge is.”

The most egregious of his faults was his connection to organized crime in New York.

Cohn was a favorite criminal defense lawyer for indicted mobsters. The list (undoubtedly incomplete) of notorious underworld clients represented by Cohn includes:

Arthur Valentine (convicted of bribing the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey); Frank Cocchiaro, subordinate of Sam (The Plumber) de Cavalcante, head of the New Jersey Cavalcante crime family & member of the Commission. Cavalcante spent his life involved in gambling, extortion, murder, and racketeering until found guilty in Federal Court of running a $20 million per year illegal gambling operation plus controlling 90% of the porn bookstores in New York City. Carmine Galante, once hit-man for Vito Genovese of the Luciano Crime family, later going on to become head of the Bonnano Crime family. Galante was thought by the NY Police to be involved in over 80 murders including that of the New York Chief of Police and had taken over most of the illegal narcotics trade in NYC. Cohn negotiated a reduced prison sentence for Galante after the mobster was convicted of loansharking and extortion. Genovese crime family captain “Fish” Cafaro provided the $175,000 required by Cohn, and Cohn personally took care of the payoffs. The reduced sentence didn’t help Galante much. Shortly after being released from prison he was assassinated after finishing his lunch at a Brooklyn Italian restaurant. Fat Tony Salerno became the second in command of the Genovese Crime family. Salerno ran the largest numbers racket in New York, grossing $50 million a year. Cohn once got a Salerno sentence on a felony conviction reduced to 6 months by having Fat Tony appear in the courtroom in a wheel chair to persuade the Judge that his client was a very sick man. As to Salerno’s gambling and tax evasion charges, Cohn explained “My client isn’t a mobster; he’s just a sports gambler.” Nicholas Rattenni, alleged Mafia executive of Westchester County; Thomas and Joseph Gambino, sons of Carlo Gambino, Head of the Gambino Crime Family. John Joseph Gotti, Jr. who became head of the Gambino Crime family by having his boss Paul Castellano and his underboss, killed. Robert Hopkins, a Lucchese crime family associate was arrested in his Trump Tower suite for ordering a mob murder of a gambling competitor. While the murder charge was dropped, Hopkins was convicted of running one of New York’s biggest illegal gambling operations—taking in 500 thousand dollars a week. He was controlling an enterprise with as many as 100 locations around the city.

Joe Weichselbaum, Trump’s helicopter pilot and convicted cocaine smuggler “Joe Beck” DePalermo, Weichselbaum’s drug connection and a leading member of the Lucchese Crime family. He was considered by New York law enforcement to be the “dean of the dope dealers.”

Federal Strike Force sources reported that when, in the 1970s, wiretapping became a problem for violent organized criminals, Mafia commission used Cohn’s offices to meet, since discussions held on their lawyer’s premises were considered privileged communications, not issible as evidence. Cohn also reportedly hosted gatherings of the Mafia commission itself—which included the heads of the five New York crime families—-at his town house on 64th Street.

How close was Donald to Roy Cohn? Cohn, long Trump’s principal lawyer, told one reporter that Donald called him “fifteen or twenty times a day, always asking what’s the status of this, what’s the status of that?”⁷

In 1985 a five-judge of the New York State Supreme court ultimately disbarred Cohn for his unethical and unprofessional conduct which included stealing $219,000 from the s of one of his clients and trying to get a comatose and paralyzed millionaire (the liquor magnate Lewis Rosenstiel) to sign some legal papers by propping him up and putting a pen in his hand. The hand wouldn’t move, but when Rosenstiel died 6 weeks later, Cohn filed the famous document decorated with some markings that he swore were Rosenstiel’s signature. The document surrendered control of Rosenstiel’s substantial fortune to Cohn. Cohn’s deception was revealed when the hospital medical personnel testified to Rosenstiel’s comatose state.

Trump appeared as a character witness before the ethics that disbarred Cohn. Trump testified that Cohn was a “fine fellow.”

On March 1, 1986, with Cohn very ill and fading fast, Donald threw a goodbye party in his honor at Trump’s place in Florida. It was a time to say goodbye and to thank Cohn for providing him the s and relations so important to his career.

Five months later, Roy Cohn lay dead of AIDs and Donald attended his funeral.

In Art of the Deal, Trump explains why Cohn was the “right man” to handle his cases. “He was a great lawyer…. when he was prepared he was almost unbeatable… Whatever else you could say about Roy, he was very tough…next to loyalty, toughness was the most important thing in the world to him…And I’m not embarrassed to say that I was one of his friends.”

the saying in the bible about being like those you associate with?

Roger Stone

Roger Stone is a self-styled “GOP Hitman” who has been instrumental in some of the most nefarious political scandals of our generation. He’s been a Trump friend for almost 30 years, senior political advisor for half that time, and continues to be Trump’s most ionate er in the press.

Seen here at a “Pride” parade being licked by kinky fitness model Kat ForTra, Stone got his start as a protégé of Roy Cohn. (See previous section.)

Stone’s political career began in earnest while working on Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, where he obtained some notoriety by discrediting a potential Nixon rival by contributing money to the rival’s campaign in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance and then slipping the receipt to a newspaper. When Nixon won the election of 1972, Stone got a job in his istration. Stone was a member of Nixon’s “Committee to Re-elect the President,” the fundraising organization that engaged in money laundering, and planned and executed the infamous Watergate break-in. This ultimately cost Richard Nixon the White House and at the same time cost Stone his own job.

After the various statutes of limitation had expired, Stone reportedly itted to buying the success of the 1980 presidential election for Ronald Reagan. Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter and in order to win the election he needed to win in New York. That was considered unlikely for a Republican unless some way could be found to split the Democratic voters. Stone’s mentor, Roy Cohn, came up with the idea to run John Anderson as the Liberal Party nominee to split the votes in New York, and Cohn found people that could to arrange it for only $125,000. Cohn arranged the funds, and Stone allegedly made the payoff. Result? Reagan’s win in New York enabled him to win the presidency.

Stone was also there leading the “Brooks Brothers Riot” when hundreds of paid Republican operatives descended on Florida to protest the State’s recounting of contested votes in the presidential election of 2000. The demonstration outside the office of the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections turned violent when several people were trampled, punched and kicked by Republican demonstrators rushing to get inside the office. Stone was reportedly outside in a van directing the activity by radio. Although Sheriff’s deputies restored order, the canvassing board voted unanimously to stop the recount. Some say that action (and others) resulted in Bush stealing the election for the Republicans. What is certain is that

several of the demonstrators, including Stone, were identified as Republican staffers who later went on to jobs in the Bush istration.

Stone chose the “Gaming Industry” as his reward. Within days of Bush’s election Stone was invited to serve on the Department of the Interior transitionworking group to, in his own words, staff up the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The Village Voice reported that Stone used that position to market himself to tribes and developers from Louisiana to California, earning fat fees and contingent percentages of future casino revenue. Two of the five deals investigated by the Village Voice were at that time projected to pay him at least $8 million and perhaps as much as $13 million.

In January 2008, Stone founded Citizens United Not Timid, an anti-Hillary Clinton group with an intentionally obscene acronym.

In 2010, in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Democrats in the NY gubernatorial election, Stone ran the election campaign of convicted felon Kristin Davis, known as the “Manhattan Madam” and boss of a high-end prostitution ring in New York City. Stone, as campaign manager, made legalization of prostitution one of the central planks of the Davis campaign.

Also in 2010, Stone’s partner in a 2-person consulting firm (RRA Consulting LLC), Fort Lauderdale lawyer Scot Rothstein, pled guilty to stealing $1.2 billion and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Stone denied any involvement. “Stone is the guy that no one wants to it to using,” Rothstein later said to the Broward Palm Beach New Times. “Roger is a guy we keep locked up in his office, and I’ll shove food under the door every now and then to feed him. But when something happens and someone needs help, we’ll open the door. You let him out and let him do what he does.”

Rothstein subsequently became a Federal informant and helped the FBI nab some of his mob associates.

As mentioned, Stone has been a friend and advisor of Donald Trump for 30 years. When Trump owned Atlantic City casinos Stone successfully ran the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign of Republican Thomas Kean and then acted as unofficial advisor to the newly elected governor, while served as Trump’s lobbyist in Washington.

Stone encouraged Trump to run for President in both the elections of 2012 and 2016. He was Trump’s senior political advisor until leaving Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2015, some said due a falling out, but others, so he could start a Super PAC to forward Trump’s campaign. Stone did start that Super PAC, called Committee to Restore America’s Greatness, and he remains Trump’s most ionate advocate in the press.

As part of his newfound Super PAC duties Stone quickly released two books. The first, The Clintons’ War on Women,” depicts Bill Clinton as a serial rapist and Hillary as an enabler.

The second, released in Feb. 2016 entitled Jeb! and the Bush Crime Family, was an attempt to eliminate Jeb from the Republican primary. In this book Stone suggests that George H.W. Bush was behind the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. In an interview following the book’s release, Stone said that the attempt on Reagan’s life was “very much like the Kennedy assassination… Never underestimate the Bush family’s capacity for evil at the time they continue to wrap themselves in the idea that they have integrity. Whether it is Prescott Bush, the Patriarch US Senator of Connecticut, George H.W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, Marvin Bush, these people would steal a hot stove.”

In the same interview Stone clarified his views on respect: “My parents taught me and taught me. They taught me and I was growing up with the idea that you treated everybody fairly. Pauper or billionaire. You treated everybody with respect. I would never abuse a doorman, a waiter, a waitress, a flight attendant….” That was the same week he was banned from the CNN network for sexist and racist remarks.

Stone has announced he’s trying to organize protests at the Republican convention in Cleveland this summer (2016) to disrupt any effort by the party to “steal” the nomination from Mr. Trump if he does not get the nomination. ⁸

Which suggests the “spontaneous riots” promised by Trump won’t be all that spontaneous.

What does such a person as Roger Stone bring to a campaign?

John Staluppi

John Staluppi was another felon with whom Trump was friendly. Staluppi was a member of the Colombo Crime family at the time he owned a helicopter service that Trump employed to ferry high rollers to Trump’s Atlantic City casinos. By the time Staluppi went into business with Trump, he had been the subject of several law enforcement investigations, including an undercover operation run by Long Island prosecutors probing his ties to the leadership of the Colombo crime family. That investigation documented meetings and social s with Carmine “The Snake” Persico, head of the Columbo crime family.

Per court documents Staluppi’s helicopters were sometimes used for Mob business.

Per other court docs Trump’s Casinos advanced Staluppi $750,000 in credit at his three Atlantic City casinos plus gave him $199,000 in complementary services between 1986 and 1993.

Bill Bastone of The Smoking Gun, discovered that another one of Staluppi’s enterprises was Dillinger Coach Works, the company that built the Trump Golden Series Limos and Trump Executive Series Limos. Dillinger Coach Works, named after the 1920s gangster of the same name, was a New York firm run by partners John Staluppi and Jack Schwartz. The men were both convicted felons at the time the Trump Limos were being produced. Staluppi’s rap sheet included an early-70s conviction for stealing auto parts, while in 1976 a federal jury found Schwartz guilty of extortion.

Trump publicly saluted Staluppi when his limos were unveiled at an Atlantic City event, but the two partners (Staluppi and Schwartz) stayed in the wings out of the limelight. They sent an underling up on the stage to appear with Trump and a General Motors representative to accept the praise, calling the underling

‘company president.’ Years later, Staluppi’s partner, Schwartz ed the occasion and itted that the underling “was president in name only.” He was only sent up to represent the company on the stage because of the “unfortunate” criminal entanglements of the company’s principals.

Schwartz was aware of Staluppi’s mob connections, and as for his own, in the book he wrote he referred to the former Colombo crime boss Joseph Profaci as his “replacement father” and called Henry “Chubby” Bono, a Bonnano crime family soldier, a “dear friend” whom he considered part of his family.

Schwartz’s earlier extortion conviction stemmed from his attempt to collect money from a debtor. When his own efforts failed, an incensed Schwartz “ed some friends from my past life with Profaci and asked them to “pay (the debtor) a visit.”

Schwartz assures his readers in his book that he “clearly instructed that no violence was to be used.” Therefore, the victim was only threatened by Schwartz’s friends, before they set fire to his garage and automobile.

Staluppi, per FBI reports, has maintained his ties with numerous of the Colombo crime family and is reported to be himself a “made” member of that family.

His business interests have apparently made him one of the richest organized crime figures in history. One published report estimated his net worth at $400 million including 32 car dealerships, a Colorado ranch valued at 28.95 million, a Palm Beach Garden mansion, a custom built yacht costing tens of millions of dollars and real estate in New York and Florida including at least one strip club.

Besides maintaining his ties to the Colombo Crime family, Staluppi has also maintained his ties to Mr. Trump.

Staluppi’s main residence is just a few minutes north of Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach Estate, Mar-a-Lago, and he has been a visitor at least as recently as November 2009 when Trump and Staluppi appeared together on stage during a James Bond themed charity dinner.

Isn’t it obvious that a president of the United States who maintains connections to such people is potentially compromising not only his own security but that of the country’s as well?

Joseph Weichselbaum

Joseph Weichselbaum is a convicted cocaine dealer whose helicopter company was another that serviced the Trump Atlantic City casinos. Before he began ferrying high rollers to the Trump casinos he’d been twice convicted—of grand larceny in 1965 and embezzlement in 1979. He was also part of a ring that smuggled cocaine and marijuana from Florida to Ohio and Kentucky in 1981 and Federal Authorities eventually indicted him for it. It was thought the man behind him was “Joe Beck” DePalermo, leading member of the Lucchese Crime Family. According to Federal agents, Weichselbaum would purchase kilos of cocaine from two Colombian brothers, Francisco and Walter Ramirez, who were operating out of Miami. Weichselbaum would then supply the cocaine to customers. Investigators developed evidence that aside from the cocaine, Weichselbaum also trafficked thousands of pounds of marihuana, some of which was smuggled into New York.

Weichselbaum was indicted in 1985, pleaded guilty to 2 counts of drug smuggling and was convicted. Before he was barred from Atlantic City for his mob connections he was being paid $2 million a year by Trump for his helicopter services.

In the court proceedings it was revealed that Weichselbaum was himself addicted to cocaine.

Weichselbaum’s organized crime connections were probed by federal and state law enforcement agencies. One convicted marihuana dealer tied Weichselbaum to Daniel “Fat Danny” Laratro, a mob associate who ran a Pompano Beach salvage yard when he wasn’t trafficking large quantities of marihuana. Investigators also learned he was friends with Joseph “Joey Ip” Ippolito, another mafia connected narcotics trafficker.

At Weichselbaum’s sentencing in 1986, Trump provided Weichselbaum a character reference that Weichselbaum presented to the judge. In his letter, Donald Trump praised him as “conscientious, forthright, diligent in his business dealings and a credit to the community.”

At the time he wrote that letter Weichselbaum already had separate convictions for grand theft auto and embezzlement of more than $130,000 from a Brooklyn company.

Prior to entering prison, Weichselbaum rented an apartment that Trump himself personally owned at Trump Plaza on E. 61st Street.

One year later Weichselbaum’s girlfriend purchased apartments 49A and 49B in Trump Tower with $2.35 million she claimed was her own money. Following Weichselbaum’s release from prison he moved into those apartments with his girlfriend. Around that time he told his parole board that he intended to become a “helicopter consultant” to Donald Trump.

Residency in Trump Tower ended in 1994 when a California bank foreclosed on a 1.7 million dollar mortgage issued to his girlfriend.

Salvatore Testa

Salvatore Testa (1956-1984), son of Philadelphia mob boss Philip “Chicken Man” Testa, was nicknamed “The Crowned Prince of the Philadelphia Mob.” After his father’s murder and replacement by Nicky Scarfo, Salvatore served as chief executioner for the Philadelphia crime family and was considered to be a “son” to Scarfo. He was a rising star in the mob until he was murdered on orders from Nicky Scarfo. (See section on Scarfo.)

Testa was involved in drug trafficking, loansharking and extortion, but his strongest suit was murder. He is known to have committed more than 15 murders. His associates claimed, “He didn’t care who he killed.”

In March 1981, when Testa was twenty-five years old, his father Phil, then crime boss of the crime family, was killed by a nail bomb consisting of six sticks of TNT that was remotely detonated as he unlocked the front door of his house. Testa’s father left him an estate valued at $800,000 that included a run-down bar in Ducktown, Atlantic City on a site where Donald Trump decided to build the Trump Plaza at 2500 Boardwalk.

Trump paid Testa $1.1 million — “twice the market value”—for the right to tear the bar down. (See Barrett.)

In April 1984, Testa appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in an article describing him as the “fastest rising star” in the Scarfo organization. Scarfo was apparently jealous and worried that Salvatore was becoming too powerful in the family so ordered his execution.

After several failed attempts, Salvatore was finally cornered and shot in a candy store in south Philadelphia in 1984.

Mayor Michael Matthews

Mayor Michael Matthews became Mayor of Atlantic City at the precise moment Mr. Trump was making his first moves there. Matthews only lasted 21 months before being convicted of bribery and extortion and sentenced to 15 years in jail. The photo shows Matthews, in handcuffs, being escorted out of Federal court. “Greed got the best of me,” he is quoted as saying, on his way to prison for selling his office to the mob. It wasn’t just greed. He had a wife, 6 children and a blond beauty-queen girlfriend half his age to .

Before he became Mayor, he was one of the city’s 5 City Commissioners. And when he announced his intention to run for Mayor, Trump brought him over to his office in New York for a meet and greet. As is described elsewhere Trump allegedly discussed ing cash contributions to the Matthews campaign even though that was illegal owing to Trump’s ongoing casino license application. The contributions were made by one of Trump’s other mob associates, Kenny Shapiro. (See Section on Kenny Shapiro.)

Matthews then became an ardent Trump er; championing his requests for design changes, free air rights over a city street, and other planning concessions for his casino property.

Matthews became Mayor in July 1982, winning by a scant 359 votes. The election was heavily contested for various reasons including evidence that Matthews campaign workers had used mental patients from Ancora State Hospital to cast absentee ballots.

Matthews weathered the legal challenges for 21 months before he was indicted and removed from office. Up until his post removal Kenny Shapiro was a frequent companion meeting him almost every week. Donald Trump and his brother Robert also were frequent visitors discussing with him various problems with the Trump Plaza site. (See Section on Kenny Shapiro.)

In 1983 Matthews had at least one meeting in his office with Kenny Shapiro, Sullivan and the Trumps on the subject of the Trump Plaza’s garage and shortly thereafter (in July) attended a public meeting to champion it against opposition from neighborhood groups.

When Matthews was itted to a N.J. hospital for back problems, he claims that Donald had him moved to a special hospital in New York City where the Trump brothers visited him.

Matthews allegedly turned a blind eye to the actions of his primary ers Scarfo and Phillip “Crazy Phil” Lynette, ing them in shaking down others and concentrating on extorting money from city officials.

In the indictment, released by United States Attorney W. Hunt Dumont, Matthews was accused of having close dealings with “Little Nicky” Scarfo for years, dating to before he was mayor. Scarfo, head of the Philadelphia crime family that controlled organized crime in south Jersey has a section of his own in this book. (See Section on Nicky Scarfo.)

Mayor Matthews was charged with the attempted extortion of $668,000 from two businesses set up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and with taking $14,000 in bribes from an undercover F.B.I. agent posing as a representative of the companies. Matthews pleaded guilty to one count of extortion on November 27, 1984, four weeks after the trial started. He also itted to accepting a $10,000 bribe from an FBI agent posing as a businessman pretending to seek his help in buying a parcel of city-owned land zoned for casinos on favorable , in return for which the government dropped seven other counts of extortion, bribery and conspiracy, and one alleging that Matthews had conspired with organized crime figures to use his office for their benefit in return for campaign financing.)

He was sentenced in 1985 to 15 years in federal prison and was paroled in June 1990.

George H. Ross

Viewers of the Trump TV show “The Apprentice” will recognize George Ross as the grandfatherly Judge with the Brooklyn accent sitting on Mr. Trump’s right hand side offering him information and advice. Mr. Ross is far more than a TV personality. He’s been Trump’s right hand man and #1 confidant for the last 40 years. As Executive Vice President and senior advisor to Donald Trump, Ross has done more major real estate deals with Mr. Trump than anyone else.

Ross helped Donald assemble the original Trump Tower and Grand Hyatt sites.

Ross got his law degree from Brooklyn College in 1953. Immediately upon graduation he went into the litigation department of the Brooklyn real estate law firm Dreyer and Traub. Ross spent over 20 years with Dreyer and Traub, interrupted by a ten-year tenure as General Counsel for the real estate firm Goldman and Dilorenzo.)

When he became General Counsel for Goldman and DiLorenzo the firm owned 18 properties. By the time he left, that number had grown to 720. Ross oversaw all the acquisitions and accompanying legal affairs.

As for Dreyer and Traub, he’d been a Senior Partner for over a decade by the time he left for the second time in 1986.

So what about these firms? Since they were the stomping grounds on which Trump’s executive vice president made his bones, we shall look briefly into their colorfully dark histories.

Goldman and DiLorenzo

Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo grew up poor boys in New York. By the mid 1970s their partnership had made them the largest private landlords in the city. The portrait below is of Sol Goldman.

Sol liked to tell his children he got his start-up money by “going around the neighborhood getting $50 from this one and $50 from that one.”

According to N.Y. District Attorney Frank Hogan in an interview with the Village Voice, the truth was somewhat different. According to Hogan, when he attempted to find out their funding source “They claim they got their start in the real estate business one lucky day when a black domestic named Lulu Jackson walked into their office with $250,000 in cash and asked Goldman and DiLorenzo to invest the money for her. Goldman and Dilorenzo claim they never saw her again.”

Hogan was clear that, “law enforcement investigators think Goldman and DiLorenzo got their money from someplace else.”

According to a Village Voice expose in 1973, Goldman and Dilorenzo owned “355 properties in Manhattan alone, including a dozen pornography bookstores, movie theaters, massage parlors, plus several luxury buildings populated by pimps, (drug) pushers, and prostitutes.” The article went on to repeat the widely held belief that the firm had connections with the Mafia, citing as an example, the fact that they had hired a “labor consulting” company named SGS Associates to forcefully break a strike of employees at the Chrysler Building. The then biggest crime boss in New York, Carlo Gambino, owned SGS Associates.

Another Goldman/DiLorenzo property was suddenly thrust into the limelight when a man named Louis Katz, operator of the mob-controlled gay bar in the building, threw local residents into an uproar by using his political influence through friend Roy Cohn to obtain a cabaret license there.

By 1975 Goldman & DiLorenzo’s real estate holdings extended throughout the United States, but their properties in the New York City borough of Manhattan alone were valued at close to one billion dollars.

Goldman & DiLorenzo were famous for three signature characteristics.

The first, as mentioned above, was that their properties were homes to a large number of mob-connected gay bars, pornographic bookstores, massage parlors, pimps and prostitutes. In those days the mafia controlled New York’s gay bars, porn bookstores and houses of prostitution.

The second was the extreme length to which the firm would go to avoid publicity. In 1971 the internationally acclaimed artist Hans Haacke had an exhibition scheduled at New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Haacke was a bit of a social activist, and amongst the works to be displayed was one of a map of Manhattan showing framed photographs of the facades of each of the Goldman Dilorenzo buildings and naming the 19 dummy corporations operating them. Sol and Alex apparently didn’t like the idea of their sleazy portfolio being so publicly showcased because the Guggenheim’s trustees started receiving threatening calls from an unknown source. Haacke was told he must withdraw that particular piece of art. When he refused, the museum’s Director cancelled the exhibition just weeks before it was due to open. When the museum’s curator, Edward F. Fry, publicly protested this action, he was promptly fired.

The firm’s third characteristic was its penchant for retaining everything it bought. Goldman/DiLorenzo would make acquisitions and then just hold on to them, adding to an ever-growing portfolio of prime New York properties.

Hand and hand with this policy was the dubious reputation Goldman & DiLorenzo garnered as landlords. They were accused of hiring goons to

physically harass tenants, and as mentioned above, enlisted a firm owned by mobster Carlo Gambino to help quash a strike by building employees at the Chrysler Building. In addition Goldman & DiLorenzo were charged with tax delinquencies and serious violations of building codes which in at least one case resulted in fatalities.

One of the most important of their holdings was the Chrysler Building. When it was completed in 1930, the Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the world until the Empire State Building overtook it. Goldman & DiLorenzo purchased it in 1957 for $42 million. Visitors and residents alike had been charmed by the art deco style of the building, at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City for almost half a century. But on September 6, 1975, Alex DiLorenzo, Jr. was not being charmed. Just days earlier, he had defaulted on a note to the holder of a 12.7 million dollar second mortgage on the Chrysler Building. When foreclosure proceedings began earlier that year, DiLorenzo had been too slow to act, and the lender (Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance) wasted no time in foreclosing on the property.

And there, in his office in that same Chrysler building, less than one week after he’d lost it to the bank, Alex suddenly ‘ed away.’

Under what some have called mysterious circumstances, the richest landlord in New York, age 58 and in apparent good health, succumbed to what was reported as “a heart attack.” The obituary said nothing else and Sol Goldman continued his real estate activities without missing a beat with the acquisition of ever more properties. At his death in 1987, Sol’s holdings were valued at $6 billion.

George Ross spent the decade of the ’60s as the firm’s Senior Counsel, and had left before DiLorenzo’s demise.

Dreyer and Traub

“Dreyer and Traub is one of the best real estate firms in the country,” –Donald Trump

The firm of Dreyer and Traub at 16 Court Street in Brooklyn, New York, was the center of real estate in the Borough for decades.

Senior Partner Alfonso Dreyer died before the FHA housing subsidies to its clients rocketed the firm’s sales.

It was his partner, Abe Traub, who made the firm into a powerhouse.

By the middle of 1954 it became clear how he did so. (See Blair: Trumps, p. 183-186)

Republican President (and former General) Dwight D. Eisenhower became furious when he found out that housing developers were skimming off large sums of government money that was supposed to be providing affordable housing to returning veterans. These profits were way in excess of the FHA specified program guidelines and he was certain there must be payoffs involved. Eisenhower’s first action was to fire FHA Commissioner Guy Hollyday. He then called into his office Bill McKenna, a Yale Law School Grad and WW II vet who had previously faced down Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters when he’d worked for the House t Committee on Racketeering. Eisenhower gave McKenna full authority to investigate the situation and get to the bottom of it.

One of the first things McKenna found was the effect of a change in FHA regulations that allowed builders to calculate costs in of housing units instead of rooms. This change allowed Fred Trump (and others) to substantially increase their profit by producing 1-bedroom units and being paid the same as the 3 and 4 bedroom units he’d previously built.

The FHA architects complained that these smaller units weren’t large enough for the veterans’ families, but the complaints were ignored. The builders were delighted to be receiving the maximum estimated cost for 4-bedroom housing while constructing the smaller units much less expensive to build. The builders were not ungrateful—lots of presents were being given to FHA staff. A steady flow of cases of whisky and TVs made their way to FHA offices. FHA underwriters were being paid off.

McKenna found that builders had exceeded the profits permitted by the FHA in over 20% of their veterans’ apartments: a total of $110 million nationwide. Fred Trump alone pocketed over $4 million, one of the biggest individual shares.

McKenna focused on New York’s FHA Commissioner Tom Grace because he’d approved more Veteran’s loans than any other state commissioner. That led to his discovery of the law firm of Grace & Grace, Grace’s firm then being run by Tom’s brother, George. Grace & Grace had handled more FHA projects and more mortgages than any other firm in the country. And coincidentally, the firm also represented Fred Trump for his FHA work.

In an audit of Grace and Grace, McKenna found fees that had not been recorded, missing checks, checks made out “to cash” none of which George Grace could for. Tom Grace was forced to resign from the FHA in 1952 to avoid conflict of interest charges.

But McKenna wasn’t content with Grace’s resignation. Smelling there was more to this, he subpoenaed the books of Dreyer and Traub. After months of stalling Abe Traub finally turned them over and McKenna found that Abe was closer to Clyde Powell, the former FHA Commissioner in charge of rental housing, than any other lawyer in the country. Abe Traub and Powell talked on the phone at least once a week on FHA matters & visited each other often. The books showed

over $1 million in uned-for disbursements and more than a few blank check stubs. Traub was convicted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for contempt in refusing to supply receipts, bills or other means of documenting those disbursements. ¹

Although Traub never ed for that money, McKenna maintained that the money was used to pay off Clyde Powell, who turned out to be a convicted jewel thief, guilty of check fraud embezzlement, plus a habitual gambler. Year’s later, Murray Felton, one of Traub’s then partners, recalled that Powell was indeed one of Traub’s major sources of projects. As to illegal kickbacks, Felton itted: “There’s no doubt in my mind that plenty of money was exchanged there.” Fred Trump’s architect, Philip Birnbaum unequivocally confirmed: “Powell was on the taking side.”

Because of his direct and close relationships with many of the crooked players (Tommy Grace, Abe Traub, and Clyde Powell) McKenna put Fred Trump high on the list of his targets. McKenna charged that Powell had showered Fred Trump with personal attention and approval on Trump’s projects including giving him special permission to start his Beach Haven Project before the loans to finance it were closed. This meant he could complete construction 6 months before the first loan payments were due and pocket a cool $1.7 million dollars in rent that he collected in the interim period rents.

From 1966 to 1986 George Ross was senior partner at Dreyer and Traub, during which time the firm was also found guilty of securities fraud.

In 1995, Dreyer and Traub closed its doors. Their attorneys scattered to the four winds, finding other jobs in firms specializing in real estate, finance, or bankruptcies.

Curiously, most of them don’t include their time with Abe Traub on their resumes.

Don King

Don King, the notorious boxing promoter is no advisor to Trump, but Trump worked closely with him when he brought boxing to Trump’s Atlantic City casinos. Trump features this image of King and himself at the beginning of each episode of The Apprentice TV series. King has publicly endorsed Mr. Trump for president.

King has also been linked to Mafia Boss John Gotti and Matthew (Matty the Horse) Ianniello.

King’s connection to the Cleveland mob began when he was a numbers baron there according to former FBI agent and later NY Inspector General Joseph Spinelli. In his book on King, Emmy Award winning journalist and investigative reporter Jack Newfield traces the boxing promoter’s history from his early career running his illegal numbers racket in Cleveland, where he was known as “Donald the Kid.” Newfield relates the of King, at 23 years old, beating and stomping to death a friend of his named Sam Garrett who owed him $600 on a wager. Fifteen civilians and two policemen witnessed the crime. King was arrested at the scene with a fully loaded and uned .357 magnum with Sam Garrett’s blood on it. Witnesses reported seeing King beat Garrett with the gun.

Newfield’s book alleges that King only escaped serious jail time for this crime when several of the 15 witnesses disappeared (prompting others to change their testimony) and money started to be ed out “to make things right.”

Despite the missing witnesses, the case went to trial in 1966. It took the jury only 4 hours to come back with a guilty verdict on a charge of 2nd degree homicide, punishable by life in prison. For reasons known only to him, Judge Hugh Corrigan reduced the charge from 2nd degree Murder to Manslaughter and suspended execution of King’s life sentence pending a motion for a new trial by

King’s attorney. Because of Corrigan’s decision, King would only spend 3 years and 11 months in prison instead of the rest of his life.

It was after King’s release from prison that he began his career as a boxing promoter, parlaying his connection to Mohammad Ali, whom he’d already met, to promote his career. Here is an of King’s first ever fight from Newfield’s book, as ed by Joey Fariello, the trainer of one of the fighters. The fight ended in a split decision.

“King tried to cheat my kid out of his pay, which was only twelve hundred dollars,” Fariello said. “King told me there was a lien against the kid, but I knew that wasn’t true. We eventually got the money, but we had to fight like hell for it. This was Don’s absolutely first boxing show, and he began his career by trying to stiff my black fighter out of twelve hundred dollars on a charity card for a black hospital.”

That wouldn’t be the only time. Per evidence gathered by Newton, by the end of King’s career, he would be sued over 100 times by boxers who claimed he bilked them of their money.

The Encyclopedia of African American History says of King: “King was nearly as famous for his legal troubles as for his boxing promotions, as he was frequently under investigation for crimes ranging from tax evasion and wire fraud to jury tampering to defrauding his fighters of large sums of money.

“Muhammad Ali sued King after a 1980 fight with Larry Holmes, claiming that King owed him $1.2 million.

“That figure pales in comparison with the suit filed by Mike Tyson, who claims that King bilked him out of over $100 million over the course of his career.

“Further clouding King’s image were two incidents (in 1984 and 1998) in which he rewarded juries that found him not guilty in tax evasion and insurance fraud cases, respectfully, with all-expense trips to see fights he had promoted, and a 1992 appearance before a Senate committee during which King took the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when he was asked about his relationship with Mafia boss John Gotti.”

In recent years King settled with Muhammad Ali out of court. Larry Holmes won the lawsuits he brought against King, and Tim Witherspoon received $1 million from King in an out-of-court settlement. Mike Tyson agreed to a $14 million out-of-court settlement, while Terry Norris forced an out-of-court settlement of $7.5 million Two other fighters who claimed they were bilked by King are Lennox Lewis, and Chris Byrd.

In 2005, a case King had brought against ESPN was dismissed on summary judgment. King had objected to an ESPN documentary which reported, among other things, that King had “killed not once, but twice, “ threatened to break Larry Holmes legs, cheated Meldrick Taylor out of $1 million, and then threatened to have Taylor killed.” The Judge ruled: “Nothing in the record shows that ESPN purposefully made false statements about King….”

Perhaps the greatest accolade ever made about Don King, was the one made by the Rev. Al Sharpton: “If he’d been born white, he’d be Donald Trump.”

John Cody

John Cody was the president of Teamsters Local 282, the leading building trades union in New York. His drove the huge concrete mixers that fed the Trump Tower project its daily requirement of concrete. Per Barrett, in the 70’s and 80’s the New York concrete industry (both the unions and the contractors) were dominated by organized crime. Trump Tower became the nation’s tallest reinforced concrete job. It was also one of the most expensive concrete jobs in history, running up a $22 million concrete bill. (See Barrett pp. 193-200.)

It was so unusual for such a structure to be designed totally in concrete that in the fall of 1980, before construction had begun, prosecutors subpoenaed Donald Trump about his choice of building material and possible relationship with union boss John Cody.

Cody, an out-of-the-closet racketeer, had already weathered 8 arrests and 3 convictions. By the time Trump Tower was finished he would be indicted on a new 8-count Federal Racketeering case, charged among other things, with taking $160,000 in kickbacks. His mob connections were so strong that the FBI reported that Carlo Gambino, the most powerful mobster in America, came to Cody’s son’s Long Island wedding in 1973.

FBI agents, investigating Cody, received information that Cody had strongarmed Trump and won a commitment from him for an apartment in Trump Tower in exchange for labor peace during its construction. Because this synched with Cody’s usual modus operendi they asked Trump about it.

Trump denied it, and because all the investigators had was a loose allegation, they abandoned the Trump trail. The Tower went up without problems, with Cody frequently on site.

In a later interview Cody claimed to know Trump quite well. He said that Trump liked to deal with him through their mutual good friend and occasional legal advisor, Roy Cohn.

According to Barrett, Trump was told months in advance that Cody was planning a citywide walkout in 1982 and got Cody’s help in completing the final floors in a rush before the strike. When the rest of the city was closed down due to the 2-month Cody strike on July 1, the finishing concrete work at the Trump Tower was unaffected.

Even after work on the Trump Tower was completed and Cody was convicted of racketeering in late 1982, Trump continued to secure Cody’s cooperation on his new Trump Plaza project on Third Avenue which had just begun.

The question is: Regardless of what Trump told the FBI, did Cody have a special interest in a Trump Tower apartment?

And the answer, as discovered by Wayne Barrett, is apparently yes. (See Barrett)

Even though the Feds failed to find it, six units on two of the top floors of Trump Tower were purchased in the name of a friend of Cody’s named Verina Hixon. By the end of 1982, Hixon, though having no visible income or means of , signed a contract with Donald to purchase 3 of the duplexes at a total cost of around $10 million. Donald signed an unusual agreement with her requiring that he construct her sections of the two floors —right beneath the ones where Trump lived— according to architectural drawings provided by her own architect. When Trump balked at the plans, Cody and Hixon allegedly cornered him in a nearby bar and got his agreement. “Anything for you, John” was

Hixon’s recollection of Trump’s comment. When Hixon’s bank financing fell short by $3 million, Cody spoke directly to Donald and asked him to arrange a mortgage. Trump did, and according to Hixon, she was not even asked by the bank to file a financial statement or fill out any forms.

Cody claimed that he was involved in these apartments from the very beginning and he’d told Trump he was interested in an apartment advising him that Hixon would be calling. According to Cody, he even called Trump once from prison.

Barbara Res, the woman who oversaw the construction of Trump Tower, observed that Donald and his wife (Ivana) were very friendly with Hixon, whom they thought to be Cody’s girlfriend. (See O’Brien TrumpNation.)

By mid 1984, with Cody in jail, Bobby Sasso became the new union president of Local 282. He’d served under Cody for years and his son was the union foreman on Trump Plaza and later Trump jobs. When Trump was threatened with a wildcat strike he phoned Sasso and Sasso took care of it. Sasso’s son later told another developer that Trump had phoned him about that time and asked what he should do “with the Cody apartment.” Sasso claimed that he told Trump to forget it; he wanted nothing to do with the apartments. (Later Sasso denied that Donald had ever spoken to him on this subject.)

Cody later itted he “might have moved” permanently into his apartment in Trump Tower if he’d won his appeal or after he completed his jail time. He did secretly invest $500,000 directly into the apartment improvements. Hixon eventually lost the apartments to the banks when she could not meet the mortgage payments.

Trump didn’t divulge any of this either to the Federal investigators looking into Cody’s operations, nor to the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. Having

this connection would have been grounds to deny him a Casino license.

Cody died in jail in 2001 after serving prison for racketeering and other crimes. And Mr. Trump no longer needs to obtain licenses from the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.

But how many others involved in this story are still alive and might have personal knowledge of its details? Any of them could seek to use that information in an attempt to blackmail or intimidate Mr. Trump.

That is why it is in Mr. Trump’s own best interest to make a clean breast of all such incidents.

Fat Tony Salerno

Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno’s company S&A Concrete provided the concrete for Trump’s New York projects that John Cody’s drivers were hauling to the sites every day. He was also the Boss of the Genovese Crime family. Mr. Salerno died in prison at the age of 80 where he was serving consecutive of 100 years and 70 years relating to two separate Federal racketeering convictions. (See Section on John Cody.)

In 1986, Federal prosecutors identified Mr. Salerno as a senior member of the Mafia Commission, the ruling council of the five principal crime families. As boss of the 200-member Genovese family, his influence ranged from Miami’s waterfront to Cleveland labor unions to New York City’s concrete industry, prosecutors said.

At the same time, Fortune magazine rated him the most powerful and wealthiest gangster in America, citing earnings in the tens of millions from loan sharking, profit skimming at Nevada casinos and charging a “Mafia tax” on New York City construction projects.

When prosecutors charged Mr. Salerno with accepting at least $10 million annually in illegal wages but reporting only $40,000 on his income taxes, Roy M. Cohn, Mr. Salerno’s lawyer, described his client as a “sports gambler.”

Salerno’s forte was rigging construction bids on Manhattan skyscrapers. In his final trial he was found guilty of allocating contracts and obtaining payoffs for constructing the concrete superstructures of 16 Manhattan buildings, one of which was Trump Plaza. He was sentenced to 70 additional years for that conviction.

When Trump was asked about Salerno in a 2015 Interview he itted “S&A Concrete was supposedly associated with the mob.”

What he didn’t mention was that he was sharing a Lawyer with Fat Tony— Trump’s good friend, Roy Cohn, and he would almost certainly have known more about Salerno than he allowed.

An anonymous FBI source reported that Trump and Salerno had at least one sit down together in Cohn’s apartment, and Barrett had at least one eyewitness who confirmed this. But Trump has denied it. (See section on Sammy “The Bull” Gravano.)

Nicky Scarfo

Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo became boss of the Philadelphia crime family in 1981 after the violent murders of the two previous bosses in as many years. His crime family controlled criminal activities in Philadelphia, South Jersey, Delaware, Baltimore and Atlantic City.

Earlier in his career (in the late ’60s) Scarfo had been banished to Atlantic City by mob boss Angelo Bruno for excessive violence, i.e. fatally stabbing a man over an argument about who should sit in a restaurant booth. Scarfo is responsible for the murders of over a dozen men.

Before the casinos came to Atlantic City he ran some relatively small bookmaking and loan shark operations while also engaging in other scams and selling illegal drugs.

With the legalization of gambling in Atlantic City, Scarfo’s fortunes soared. He saw the new money coming into his area and was determined to extract a healthy share of it. Employing a violent management style, his various operations (including a thriving methamphetamine business) brought in several million dollars a month before they began to unravel in 1987.

To exploit the possibilities generated by Atlantic City casino construction in the late 1970s he brought his nephew, Phillip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti into the business to run a construction company he started named Scarf Int. Additionally he started a contracting company called Nat Nat. specializing in concrete reinforcement . These companies procured contracts to work on 6 of the first ten Atlantic City casinos including Harrah’s at Trump Plaza (later renamed Trump Plaza Casino).

Another one of Scarfo’s interests, The Cleveland Wrecking Corporation, did Trump’s demolition work at his Hyatt project in New York City.

Another Scarfo junior associate was Frank Lentino, a supposedly retired Teamsters union boss who was an organizer for Frank Gerace’s Local 54 Hotel Employees and Bartenders International Union. Lentino’s primary responsibility, according to an FBI memo, was “to directly supervise the leadership of a number of labor unions (including Local 54 and several Teamsters locals) for the Scarfo Organization.” The Hotel Employees and Bartenders International Union represented all of Trump’s workers in Atlantic City.

In April 1985 the President’s Commission on Organized Crime charged that the Mafia controlled both the Teamsters and the Bartenders unions.

Scarfo’s Union s also gave him access to Atlantic City mayor Michael Matthews which eventually resulted in the good mayor’s indictment, removal from post and arrest on bribery and corruption charges.”

When Trump came to Atlantic City two sites he chose for building his casinos were both owned by parties with direct links to Scarfo. See sections entitled “Mob Connections to Trump Casinos” and “Danny Sullivan”).

Scarfo is currently serving a 55-year federal prison sentence following his 1988 conviction for involvement in a racketeering conspiracy that included nine slayings. How much of Mr. Trump’s dealings was this mob boss personally acquainted with? How much evidence could he collect from those of his mob underlings outside of prison? It isn’t hard to imagine this murdering, drugpeddling extortionist rubbing his hands together in gleeful anticipation of a Trump Presidency; maybe Little Nicky’s last chance at a ‘get out of jail free’ card.

Vito Pitta

In the mid 80s, when Vito Pitta was International Vice President and Local 6 Officer of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HEREIU) he was cited as an associate of the Colombo family in the President’s Commission on Organized Crime report to President Reagan. At the same time he was indicted for being part of ‘‘a pattern of racketeering activity’’ involving extortion, theft, loan sharking, gambling, bribery and drug trafficking.” Despite the fact that FBI surveillance and phone taps provided compelling evidence against him, his charges were dismissed several years later while 4 other bosses indicted together with him went to prison. Pitta was another mobster who its he was “very friendly” with Roy Cohn.

At the Grand Hyatt groundbreaking event in New York in 1978, Pitta’s Union was picketing the celebration. At the ceremony Trump was introduced to Pitta by his old friend, Governor Carey. It took just a quick word to Pitta promising to cooperate with him and his union for the protesting union to be sent home. In 1985 Trump broke ranks with the New York Hotel Association on the eve of a strike by Pitta’s union by g a side agreement with Pitta. Pitta was so pleased by this that he was overheard on an FBI phone tap calling the Scarfo family mobsters running Local 54 in Atlantic City on Trump’s behalf, telling them that Donald “would be no problem for the local there.” A year later Trump signed his own contract with Local 54 in Atlantic City and was virtually the only casino owner spared a bitter strike.

Pitta is quoted as saying: “They have good relations with him in Atlantic City. As good as we have here.” (See Barrett.)

When Pitta retired from his union job he did so on a pension of $220,000 a year: $119,400 from the New York Hotel Trades Council to which he was named “President Emeritus,” and $101,155 from Local 6.

Kenny Shapiro

Kenny Shapiro, alleged banker for the Scarfo crime family in Atlantic City, sold Trump both the land on which Trump Plaza was constructed and the site for a parking garage. One transaction occurred at the beginning of the ’80s and the other at the end. Shapiro was later identified in law enforcement reports as “the mob’s main dealmaker” in Atlantic City in the eighties. Shapiro’s two-story office building just off the Boardwalk became an oasis for visiting racketeers ing through town. It was fortunate that Shapiro’s name was not mentioned in Trump’s application for a casino license in 1982. Shapiro’s mob associations were so well known to authorities that two weeks after Trump won his license, the state police began a twenty-four hour watch on Shapiro’s Atlantic City Office. Surveillance disclosed that Nicky Scarfo, as well as other mobsters from all across the state, visited him as had Donald and Robert Trump.

Shapiro was indicted for bribing Atlantic City Mayor Michael Matthews. At the same Shapiro was busily funneling Philly mob money into dozens of Atlantic City real estate deals, and was eventually found to be a SON of mob chieftain Nicky Scarfo.

Shapiro, who was convicted of payoffs to Atlantic City Mayor Matthews, served his jail sentence and died in the early 90s.

Did all the details of his relationship with Mr. Trump die with him?

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a former Teamsters Union Business Executive and friend of

Jimmy Hoffa, whose arrest record included impersonating a police officer, larceny, grand larceny, felonious assault, and possession of a dangerous weapon.

He once bragged he belonged to 37 Teamster’s Locals.

Sullivan was a huge guy (6’5”) with an explosive personality. Trump told O’Brien that he’d “heard the rumor” that Sullivan had killed Jimmy Hoffa and that he didn’t want to be friends with him. But Sullivan, with his connections to mob-controlled unions such as the Teamsters, Laborers International, and Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, was a useful person to know. In fact Trump hired him as a “labor consultant” to handle a labor dispute on his Grand Hyatt (NYC 1980) construction site. As expected, Sullivan made the labor problem go away.

According to Tuccille, Trump also utilized Sullivan’s services to negotiate peace with the labor unions after the Grand Hyatt opened. The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump thought enough of Sullivan to introduce him to his personal banker at Chase Manhattan bank.

According to the FBI, Hoffa had told Sullivan that his (Hoffa’s) life was in danger shortly before Hoffa’s disappearance. Curiously, in an apparently unrelated incident Sullivan was also the last person to see a dissident Teamster lawyer named Abraham Bauman alive before HE went missing. Neither of the two bodies was ever found.

According to Barrett “it was Sullivan’s relationship with the national president of the Hotel Workers Union—a reputed associate of the Chicago crime family— that helped secure Trump’s first contracts with the union at the Hyatt and later at the Barbizon in New York. These contracts were consciously crafted outside the bounds of the citywide Hotel Association agreement with that union, laying the

foundation for the special relationship that developed over the years between Trump and the union in New York and Atlantic City.”

Trump’s most important connection to Sullivan however was the result of the partnership Sullivan had put together with Kenny Shapiro, banker for the Scarfo Crime family. The partnership owned land on the Boardwalk that interested Trump and he leased it from them for 99 years.

After the CCC licensed Trump in 1982, they required him to buy out Shapiro and Sullivan and end the partnership due to concerns about the two men’s backgrounds. Trump and Sullivan both told the CCC that they’d never met before negotiations for the Holiday Inn parcel.

Trump apparently forgot to mention to the CCC anything about Sullivan’s earlier work as “labor consultant”. And Sullivan, after the hearing, was heard to refer to Trump as “an old friend from New York.” “It’s nice to be friends with a millionaire,” he added. (See O’Brien.)

Sullivan was an unindicted co-conspirator in the bribery case against Atlantic City’s Mayor Michael Matthews. He’d avoided saying anything incriminating within range of the FBI microphones. Sullivan was persuaded to testify in front of the Grand Jury in exchange for amnesty—his partner Shapiro who made the actual payoffs went to jail. How many secret details of Shapiro and Sullivan’s dealings with Mr. Trump are sitting there just waiting to be dusted off for use in blackmail or coercion?

Felix Sater

Trump on the left and Felix Sater on the right. Business card at top was provided to Sater by the Trump Organization in 2010.

Felix Sater (aka Felix Satter) was born in Russia in 1966. Several sources allege his father was a Russian mob boss. When Sater was 8 the family emigrated to the USA.

By the time he was 24; Sater was a successful Wall Street broker. But it wasn’t to last. By 1993 Sater was in prison, the result of a violent bar fight with a fellow stockbroker. According to the trial transcript, Mr. Sater grabbed a large margarita glass, smashed it on the bar and plunged the stem into the right side of the broker’s face. The man suffered nerve damage and required 110 stitches to close the laceration on his face.

In 1996, out on the streets after serving his time, he was again in trouble with the law. According to the New York Times, a storage locker rented by Sater in lower Manhattan fell behind in its rent. When opened by its manager a gym bag was found containing a treasure trove of documents detailing a money laundering scheme, mafia connections and a list of Sater’s offshore bank s. Also stuffed inside the bag were two pistols and a shotgun. At the time investigators made these discoveries Sater is alleged to have been back in mother Russia wheeling and dealing with his connections there.

The discovery sparked a two-year FBI investigation that uncovered a $40 million stock scam and resulted in indictments against Sater plus 19 stockbrokers and mafia connections on charges of money laundering and stock fraud. The indictments asserted that Mr. Sater helped create fraudulent stock brokerages that were used to defraud investors and launder money.

Federal authorities alleged Sater’s scheme relied on of several mafia families to commit extortion and “resolve disputes.” According to the Washington Post, Federal authorities called this scheme “a concerted effort by organized crime to make inroads on Wall Street.”

Federal indictments issued in 1998 and 2000 named Sater as a key figure in this operation. Eventually all 19 involved were found guilty, and of those, 6 had direct ties to the Mafia. Sater pleaded guilty to racketeering in the 1998 indictment, but got himself off the hook by deciding to cooperate with the authorities. In return for getting some of his Mafia buddies put into jail, Sater got a reduced sentence plus the Federal Government’s agreement to seal his court records so other information relating to his criminal activities would not be revealed.

Sater’s relationship with Trump began, according to Sater in sworn testimony, when he and his business partner in a company called Bayrock, approached Trump in 2003 with a plan to build Trump Towers across the U.S. and in the Soviet bloc. Sater’s company, Bayrock, had its offices in Trump Tower. Sater proposed that Trump license his name to hotel projects in Florida, Arizona and New York, including Trump SOHO. Trump approved their plan.

Bayrock built the Trump SOHO in New York with Russian money (its own plus that of Tamir Sapir, now deceased, a Russian billionaire with ties to Vladimir Putiin and the KGB.) Trump was given a share in the ownership in return for the use of his name.

According to Sater he’d pop into Trump’s office frequently in the period between 2003 and 2008 to give him updates on his projects. He recalled flying to Colorado with Trump and escorting two of Trump’s children (Donald Jr. and Ivanka) around Moscow in 2006 specifically at Trump’s behest.

Sater’s violent nature manifested itself again in 2006 when Jody Kriss, then a partner in Bayrock, disagreed with a Sater money-laundering plan to evade up to $20 million of tax liabilities. Sater gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse (according to a lawsuit brought against Sater by Kriss): “Either take $500,000, keep quiet, and leave all the rest of your money behind, or make trouble and be killed.” In that same year a project partner named Ernest Mennes discovered some of Sater’s criminal history and announced that he would make the information public. In a lawsuit brought against Sater in 2007 Mr. Mennes recounted Sater’s reaction to the prospect of having his history revealed. Mennes says Sater phoned him in 2006 and threatened that Sater’s cousin “would electrically shock Mr. Mennes’ testicles, cut off Mr. Mennes’ legs, and leave Mr. Mennes dead in the trunk of his car” if Mennes revealed his (Sater’s) criminal past.

In 2007 Sater attended several social events at Trump’s Mar-al-Lago Florida estate and attended a glitzy launch party of the Trump SOHO with Trump, a property Sater had been key in developing. Later that year the New York Times published an expose of Sater’s background. Before then, although many of the facts were already in the public record, Sater’s 1998 and 2000 federal indictments on stock manipulation had been sealed by the government in exchange for Sater’s assistance in helping to put his mafia connections behind bars.

In 2008 Sater publicly left the Bayrock Group as a result of the controversy engendered by the New York Times expose. But according to court documents Sater remained a principle in the company. In 2009 Sater was found guilty on his 2000 stock scam indictment but given a very light sentence on of his assistance in convicting fellow conspirators including 6 connected to the mafia.

Even after Sater’s background had been fully revealed in that New York Times expose, Trump remained in close proximity to him. At the request of Trump’s lawyers Sater testified for Trump in a libel case against journalist Tim O’Brien.

Trump also remained close to Sater’s partner in Bayrock, a Russian (actually Kazakh) businessman named Tevfik Arif. Arif started the Bayrock company in the Soviet Union where he’d worked for 17 years as an official in the Soviet’s Ministry of Commerce and Trade. When Arif arrived in the U.S. with a trainload of cash in the early 2000s, he tapped Slater to help tly develop commercial properties in New York.

Mr. Trump has offered varying s of his relationship with Mr. Arif. In a 2007 deposition in a civil lawsuit, Trump said he didn’t know Felix Sater very well and that Mr. Arif was his primary at Bayrock. In a 2011 deposition for a different lawsuit, Trump said he didn’t know Mr. Arif very well.

Arif was arrested in Turkey in 2010 for his alleged role in running an international prostitution ring and pimping out Eastern European models for decadent sex parties aboard a Turkish yacht. The arrest was the result of a 9month investigation and followed a helicopter raid on the luxury yacht Savarona, moored off the coast of Turkey. During the raid authorities rounded up ten Russian and Ukrainian models and a number of Russian, Kyrgyz and Kazakh businessmen and high-level government officials who were allegedly shelling out between $3,000 and $10,000 apiece for the trysts. The Turkish military policeman who led the helicopter raid reported that when the team landed on the yacht around lunchtime they found all the yacht’s guests in bed. The official, who declined to be identified according to the newspaper, said they found dozens of condoms in each room. Turkish prosecutors charged Arif and five others with organizing a criminal gang, prostitution and human trafficking, according to media reports. Arif claimed he was just throwing a party for some friends and was acquitted in 2011 allegedly because his arrest was made based on information acquired from illegal phone taps. The women were all deported back to their home countries.

In the same year of Arif’s cruise party, Sater was in trouble again. A former Bayrock business partner, Jody Kriss, filed a lawsuit against Bayrock making wide-reaching allegations of conspiracy and fraud and incidentally revealing

more of Sater’s criminal history. Sater has worked continuously, up to 2016, to prevent this information from being released, but in February 2016, Judge Lorna Schofield, United States District Judge of the Southern District of New York, ruled that this information would no longer remain sealed and cleared the way for all the data to be heard in open court.

Ironically, Sater himself had already unsealed most of the information by including it in filings he submitted to an Israeli court that made it a matter of public record.

The Kriss complaint states that, “ Bayrock does not conduct legitimate real estate business, but for most of its existence it was substantially and covertly mob-owned.” The complaint also alleges “Arif made Sater Bayrock’s covert majority owner and co-control person even while Sater was awaiting sentencing on his prior Federal racketeering conviction.” It further alleges that Arif and Sater arranged for up to $250 million of Bayrock’s profits in the Trump SOHO project “to be laundered, untaxed, through a sham Delaware entity to Iceland (and reportedly then Russia) intending to evade up to $100 million dollars of U.S. taxation.” The complaint goes on for 163 pages and includes the revelations that Sater secretly owns 63% of the entire Bayrock organization. On page 140 of the complaint Kriss alleges that Arif and Sater both told him that the money behind the Bayrock Company was mostly Russians in favor with Putin.

Mafia ties notwithstanding, Trump took Sater back in 2010, providing him with an office at Trump Tower, a Trump email address and the Trump business card shown above declaring him “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.” Sater continued looking for more deals for Trump.

In sworn testimony given in 2013 Trump says he wouldn’t recognize Sater if he were sitting in the same room. In a 2014 interview with BBC news, when the subject of his relationship to Sater was brought up, Trump abruptly ended the interview and walked out.

In 2015, an ABC News investigation suggested Trump may have lied under oath about his relationship with Sater.

In 2016 Sater donated the maximum allowable contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign and tweeted that Trump “will make the greatest president of our century.” According to Politico Magazine, Sater itted visiting Trump Tower in July 2016. When asked about the purpose of his visit Sater termed it: “confidential.”

If Trump will not come clean on issues like this, shouldn’t the FBI be investigating them?”

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano

What does Trump owe to the New York mob?

In the 1970s and 80s, when Trump was building in New York, one of the most prominent examples of mob influence was the concrete industry racket. This is mentioned elsewhere in this book, but it should be noted that this business was so vast that it was shared by the four most influential New York mafia families.

The mafia took control of the Concrete Workers Union in 1981, at the beginning of a building boom in New York. At the same time it formed six concrete contracting firms to guarantee rigged bids. These six companies were the only ones allowed to bid in projects larger than two million dollars and all projects

exceeding five million dollars were given directly to the mob. The mob exacted a 2% tax on every contract plus two dollars for every cubic yard of concrete poured.

The top-tier mob company was S & A Concrete Co., owned and controlled by the Genovese and Gambino Crime families. Its principals were Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno (boss of the Genovese Crime family) and Paul Castellano (boss of the Gambino crime family).

Also directly involved with these projects was Vincent DiNapoli, a Captain in the Genovese Family and Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, underboss of the Gambino Crime family, famous for committing at least 19 murders plus bringing down his boss, John Gotti.

Trump Tower, the largest concrete project in history obtained its concrete from S & A Concrete. Trump chose to build Trump Tower totally out of concrete instead of the more usual and cheaper steel structure. This decision created a huge cash cow for the mob and was so unusual that it prompted an investigation into it from the FBI. Trump has never explained why he chose to eschew the traditional steel construction.

Several years after Trump Tower was built, a t action by the FBI and the State Organized Crime Task Force and the NY Police Department found that the hierarchy of four Mafia families split profits of over eight million dollars from their “concrete club.” Salerno and DiNapoli were tried and convicted.

Besides the Trump Tower, listed among the racketeering acts for which Salerno and DiNapoli were convicted was a $7.8 million concrete subcontract awarded to S&A Concrete Co. in the construction of the Trump Plaza luxury apartments on East 61st Street built by HRH Construction Company.

The president of the HRH Construction Company , Irving Fischer, was one of the builders with the courage to stand up to the mob. He testified at trial that when he was building Trump Tower “a bunch of labor goons once stormed into our office and held the switchboard operator at knife-point” while demanding no-show jobs.

Trump repeatedly denied any ties to the Mafia and did not testify against them in Salerno and DiNapoli’s trial.

But Wayne Barrett reports that he had eyewitnesses to a Trump meeting with Tony Salerno in the offices of the attorney they shared (Roy Cohn).

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano had another story about Trump’s relations with the mob. When interviewed by ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, Gravano said: “I literally marvel at the sight of Manhattan…because I controlled it. Literally controlled Manhattan…I marvel…when I see the lights and everything about it. Donald Trump… couldn’t have built a building if I didn’t want him to build it.”

Where was Donald Trump during the FBI’s investigation? Why didn’t he stand up to the mob when he had the chance?

Why has he still not, after 30 years, itted to helping another convicted mafia associate, John Cody, obtain an apartment in Trump Tower? Did he grant the apartment out of friendship, or was he being pressured by the mob?

Either way, where was Trump’s legendary strength when it mattered?

Robert Libutti

Mr. Trump’s common reder to close questioning about his Mob connections is, “I don’t .” So it was with regard to mobster Fat Tony Salerno, drug dealer Joseph Weichselbaum, fraudster Felix Sater, and again with Robert Libutti.

Libutti liked to gamble in Trump’s Atlantic City casinos. He was one of thirtythree million Atlantic City casino patrons, and you couldn’t expect anyone, even Mr. Trump, to be able to them all. But Libutti was not so much like the others. He was Trump’s very best customer. Libutti was the biggest loser of all of them. Between 1984 and 1990 he gambled over twenty million dollars in Atlantic City casinos; losing over twelve million dollars, most all of it in Trump casinos. During that period Trump’s casinos awarded him complimentaries of $3.5 million including 9 luxury cars. Trump also flew him back and forth to Atlantic City on his private helicopter and even had him aboard his private yacht. Trump threw a gala birthday party for Libutti’s attractive 35-year old daughter, Edith, at one of his casinos. On one of their helicopter trips Trump agreed to buy one of Libutti’s thoroughbred racehorses and change its name to Trump.

Libutti was a close associate of John Gotti. How close? Close enough to be finally banned from all Atlantic City Casinos in 1990. Among other things, Libutti was caught on an FBI surveillance tape calling Gotti his “boss.”

Trump’s association with Libutti proved to be troublesome. Libutti did not like girls or African Americans in charge of the cards or dice. He also didn’t like to play at tables where there were minorities. If this had been any other customer, Trump might have just shown him the door. But being an associate of the Gambino crime family required a different handling. So whenever Libutti entered one of Trump’s casinos, all the women and African-American employees were made to leave the gaming tables. Nine employees of the Trump Plaza casino objected and filed a complaint with New Jersey regulators. The investigation confirmed the allegations, finding that Libutti on many occasions

at the Trump Plaza, had publicly berated blacks and women with the vilest language, and Trump’s only handling was to order blacks and women to leave the tables.

For violating anti-discrimination laws, Trump’s casino was fined $200,000 by the Casino Control Commission. For reasons explained elsewhere in this book, Trump was never even questioned about this incident by New Jersey casino regulators and was not held personally responsible. But when questioned about Libutti by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter in 1991 Trump said he hardly even knew the foul mouthed mobster and went on to give his stock response: “I have heard he is a high roller, but if he was standing here in front of me, I wouldn’t know what he looked like.”

When Libutti’s daughter heard this, she was quick to respond that Trump, “Was a liar…they knew each other quite well. Of course he knew him.” (The daughter’s s of direct meetings between Libutti and Trump are corroborated in a 1991 book by John R. O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Casino.)

This is just another instance of Trump being unable or unwilling to stand up to any mob pressure and then developing a bad memory to blot out the recollection.

Magnifica Porta

There is a riddle told by old Sicilian grandmothers called “The Magnificent Door”

A white door has three sections. The top section is fully coated with black paint. Thick black stripes are painted across its middle section. Large black spots are sprinkled over its bottom section. At what point is the door no longer white?

Or put another way: You’re a completely untainted guy, with no ties whatsoever to organized crime. One day you adopt a mentor who also is your lawyer with direct connections to the mob. Then you hire a law firm to represent you that has direct connections to the mob. Then for business partners, you choose guys directly connected to the mob. Top that off with a couple of major construction projects where you seem to go out of your way to choose mob-owned or mobconnected contractors. You even appoint a mob-connected lawyer to be CEO of your organization.

At what point can we start calling you “mob connected”?

Integrity trumps all: what Mr. Trump could do about it

You don’t get to run for president of the United States by growing up in a vacuum. So if you’re not being advanced by either of the two major parties or a Casino Mogul or the NRA, then from whence are you springing?

Trump is a third generation real estate tycoon, born into one of the richest families in America. His more immediate forbears, after arriving from , immersed themselves in New York real estate at a time when organized crime was king. Mob influence was similarly rampant in Atlantic City where Trump chose to later foray.

Americans love gifts. Just because a politician takes a gift does not mean he’s necessarily owned by the devil. And just because a developer pays off the mob does not mean he is a Lucifer. A politician who, once elected, will vigorously and honestly serve the common good can be said to be doing his job.

What matters is personal integrity. And Trump has some.

Though surrounded by people who drink, take drugs, and gamble he does not engage in any of those activities. His wives still all seem to love him and his children obviously him. He, in turn, appears to love his children and also loved his parents. But he’s clearly conflicted.

Here is a man who though a teetotaler, produced a brand of vodka using the Trump name to entice people to drink more alcohol. (How would he even know whether the product was any good?) Here is a man that is smart enough to never gamble in a casino, yet is comfortable with bilking billions of dollars off of innocent casino patrons. Here is a guy who could hire anyone, yet surrounds himself with people like the ones described in this book, people who apparently gave up on the idea of integrity long ago.

The Mafia and Casino Cartel differ in one important respect from most other special interest groups: their actions are motivated almost entirely by greed and a criminal mentality. They take and take and take and give nothing back of any value. If even one of the individuals you read about in this book is sharing a

secret with Mr. Trump, the potential for blackmail and extortion exists. But when you consider how many of them there are (not to mention how many additional cohorts there might be who may have first-hand information on some aspect of these deals) the potential for catastrophe is great.

For those who want to safely elect Mr. Trump, this vulnerability must be nullified.

Honestly divulging the full details of these deals is an obvious and easy first step. Anything revealed would be covered by statutes of limitations, and voters would doubtlessly applaud his courage. More importantly, mobsters would be left with nothing to blackmail him about.

Roy Cohn is dead. Wherever he has gone he’s unlikely to mind if Donald were to disavow him. The listed mob connections for the most part are in the past, easy enough to now acknowledge and disavow.

The more vital step would be to renounce his connections with Roger Stone and the Casino Cartel. Hanging around those guys cannot be good for the digestion. But if corporate types with large investment portfolios can put their funds into blind trusts while doing their stint of public service, Mr. Trump should be allowed to do the same with his casino connections. He could agree to cut ties for the duration of his presidency.

Those actions accomplished would be a giant step towards defining Trump’s honesty and courage. It might or might not win him more votes (but it probably would).

What it would certainly do is make him a stronger and more rational president.

4 For instance: Proverbs 13:20 and 1 Corinthians 15:53

5 See Rick Porrello’s americanmafia.com. Porrello is a mafia expert and Police Chief of Lyndhurst, OH, just outside of Youngstown.

6 Reported in the Daily Beast in February 2016.

7 Barrett p. 256

8 Reported by buzzfeed.com

9 A “made man” also referred to as a “wiseguy” is someone who has undergone a Mafia initiation ritual. It is claimed this often includes committing a murder.

10 The conviction was later overturned on a technicality.

5. “Proof” That Mr. Trump Is Not Mobbed Up

Roger Stone (subject of a previous section of this book and head of a Trump Super PAC) has, in his usual fashion, offered some greasily specious “proof” that Mr. Trump is uncontaminated by mob ties. Ignoring the many shady Trump associations catalogued in this and other books, Stone asserts “There’s zero chance he’s mobbed up” because Trump ed background checks by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission when applying for licenses to operate his Atlantic City casinos.

Stone undoubtedly said this with tongue in cheek.

But I’m really glad he did. It gives us a chance to say a little bit about the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.

And there’s SO much that could be said.

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission

“The Casino Control Act was a child of special interests who hope to reap tens of millions of dollars in profits at the expense of our working citizens.” –U.S. Attorney Jonathan Goldstein

Casinos were legalized in New Jersey in 1977. The forces behind the legalization considered it vital to reassure the public that people in the casino industry were honest, of good character, and not tied to the mob. They felt this necessary in order to avoid a public backlash against possible mafia involvement.

It’s easy to understand why they feared such a backlash. Less than 8 years earlier in, 1969, the FBI had indicted 62 people from New Jersey, including the Mayor and three city councilmen from Newark, the public works director, two former corporation counsels, and a sitting judge. The charges centered on extortion, corruption, and mob-connected racketeering. By the time the investigation into New Jersey corruption was complete, a total of ten mayors, a congressman, leaders of both the state Democratic and Republican parties, two secretaries of state, two state treasurers, an assembly speaker, a president of the senate, and two U.S. Senate candidates were convicted. Scores of lesser politicians, bureaucrats, contractors, and bankers were also sent away to prison. In a separate but related indictment the FBI charged Simone “The Plumber” DeCavalcante and 54 others with corruption-related offenses including operating a $20 milliona-year numbers racket. During the investigation the FBI uncovered a graveyard in a South Jersey chicken farm used to deposit victims of Mafia executions. Decavalcante, boss of New Jersey’s only crime family, was convicted of extortion and sentenced to 15 years in prison. (See Demaris p. 40.)

Did the FBI get them all? Not even close. Less than 3 years later (1972) new indictments came down on an Atlantic City former mayor, three city commissioners, the airport supervisor, a public works department aide, and a city purchasing agent. Each of these was charged with 17 counts of extortion and 9 counts of bribery. Evidence was uncovered that showed almost every major business in Atlantic City had been required to give a 10% kickback to these politicians. At the trial, the prosecutor said: “They enforced a total feudal system of corruption upon that society and they acted as lords of corruption.” The former mayor was at the top of the conspiracy. Eventually all were convicted. Sentences varied from 2 years probation to 6 years in jail.

Bad as that sounds, there was something else brewing under the boardwalk that was far more ominous. On Feb. 15, 1970 there was a meeting in Acapulco, Mexico attended by top level mobsters from the US and Canada. It was being officiated by Meyer Lansky, Don of the underworld’s gambling interests, and the man who’d set up casinos in pre-Castro Cuba in the 1950s and in the Bahamas. He was also behind a number of Las Vegas casinos. It was at this meeting that Lansky proposed a campaign to legalize casino gambling in Atlantic City and the methods by which the mob could infiltrate the casinos.

How do we know this? A half dozen government agencies and bureaus (including the FBI and IRS) were monitoring the meeting. Subsequently the chairman of the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation testified before the Senate committee holding hearings on the casino legalization bill that “organized crime figures as far west as Chicago are meeting and arguing over how to whack up casino gambling in Atlantic City.”

That didn’t stop a young, New Jersey assemblyman named Steven Perskie becoming the primary advocate and sponsor for the introduction of casino gambling to Atlantic City. By making the legalization of gambling in Atlantic City his primary agenda, he earned the of Paul “Skinny” D’Amato. D’Amato was the owner of the 500 Club, a front for a mob-operated illegal gambling operation in Atlantic City. To draw gamblers he’d bring in top entertainers to perform. In its heyday, Frank Sinatra did 5 shows for him and never charged a penny. D’Amato worked for the corrupt Atlantic City Treasurer Enoch “Nucky” Johnson and his mob-connected political organization. He was also an associate of Chicago family boss Sam Giancana and New Orleans crime family boss Carlos Marcello. It was into that environment that the Casino Control Act beckoned casinos into Atlantic City.

for legalization came from the Committee to Restore Atlantic City (CRAC) whose most generous er was Resorts International, a hotel operator already scrambling to get Atlantic City’s first casino built in advance of

the age of the new law. Resorts obviously couldn’t hire Assemblyman Perskie directly, so it did the next best thing: hired his Uncle Marvin for $10,000 a month to draft the New Jersey Casino Control Act. ¹¹ When CRAC had accumulated $1 million they also hired a political strategist from San Francisco to come and run the campaign. His message was simple: “A yes vote for casino gaming in Atlantic City will balance taxes, create jobs, boost the economy, and cut down on street crime.” Leaders in minority communities were hired to broadcast the message.

And it worked. In 1976 casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City.

Exactly what role Steve Perskie played in New Jersey casinos can be deduced from the Atlantic City murder of Judge Edwin Helfant in February 1978. Judge Helfant was a municipal judge in Somers Point, New Jersey. Aside from his legal duties he owned a cocktail lounge frequented by Nicky Scarfo, “Crazy Phil” Leonetti and their mob associates and was the mob’s link to the Atlantic City real estate business. Helfant was the king of real estate deals and liquor license transfers. He always knew who was doing what to whom in local politics and the Mob. He was the mob’s “go to” person when legal advice was needed to make them quick profits. But the Judge was in trouble. He’d been under a Federal indictment for years and had exhausted all his legal options. He feared he’d be disbarred, and thus disqualified from practicing law. So he turned informant to the FBI, a dangerous path when you are informing on the Mob. He tried to say nothing about Scarfo and Leonetti, but in the end he said too much and they had him killed.

Within an hour of the murder Helfant’s lawyer, Raymond Brown, arrived at the Helfant home to comfort Helfant’s widow. But when he arrived he was surprised to find Steven Perskie there, “shaking like a leaf.” Writing in the University of California Press, Michael Checchio wrote: “It was a moment of undeniable irony: The politician most responsible for casino gambling was sitting next to the shocked widow of the man many law enforcement officials suspected knew the blueprint for the Mob’s invasion of Atlantic City.”

Perskie’s New Jersey Casino Control Act established The Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) with the stated mission “to ensure the integrity of the casino gaming industry in the State of New Jersey. Its mission was “to protect the public interest by maintaining a legitimate and viable industry, free from the influences of organized crime.” The lawmakers went further. In order to reassure the voters that they “meant business,” the Casino Control Act also established the Casino Control Commission (CCC), an independent, semi-judicial body composed of 3 chosen by the Governor. The CCC would hear appeals from actions taken by the DGE and also approve license applications from casino operators.

The DGE was under the Attorney General, a Governor appointee, but any actions by the Attorney General could be “trumped” by the ‘independent’ CCC, also Governor appointees.

When he signed the Casino Control Act into law, New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne, who had run for office on a platform to legalize gambling in Atlantic City, dramatically stood up, shook his fist and famously yelled at organized crime: “Keep your filthy hands off Atlantic City and keep the hell out of our state!”

Byrne appointed Joseph P. Lordi as the first Chairman of the Casino Control Commission; a surprising appointment in light of the fact that Lordi had failed his background check because of serious questions about his past associations and actions.

A note about Governor Byrne: before running for governor, Byrne had spent ten years (1959-1968) as Essex County Prosecutor, the chief law enforcer over Newark. A former police director from those years described the state of one of Newark’s precincts at the time as the “hellhole of the world. Mob people walk in

and out of there like they own the place. They even use the police telephones. The whole place stinks from top to bottom.”

In the decade he presided over Newark law enforcement, corruption was at an all time high. If indictments and convictions are any measure of a prosecutor’s success at impeding the power and corruption of political bosses or the mob, Byrne must be considered impotent: he hardly indicted or convicted anyone. During those years Byrne’s assistant was none other than his CCC appointee, Lordi. (See Demaris p. 49.)

Shortly after being appointed to the Casino Control Commission, Lordi’s reputation was besmirched by the FBI when Senator Harrison A. Williams Jr. of New Jersey told undercover agents disguised as representatives of potential Arab investors that he could and had influenced Mr. Lordi to aid a casino company. Lordi denied it and refused to step down. Mayor Byrne did not pursue the issue. But later FBI evidence found it likely that Lordi was controlled by Genovese Crime Boss Joe Catena the entire time he served on the Casino Control Commission. (See Demaris.)

The federal indictments and arrests of politicians cited above didn’t appear to slow down the corruption. Just eighteen months after age of the Casino Control Act, Angelo Erichetti (New Jersey State Senator and Mayor of Camden) was caught in a new scandal that led to his indictment and conviction for bribery and conspiracy. This was the result of the same FBI sting operation that implicated Lordi. It was called ABSCAM and it ultimately convicted six of the U.S. House of Representatives (Including New Jersey’s Frank Thompson) and one U.S. Senator (New Jersey’s Harrison A. Williams.) The federal judge who sentenced Erichetti to prison described these New Jersey politicians as “standing in the middle of a cesspool of corruption.”

The Casino Control Commission’s pristine image was further sullied in that investigation. Besides the allegations against Lordi mentioned above, another

one of Governor Byrne’s new commissioners, Ken MacDonald, was also indicted. MacDonald had a long-term cozy relationship with Erichetti. It was Erichetti, as State Senator, who originally proposed McDonald for the commissioner posting. After the appointment, Erichetti introduced McDonald to an undercover FBI agent posing as a Middle Eastern man wanting to buy a casino in Atlantic City. McDonald was on the surveillance video when Erichetti took a briefcase containing $100,000 from the undercover FBI agent and walked out of the room with it. Erichetti was convicted and spent 3 years in jail. McDonald died before his case came to trial.

According to a U.S. Attorney involved in the investigation (Jonathan Goldstein) the Casino Control Act was “a child of special interests who hope to reap tens of millions of dollars in profits at the expense of our working citizens.”

Point by point, the stricter clauses of the Casino Control Act were whittled away or ignored. Not one of the first seven casinos achieved the full license required by the Casino Control Commission before opening. Arguably the biggest win of the Casino Cartel was to do with taxation. Resorts International was paying 22.5 % tax on profits from its casino in the Bahamas. Governor Byrne was asking for 16%. The casino interests ended up having to pay only 8%, with bad debts subtracted from even that. (In other words the citizens of Atlantic City would be subsidizing the casino industry’s overgenerous credit policies including towards criminals.)

It’s been alleged that entrusting the integrity and honesty of casinos to New Jersey politicians was not unlike handing over the safety of a herd of sheep to a wolf pack.

I can’t speak to that, but I can say that over the years there has been more than one event involving the CCC that rather stains its credibility. It started from its very beginning.

Dennis Gomes

Mr. Gomes is mentioned elsewhere in this book, but his story belongs in this section because his is one of the great success stories of the gaming industry.

Gomes got his start in law enforcement. In 1970 Michael O’Callaghan was unexpectedly elected Governor of Nevada. Up until his election the Nevada government had been controlled by the gambling industry. O’Callaghan had not taken any gambling/mob money and he wanted to clean up the industry at least to the degree that the state would be getting its fair share of tax revenues. To accomplish this in the early 1970s he appointed Dennis Gomes (someone previously unconnected to the gaming industry) to the post of Chief of the Audit Division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. His mission was to clean up the mob influence in Las Vegas.

Following this mandate, Gomes went to work and publicly exposed several illegalities and skim operations in Las Vegas casinos including the famous one at the Stardust Casino that become the subject of the movie Casino. Proud of his accomplishments, Gomes continued working hard at his $20,000 a year job until one day he found obstacles being placed in his road by a new istration whose campaigns might just possibly have received from the mob.

In Gomes own words: Suddenly “it was very difficult to get prosecutions of some of these people. I was fighting and fighting and all of a sudden there was a new governor who was “easier” on these things, and a new Chairman who really was pushing us back. I decided I was getting out of Nevada. New Jersey had just authorized a gaming bill and they asked me to come and be their head of Special Investigations Bureau of the Division of Gaming.”

It was 1977 and casinos had just come to New Jersey. The N.J. Casino Control Commission had money to spend and a celebrity like Gomes was deemed perfect to forward the squeaky clean image they were trying to create for their gaming

industry. Robert Martinez, newly appointed director of the DGE went to Las Vegas to hire Gomes at double his current salary, and Gomes wasted no time accepting. On Sept. 27, 1977 he said goodbye to his job in Las Vegas and headed to New Jersey. The CCC told Gomes he would be given a free reign with a special task force. “We were told that we had complete autonomy in our investigatory procedures,” he said.

Unfortunately for Gomes, it didn’t turn out quite as he expected. For one thing his boss, Martinez, turned out to be someone who would sometimes party all night and come into work the following morning looking and smelling like it, plus would reward DGE agents by taking them to Trenton’s red light district and picking up girls.

Gomes would have worse problems. As head of the Special Investigations Bureau one of his first jobs was to conduct an investigation into the license application of Resorts International, the company who’d been most instrumental getting casino gambling legalized in Atlantic City. There was a lot of pressure to get the DGE investigation done quickly. With his usual dogged professionalism, Gomes began looking into a report that Resorts Hotels had been illegally making payments to Bahamian politicians.

When he quietly went down to the Bahamas and raided the Resorts casino there, he found filing cabinets full of evidence suggesting bribes had been paid to the New Jersey officials who ran the referendum that approved casino gambling in New Jersey and were involved in writing the Casino Control Act itself. He found numerous communications between Steven Perskie and his Uncle Marvin (who was, of course on the Resorts payroll) that indicated they’d been in continuous discussions about the casino control business. Other evidence disclosed that Resorts obtained $24 million dollars from sources closely related to the Meyer Lansky gang. The manager of the Resorts Bahamas casino was Eddie Cellini who was banned from entering Great Britain when it was discovered he had worked directly under Meyer Lansky off and on for 30 years.

Those disclosures sealed the fate of Mr. Gomes. His special investigation group was immediately disbanded and he was chained to his desk.

Sometime later, Gomes’ ultimate boss, Attorney General John Degnam, did challenge the Resorts application; citing 17 serious objections including bribing government officials, direct connection to mobsters, and money laundering. Governor Byrne’s CCC ignored them all and unanimously approved the license. Steve Perskie railed against the Attorney General for putting Resorts through such a terrible experience. The prosecutor who had presented the State’s case against granting the license to Resorts put it simply, “It was politically expedient.”

Gomes later changed his tune. He said:

“When I was young I was so idealistic thinking that if you have a job, to clean out organized crime for example, it was simple. You just did your job and everybody’d be happy. But ultimately what I learned was that the people I was chasing weren’t as bad as some of the judges and politicians out there and that nothing was as it seemed. I was thinking about going into the casino business because at least there the common denominator was making a profit. So that’s an easy decision and very clear.”¹² And that is what he did.

After having his wings clipped by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, Gomes went back to Las Vegas where he entered the private sector. His first gig was as Executive Vice President of the Frontier Casino where he increased profits by 400%. Before he was through he had worked as the CEO of 14 casinos across the United States including Trump’s Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Trump paid him $1.2 million for his first year as President of the Taj.

He capped off his career in 2010 with the purchase of the Resorts Casino Hotel

in Atlantic City—the very scene of his thwarted investigation some 20 years earlier.

Gomes cooperated with the FBI in a 1986 investigation and eventual indictment of key of the Chicago Calabrese crime family, called the Family Secrets Operation. Gomes, by then deeply involved in the gambling business in New Jersey, wasn’t involved in the Calabrese sphere. Nevertheless he required as a condition of testifying in 2007, that the FBI formally subpoena him so other mafia types wouldn’t get the idea that he was volunteering for the chance to testify against them.

Dennis Gomes was posthumously inducted into the “Gaming Hall of Fame,” receiving glowing praise from the President of the American Gaming Association: “When Dennis Gomes ed earlier this year, the casino industry lost one of its boldest and most creative owners.”

As regards casino regulation, Steven Perskie fared better. With the Resorts casino up and running and now licensed, Perskie was rewarded with a Judgeship and when Joe Lordi resigned from the Casino Control Commission, Perskie replaced him as chairman.

Gov. Thomas Kean

Gov. Thomas Kean was Governor of New Jersey between 1982 and 1990. It was he and his appointees in the CCC and DGE that made Donald Trump King of Atlantic City.

Donald had two routes to Gov. Kean. His long-term mentor, Roy Cohn, was an early backer of Kean’s gubernatorial campaign and had hosted a fund raising party for Kean attended by Trump. Also key to Trump’s influence in the Kean camp was Roger Stone. Stone managed Kean’s astonishing come-from-behind gubernatorial win in 1981.

Stone used intimidating tactics to get Kean elected. Challenging letters were sent to 45,000 minority citizens and a “Ballot Security Task Force” was established consisting of armed off-duty policemen carrying guns and wearing armbands and hired to patrol polling booths and intimidate voters in minority neighborhoods. The civil lawsuit brought against the Republican National Committee after the election resulted in the RNC promising it would not allow tactics that would intimidate Democratic voters. Stone remained an unofficial advisor to Gov. Kean even after he was retained by the Trump organization in 1984.

By 1986 the CCC was almost entirely filled with Kean appointees. When Trump was attempting to obtain the 1986 renewal of the Trump Marina license he ran into a problem. When he’d purchased Hilton’s Casino (later Trump Castle), he took on the responsibility of contributing $11.7 million to local road improvement. He had no intention of paying this money and tried to deflect the blame to Hilton for not informing him about it. When questioned by the DGE he stated he’d never really known about this, but the DGE found unquestionable evidence to the contrary in Dreyer and Traub papers. Despite having perjured himself at the hearings, DGE and CCC suddenly backed off and gave Trump the license.

Other help Trump received from the Kean istration was the award by state officials of a 25-year lease on the publicly owned marina next to the Trump Castle. At the time he was already in non-compliance with the road improvement contribution mentioned above. In addition, a local group was in competition with him for this lease. This group had the endorsement of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee — a public interest group set up to advise the N.J. Dept. of Environment Protection. When the DEP chose Trump’s bid over the local group’s, they knew the process must have been politically rigged and sued Trump.

Trump settled with them out of court.

CCC’s confusion between ‘oversee’ and ‘overlook’

The CCC gave Donald Trump a preliminary license to operate a casino in Atlantic City in 1982. The DGE’s background check on which the license was based was done so quickly it did not involve even a cursory conversation with Ed Korman, the US Attorney who’d conducted a probe into Trump’s Penn Central project. The subject of the probe was alleged collusion between Trump and David Berger, lawyer for the Penn Central Shareholders. Neither did it consult U.S. Attorney John Martin’s investigation of the Hyatt deal.

Barrett lists various ways that Trump’s answers to questions on the licensing application may have misled DGE investigators such as omitting the earlier racial discrimination charges, and a federal investigation into bribery and corruption at which he’d been subpoenaed to testify. These investigations had all been reported in the press and it is not possible they could have been unknown to either the DGE or CCC. The Casino Control Act requires that licensing applications reveal any such investigation. (See Barrett.)

One of the most serious of these omissions was Trump’s failure to disclose his business dealings with Kenny Shapiro. Trump’s connection to Shapiro and other related mob connections are covered in the sections “Kenny Shapiro,” “Danny Sullivan“ and “Mob connections to Trump Casinos“) When questioned about Shapiro and Sullivan in the 1982 licensing hearings, O’Brien reports in TrumpNation, Trump said, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these people. Many of them have been in Atlantic City for many many years and I think they are well thought of.” After the 2 hour CCC hearing, Trump was given his license. (Hearings usually took five months.)

Shapiro and Sullivan told reporters in separate interviews that Trump met with the two of them in his New York office in 1982 when they were in frequent touch about the Plaza lease and the parking lot site Trump was interested in. They both reported separately that Trump had considered arranging to funnel campaign contributions to Mayor Matthews through NY building subcontractors. When that idea was found to be infeasible, Trump is alleged to have suggested that Shapiro put in $10,000 and that Trump would later repay him. Shapiro allegedly made the contribution but was never repaid. (See Barrett p.235)

According to Federal prosecutors Nicky Scarfo had funneled $150,000 into Matthews election campaign and had Matthews in debt to him even before he was elected.

After the election, Shapiro become the liaison between Scarfo and Matthews and met with Matthews almost every weekend.

Is it surprising, then, when the Trump Plaza air rights issue came before Atlantic City’s 5 city commissioners that year, Matthews immediately championed it though he’d opposed similar proposals in the past?

Another serious omission in his licensing application was Trump’s relationship with John Cody. (See earlier section on John Cody.)

The CCC also apparently ignored Trump’s mob connections when it gave Trump his license to operate the Trump Plaza the week before the casino’s opening in May 1984. According to the New York Times that CCC licensing hearing took only seven minutes.

The following year, in 1985, the CCC caught everyone off-guard by denying Hilton a gaming license. Hilton had a stellar name in hotel management and had overseen construction of an Atlantic City casino-hotel in the Marina District that was nearly complete at the time of the CCC decision. According to Carl Zeitz, one of the commissioners who voted against the Hilton license, Hilton was denied the license “because of an arrogant attitude toward the Commission’s concerns.” The two concerns turned out to be the firm’s employment of a Chicago attorney with alleged links to organized crime and an internal Hilton corporate investigation into alleged misconduct by Hilton executives in San Francisco. Hilton’s Attorney Sidney Korshak was indeed firmly connected to the Chicago mob. Hilton retained him on a $50,000 yearly retainer so he’d be available for “fixing” labor problems in his hotels when necessary. Korshak rarely talked to any Hilton top executives and at that time he had no ties to Atlantic City.

Compare that to Trump’s ties with Roy Cohn. (See Section on Roy Cohn.) Cohn represented so many Mafia types it would be hard to find a cell large enough to contain them all. Cohn even hosted meetings of the “Mafia Commission” at his apartment. And Cohn testified Trump was calling him 15-20 times a day. The ironic thing is that Cohn was even connected to Korshak. It turns out that Korshak was the attorney for Cohn’s questionable parking lot business. (See also Barrett.)

So how did Hilton’s association with Korshak deep-six the Hilton casino

application, while Trump’s association with Roy Cohn caused not even a raised eyebrow?

And besides Cohn, Trump had numerous other mob connections he should have had to worry about, including Kenny Shapiro, John Cody and Danny Sullivan. The CCC was apparently willing to turn a blind eye to all of these, for Mr. Trump’s sake.

At the very moment that Hilton’s license was denied (Feb. 28, 1985) Trump bought the nearly complete casino (together with its already hired and trained employees). Trump’s license was approved and the name of the Hilton property changed to Trump Marina. Shortly thereafter Mayor Matthews was indicted and forced to resign his post. But the CCC continued to play nice with Mr. Trump.

In 1990, Trump was back in poor financial straits; unable to make a loan payment on the Trump Castle Casino in Atlantic City. Appealing to his father, a surreptitious loan was made. Father Fred came to Atlantic City and purchased 700 grey chips, each worth $5,000. Three things made this illegal. First, any such loans to a casino are supposed to be reported in advance. Second, Fred had no intention to gamble with those chips. And finally, Fred had no license as a casino financial source. This came out months later when reported in the New York Times. The DGE then verified it, but it was virtually ignored by the CCC.

Why the Australians rejected a Trump casino bid

A year after Trump received his CCC license, Australian officials, conducting an investigation into Trump’s suitability to operate a casino in Sydney, were given access to FBI surveillance transcripts of conversations between Trump and Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno. The FBI report indicated that Trump met Salerno

through their mutual attorney Roy Cohn.

The phone conversation was enough to convince the Australians to deny Trump’s casino bid.¹³ The same FBI surveillance transcripts would have been available to DGE and CCC.

CCC & Colombian Drug Cartel

Alleged negligence by the CCC extends way beyond the handling of Trump’s license applications. In the 1980’s the Medellín Drug Cartel was Colombia’s largest and most violent producer of cocaine. Farayala Janna (pictured here) controlled the second largest known bank of the cartel. Janna used his base, the Aruba Concorde Casino in the Caribbean, along with others in in Las Vegas and the Bahamas to launder millions of dollars in cocaine money for the Medellin cartel. Casinos liked him to come and gamble because he seemed to be incredibly rich, but was a relatively poor player and could be counted on to lose vast sums without protest.

Janna came to the attention of the Atlantic City Casino Control Commission when the Pratt Hotel Corp, owners of the Atlantic City Sands Casino, won a bid to manage the afore-mentioned Aruba Concorde Casino. Rob Goldstein, head of Pratt’s A.C. Sands Management Team was given the job of handling the Aruba contract. Per New Jersey gaming laws such a venture triggered an immediate investigation to ensure there was no connection to criminal elements. Goldstein told the CCC that they’d found the Aruba Casino in a mess but were sorting it out nicely and would soon have it running “close to New Jersey standards.” The investigators sent down to Aruba by the CCC wrote a glowing report.

Strangely enough, more and more money began to be laundered in Aruba. Under the Sands management, Janna became the Aruba Concorde’s biggest player. The casino extended him $1 million dollars credit at least five times in the summer and fall of 1986. Five months after the Sands started running the Aruba Concorde, Janna flew to Atlantic City where the Sands treated him as a “preferred player.” After losing for a few days at the Sands he went down the street and gambled another week at Caesars.

While this was happening, another scene was playing out. The Venezuelan billionaire owner of the Aruba Concorde casino, a banker named José Joaquín Gonzáles Gorondona, Jr., was being deposed in an alleged wrongful dismissal suit by the lawyer of the ex-manager of the casino, Leon Samburg. Samburg

knew more about Janna and the drug connections than did Gorondona, the owner.

But Gorondona knew enough. The Miami branch of Gorodona’s personally owned bank was also a destination where cartel monies were laundered, and Janna controlled a large bank there for the Colombian cartel.

Cartel monies were wired also from the Aruba Casino to the Sands in Atlantic City, a convenient way to launder them. On January 22, 1987, Janna wired $665 thousand from two Miami banks to another of his s in the Aruba bank. The next day the Aruba Concorde casino wrote Janna four checks that were sent back to Florida and deposited in other s that Janna controlled. What he was doing was creating a paper trail to cover the actual source of those funds. An investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement istration (DEA) the following year disclosed that tens of millions of dollars had been laundered between those different Janna s. The Aruba Concorde, under the management of the Sands Team, was laundering cartel money and sending some of it back directly to the Cartel.

The Colombian national police had identified Janna as a cocaine and marihuana smuggler as early as 1985 and had a large file on him. The US DEA had a file on him too. According to Janna’s attorney, the credit manager from Pratt and also the chief financial officer installed in Aruba by the Sands group both knew that Janna was brokering cocaine dollars. The millions of dollars of payouts he received in January and February of that year were enough to leave no doubt.

Janna’s credit remained good as gold in Aruba even when he was $3 million in debt to a Las Vegas casino. The Sands team even made Janna their “agent” to recruit players from Colombia and to collect their Colombian debts. Around the same time the Sand’s Aruba credit manager paid himself a nice commission.

Gorondona’s investigation into the Aruba Casino disclosed most of the above and resulted in his firing the Sands Group. They sued him for not giving them any advance notice. At those hearings all the above facts were brought into evidence and also likely collusion between some of the Sands staff and Janna— Janna was caught on video cheating at cards and the Sands group were alleged to be allowing him to illegally win. Gorondona’s lawyer, Nick Ribis, also Trump’s lawyer, sent copies of the testimony and most of the exhibits from those hearings to New Jersey’s Department of Gaming Enforcement. There was nothing noble in this action; from Trump’s side this can be seen as creating obstacles for an Atlantic City competitor. The data showed the large amounts of money flowing in and out of the Sands Casino for Janna’s benefit, and that large sums of money had just “vanished” from the Aruba Casino while under Sand’s management. There was also proof that the Sands people had been told that the DEA had frozen Janna’s bank .

Despite glaring evidence that the Sands Casino was doing favors for the Medellín drug cartel, no one at CCC took any action whatsoever. Shortly thereafter Janna went home to Colombia and was nearly killed when a bomb exploded in front of his house. He went into hiding after that. (This incident is covered in full in Chapter 17 of Johnston’s Temples of Chance.)

• • •

With oversight such as that, can anyone besides Jolly Roger Stone possibly believe that Mr. Trump’s smooth sail through the CCC’s licensing application constitutes any assurance of virtue?

11 When Uncle Marvin died, Perskie became the executor of his estate inheriting several thousands shares of Resorts stock plus land in an area zoned for casinos.

12 This is the full quote. The version that appears in many places on the Internet has had the boldfaced sentence redacted.

13 Reported in MadCowNews by Daniel Hopsicker, March 9, 2016.

6. Atlantic City Casinos

“People think I’m a gambler. I’ve never gambled in my life. To me, a gambler is someone who plays slot machines. I prefer to own slot machines. It’s a very good business.” –Donald Trump

Mr. Trump achieved much of his notoriety from his connection to professional gambling. At various times he owned 5 casinos in Atlantic City. So far as is known he no longer holds any interest in an operating casino. Nevertheless, some of Trump’s best friends and ers such as Carl Icahn and Phil Ruffin are deeply involved in the gambling trade and have each made billions from it. Roger Stone is still trying. Sheldon Adelson, all time largest contributor to the Republican Party, has made more from casinos than the rest of them combined, and has promised to Trump if he wins the Republican nomination.

What’s with that?

Does anyone really think casinos have played any kind of positive role in our society? Does anyone think they’ve played only a neutral role?

Even before casinos came to Atlantic City, speculators were evicting thousands of residents in anticipation of reselling the land to casino developers. Many of these residents were already on welfare. Low-income housing, already in short supply, became critical. When casinos finally arrived a few years later, violent crime doubled, then tripled. What was then just a poor community became a slum. What had been only bad conditions became intolerable ones. In the early 70s housing for Atlantic City’s elderly and needy was poor and deteriorating. The casino interests latched onto this issue to gain by promising to remedy the situation.

When casino legalization was announced to the people of Atlantic City in 1977, its citizens were told that they would have “an overnight rebuilding of Atlantic City.” The Governor said that success would be measured by whether the implementers of the casino legislation, would ensure that “Atlantic City would be a home for all its citizens.” Ten years later, a study by the Twentieth Century Fund concluded that nothing whatsoever had been done to improve housing

conditions for the elderly and the needy. “The casinos are walled-off universes… In of revitalizing the city, it is a disaster.” In the following quarter of a century the situation has only become worse. In the last 40 years Casinos have taken one hundred billion dollars out of Atlantic City, but there has been no “spillover.” None of that money went back into municipal improvements. Evidence of positive benefit to the city is completely lacking.

These days, for security reasons, casino patrons are requested not to leave the casinos; but on a recent visit I roamed the surrounding streets. The casinos are insulated containers surrounded by poverty, despair, empty parking lots, and boarded up buildings. Gangs fight each other on Pacific Avenue just one block from the Trump Taj Mahal and Steve Wynn’s Resorts Casino — I witnessed one such incident in April of 2016.

There’s a bizarre debate that goes on amongst gaming interests, politicians and just about everyone else. Studies all over the world point to increases in violent crime and gang activity wherever casinos have popped up. Other studies show that when a casino comes to your community, it takes far more OUT than it ever puts in. Yet gaming interests continue to smile and insist that there’s no relationship whatsoever between casinos and crime. Moreover, they do their best to persuade us that casinos always have a really positive impact on their communities.

In the next few sections we’ll look at the actual impact of casinos on local communities in general and Atlantic City in particular. It is not a very pretty picture.

Sin City

It’s no coincidence that gambling paradises like Las Vegas and Atlantic City get tarred with an epithet like “sin city.” This book is not a rant against those who go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City to gamble at a casino, see some naked flesh, or consort with prostitutes.

But we do think, particularly in a gambling establishment, that you should call a spade a spade.

Casting a new image to hide what really goes on in places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City has always been a priority, first of the mob, and then of the Casino Cartel. The most obvious is that we no longer call it gambling. It’s now the “gaming industry.” There have been lots of other pretty catchy mob public relations slogans:

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. “

“We’ve cleaned up Vegas now. It safe for the entire family.”

“What happens in Atlantic City stays in Atlantic City.”

“Don’t worry, we only kill each other.”

“Casinos are respectable ever since the mob sold its casino interests to Wall Street.”

“The American Way to Play”

“Gamble responsibly.”

Cute phrases, all of them, but “Sin City” is certainly the only descriptive one. The following sections will show what the phrases are disguising.

Zero tolerance towards prostitution

Though never mentioned in public promotion of the Las Vegas casino scene, the state of Nevada is the only state where buying and selling sex is legal and can be freely done on the streets and in brothels. Technically hookers are not supposed to operate in Clark County where the Vegas Strip itself is located—to be legal you need to go a mile or two up the road across the county line. But the plethora of massage parlors and leaflets advertising “skilled masseuse available for service in your hotel room” suggests the true story. According to a report from the Nevada Coalition Against Sex Trafficking most of the prostitution in Nevada takes place right in Clark County—on the streets, in the strip clubs, and right inside the hotel/casinos of the Las Vegas Strip. Like it or not, prostitution is and has always been, part and parcel of the casino scene and a factor in every casino environment including Donald Trump’s in Atlantic City.

Tests have yet to be invented that could determine if a penchant for such activities really runs in the Trump genes, but for sure Donald Trump’s grandfather knew how to turn pale pink female flesh into green~backs as is recounted in the section concerning Trump’s forebears. A few years ago a syndicate was uncovered in Atlantic City that was bringing in dozens of

beautiful young Asian girls to staff its prostitution services. The operation was working in cahoots with 4 casino floor hosts and 2 casino executive directors.

In recognition of the fact that many clients will pay more for a teen-ager than for more matronly ladies of the night, Atlantic City was only following the example of Las Vegas where the trend is towards younger and younger prostitutes. Pimps operating around the local Vegas schools often recruit these girls.

Absolutes are difficult to come by in this world, but here’s one of them: All casinos everywhere have always insisted they have a “zero tolerance towards prostitution.” It must just be just a coincidence that so many suspected prostitutes (and their handlers) ply their trade unchallenged inside and around casinos.

One report several years ago noted the police in Las Vegas had, in a six month period, arrested 127 prostitutes under the age of 18 plus discovered 368 prostitutes that tested positive for HIV. In a related report from Atlantic City, In a 2-week period 136 people were arrested on prostitution-related charges of which over half (78) were captured inside casinos.

In April 2016, on a research trip to Atlantic City, the second staff member I spoke to in the Trump Taj Mahal told me there would be no problem to arrange a girl to come to my room. (And I didn’t even have a room there.)

The real impact casinos have on their local economies

There’s a simple formula the Casino Cartel uses to expand into new

communities. After enlisting ers with various enticements, they then undertake massive advertising campaigns to achieve positive results in the state and local referendums usually required to secure legalization. Issues like mob connections, crime, and drugs are ignored—the campaign seeks to focus public attention on all the positive advantages that the casinos are supposed to bring:

1) First and foremost, the community is promised increased tax revenues. These revenues are meant to increase funding for education, infrastructure, and housing. The truth is this never occurs. In fact it is the reverse.¹⁴

In recent history, the taxpayers have directly and indirectly subsidized all legalized gambling activities. Field research throughout the nation indicates that for every dollar the legalized gambling interests pay in taxes, it usually costs the taxpayers at least 3 dollars — and higher numbers have been calculated

These costs to taxpayers are reflected in:

New infrastructure costs required by the casinos to be paid by the community Relatively high regulatory costs (in New Jersey this includes the budgets of the CCC and DGE) Increased costs of the criminal justice system to combat the crime and drugs brought in by casinos, and Increased social-welfare costs to deal with the increase of the unemployed, the poor, and the drug addicts that regularly accompany the introduction of casinos into a community.

This means that even a 50% tax on casinos would give the average Joe

Citizen and his community a net loss.

2) The community is also promised “plenty of new jobs.” This may be true, but many if not most of them have gone to outsiders with previous experience in the gambling industry. In Atlantic City, over 50% of casino workers live outside Atlantic City and commute each day.

Mob connections to Trump casinos

Gambling has always been closely associated with the mob, both before and after legalization of gambling in Las Vegas. Carl Zeitz, a New Jersey Casino Regulator, when explaining the need to give gambling “legitimacy” in New Jersey, candidly itted that casino gambling in Las Vegas was fully financed by the Teamsters and the mob and that mob-controlled gambling was no stranger to New Jersey, either, right up to and after its legalization there in 1976.

The beginning of the “Legal” chapter of Atlantic City’s gaming industry was a colorful one and is covered in more depth in the section entitled Casino Control Commission. Here we just describe some of the mob related connections to Mr. Trump and his casinos.

The violent Philadelphia mobster, Nicky Scarfo, couldn’t wait until gambling was legalized in Atlantic City. Immediately after legalization in 1976 he formed Scarf Inc. a concrete subcontractor. (See also the dedicated section on Nicky Scarfo.) Scarf Inc. did work on five of the first nine casinos that were built in Atlantic City. According to police investigators, the companies that hired Scarf Inc. had to pay non-existent employees but were “assured of labor peace” at their construction sites.

When casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City, almost every east coast mafia family set their sights on Atlantic City unions. Unions had power because they could strike. A strike by chefs or security guards, for example, could virtually close down operations, costing management a million dollars a day. That was a lot of leverage and the last thing that casino owners wanted was labor troubles. One of the circling hawks was a man named John McCullough, the tough and violent boss of Philadelphia Roofers Local 30. He launched a takeover of the weaker Atlantic City Roofers local and annexed it after a number of assaults and incidents of arson. He then gained control of the Building Trades Council which gave him power over all the city’s building trades unions, giving him unlimited possibilities for extortion.

But McCullough wanted more. He started his own bartenders union (Local 491) and used that as a springboard from which to raid of Local 54 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Union. This Local 54 controlled all the bartenders, waiters, waitresses, bellhops, and maids in Atlantic City (including in the casinos) and was controlled by Scarfo through his friend and subordinate Frank Gerace. Scarfo didn’t like McCullough strong-arming into his territory. After persuading Genovese crime boss Phil Testa that McCullough had to go, Scarfo dispatched 3 contract killers to murder McCullough in his Philly home in December 1980. Scarfo wasted no time taking back the bartenders.

Scarfo’s influence extended into the mayor’s office. Atlantic City Mayor

Michael Matthews met often with Scarfo family mobsters after his election in 1982. The good mayor was later convicted of receiving $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent he thought to be an associate of Scarfo in return for arranging the sale of a city-owned plot of land zoned for casino development.

Trump had connections to Scarfo even before his quest for Atlantic City casinos. But they multiplied as soon as he became serious about gambling. (These connections are fully explored in Wayne Barrett’s book.)

Long before Trump came to Atlantic City to look for property on which to build a casino, the best real estate had already been gobbled up by speculators. One plot in which Trump was particularly interested included a parcel bordering directly on the Boardwalk owned by a local group of owners called Magnum. The three sets of owners of this property each had direct connections to Scarfo. One set was a small law firm that represented a significant number of mob figures including Saul Kane, who would eventually be convicted of running Nicky Scarfo’s million-dollar-a-month methamphetamine empire. Kane’s Bar, which sat in the middle of that Boardwalk property, was a Scarfo hangout. The second owner of this future Trump site was Gene Alten, who had long wanted to build a casino but was never able to get his project off the ground. When faced with losing the property to a foreclosing bank, Alten got $110,000 from the Cleveland Wrecking Corp., a demolition contractor from Pennsylvania whose secret investor was the same Nicky Scarfo, and which coincidentally was at the same time doing Trump’s demolition work at his NYC Hyatt project. The third investor in the prospective Trump site was SSG, Inc. a partnership between Danny Sullivan, a friend of Alten’s who claimed to be a member of thirty-seven Teamster locals, and two Philadelphia scrap dealers. SSG’s managing agent (and main force) was Kenny Shapiro.

Shapiro would later be identified in law enforcement reports as “the mob’s main dealmaker” in Atlantic City in the eighties. It was Shapiro who controlled Scarfo’s secret interest in Cleveland Wrecking. Shapiro’s own two-story office building just off the Boardwalk became an oasis for visiting racketeers who

ed through town. Shapiro was busily funneling Philly mob money into dozens of Atlantic City real estate deals throughout the ’80s, and was eventually found to be the son of mob chieftain Nicky Scarfo. (See section on Ken Shapiro.)

It was this motley crew of criminals with whom Trump was directly dealing. Had any of their identities come to the notice of the Casino Control Commission it should have been more than enough grounds to warrant a license denial. But so sure was Mr. Trump that he could handle the licensing “politically” that instead of purchasing the land outright (and thus severing the mob ties) he initially leased it for 99 years.

Why he was so certain is explained in the section on the Casino Control Commission. But what is arguably of most importance is that the sheer number of criminals with personal knowledge of Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City dealings (including incarcerated murderer Nicky Scarfo) makes Mr. Trump a high value target for blackmail and extortion if he is elected president before coming clean concerning all of these incidents.

What Trump casinos gave to Atlantic City

“I’ve loved Atlantic City. It’s been very good to me and I’ve been very good to it.” –Donald Trump

Atlantic City’s Casino Control Act is often cited as “the gold standard of gaming regulations.” Insiders proudly boast, “New Jersey gave legitimacy to the casino industry.” That may be so, but only someone with a jaded worldview would

boast of it.

The real question is, what did that famous piece of New Jersey legislation do for Atlantic City itself? And how about other communities where casinos have sprung up after “legalization.” What did it give to them? Studies all over the world, from Philadelphia, India, Philippines, Macao, the Bahamas, not to mention Las Vegas, and a dozen other states in the U.S. report that the introduction of casinos into a community has always been accompanied by significant increase in violent crime. This is not coincidence. It is cause and effect. Casinos including the 5 owned by Trump took a heavy toll on Atlantic City.

Mr. Trump’s time and activities in Atlantic City should be evaluated as a part of his past “voting record.” Though he never held public office, here is an example of Trump-ed legislation and the effect that his activities had on the city and people of Atlantic City.

The following are conditions that existed at the height of Atlantic City’s casino “success” as well as some broader findings and conclusions about the effects of casinos.

Atlantic City was experiencing a widespread AIDs epidemic. 1 in every 40 residents was infected with HIV. A 2-week sweep of Atlantic City casinos resulted in the arrests of 136 people on prostitution-related charges. Over half (78) were captured inside casinos. State police reported that the Bloods Street Gang was running prostitutes in casinos and on the streets surrounding them. An Atlantic City casino worker pleaded guilty to being part of a prostitution ring that recruited young Asian women and sold their services to high rollers. Four

other casino employees were arrested on related charges. The operator of another prostitution ring that serviced casinos in Atlantic City from a brothel in Philadelphia was sentenced to 27 months in prison for delivering young women to customers. Hosts arranged rooms, food, entertainment and other services for high rollers. Two accomplices were convicted on related charges. The conventional wisdom that Atlantic City’s unemployment is caused by “too many casinos opening up in the northeast resulting in a glut in the market” is false. The unemployment rate in Atlantic County (home of Atlantic City) was highest in the state even before the Casinos started closing down. Even in the heyday of the casinos, unemployment among the city’s largely poor black and Hispanic population had never gone below 20%. Of the 36,000 “new jobs” created by the casinos, only 6,000 went to city residents, but net unemployment declined by only 1200 because most of those hired were switching careers from teacher, nurse, secretary to casino dealer, cocktail waitress, or other higher paying jobs. Atlantic City’s residents had been promised that the economic boom generated by the casinos would be used to provide low cost housing. Instead 5,000 units of low cost housing were destroyed when speculators evicted thousands of people to make way for casinos and high priced condominiums with ocean views. Atlantic City’s poor became the pawns in the speculation game. The casinos were the largest real estate owners in the city—they were also the largest slumlords. A local resident whose parents worked for the campaign that ed the referendum to legalize casinos in Atlantic City says it all: “My thought on Atlantic City is: they came in and kind of robbed it for what it was worth and then left. They built these boxes and put everything that they wanted inside the box and they wanted you to stay in the box. So, the vision that my family, my mother, thought was going to happen with casino gambling—that they were going to come in and revitalize Atlantic City—was nothing. They did nothing.” Atlantic County (home of Atlantic City) had the largest number of reported drug violations (heroin) and the largest number of drug rehab centers in the state. Atlantic City has the highest violent crime rate of any major US casino city. In

2010, it experienced 19.7 incidents of violent crime per 1,000 residents, a rate that even Detroit (18.9) couldn’t match. By comparison, Las Vegas has 36 times AC’s population yet boasts a violent crime rate only half that of AC. Tourism officials in Atlantic City were not too excited with the results of a sixcity focus group tasked to provide a snapshot of “Atlantic City—America’s favorite playground,” when the group concluded that the New Jersey casino resort “has a drug problem”, “lots of poor people” and “is crime ridden.” According to a 2012 study of casino crime by University of Maryland researchers, Atlantic City’s rapid casino growth in the 1980s was accompanied by an immediate crime increase of 100 percent in a 30-mile radius surrounding the casinos. Atlantic City’s current mayor said at a 2016 forum at St. Peter’s College: “Adding casinos to a community “brings crimes including prostitution and drugs and cause as many problems as benefits.” Wynn Resorts project manager and casino operator, Dan Keating, noted that casino operators often promise that their casinos will create jobs and assist development in the surrounding communities. But he was more candid: “No one should expect or plan on a casino to bring about urban renewal…Because that’s not what casinos do.” National Association of Realtors economists say, “The impact of casinos on neighboring property values is “unambiguously negative.” According to the NAR, “Casinos don’t encourage non-gaming businesses to open nearby, because the people who most often visit casinos do not wander out to visit other shops and businesses. A casino is not like a movie theater or a sports stadium, offering a time-limited amusement. It is designed to be an all-absorbing environment that does not release its customers until they have exhausted their money.” Almost every expert who testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business criticized the impacts that casino-style gambling activities inflict upon the criminal justice system, the social welfare, system, small businesses, and the economy (Congressional Hearing 1994). The use of legalized gambling activities as a strategy for economic development was thoroughly discredited during the hearing. A comprehensive statewide report from the Florida Budgeting Office concurred with the congressional hearing’s

conclusions that legalized gambling is no solution to a community’s economic problems. Casinoonnet.tv is a pro-gambling online platform that has a “let’s talk turkey” page about crime, prostitution and drugs. Some quotes from their website follow: “Many criminals try to launder money in a casino…Casinos have been shown to be a catalyst for a number of crimes including street crimes, drugs, prostitution, and embezzlement. Although this topic is not really discussed in public, there is a high incidence of prostitution in casino locations. Gambling is a perfect environment for prostitution. Some casinos provide prostitutes for their high rollers. It seems that prostitutes are a factor that must be calculated into any casino environment.” When casinos started booming in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute commissioned a three-part study of casino related crime found, “existence of a casino within the boundaries of a county led to an increase in county-wide crime rates (and) a strong spillover effect with counties adjacent experiencing higher crime rates.” Their data showed a 5,300 annual increase of “major crimes” and 17,100 “minor crimes” with an associated cost in 2001 dollars of $51 million for Wisconsin taxpayers.

CONCLUSION

The above evidences the fact that Casino operators conduct their businesses while paying scant attention to the adverse effects they are creating in the surrounding communities. “My Casino First” could be the motto of the Casino Cartel.

Mr. Trump is not the world’s only casino operator. But he is the only one running for president. One of his most prominent stances is “America First” and that is eerily reminiscent of the above stated motto of the Casino Cartel.

While it is correct that an American president must make the welfare of the American people his top priority, were Mr. Trump to engage in a political scorched earth policy of the type that casino operators typically wage against their communities, the world could be quickly driven into chaos. That is another reason why he should renounce his past business dealings as a casino operator.

Insider reveals redeeming qualities of casinos

Are there any redeeming qualities to the gaming industry?

Ironically, the best answer to this comes from the infamous Las Vegas casino executive and mob associate, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal.

Rosenthal secretly ran four Las Vegas casinos — the Stardust, Fremont, Marina, and Hacienda — when the Mafia controlled them. This makes him one of the most experienced and knowledgeable casino operators. When the mob blamed him for legal problems the casinos were incurring in 1982, they attempted a “corporate ouster” of Rosenthal by attaching a car bomb to his gas tank. The assassination attempt failed; Rosenthal survived the explosion, but left Las Vegas shortly thereafter.

What follows is part of an interview he gave several years later.

Is it possible for a customer to win at a casino?

“There is no way, legally, to beat any form of gaming, gambling—take your choice of words—which I’m aware of. I’ve never known anybody who has been able to win on a consistent basis, and that’s the word: consistency. Anybody can get lucky, but can you sustain yourself? Casinos are the only industry that I’m aware of in the world where the player (customer) really has virtually no chance, and the only industry in the world where the (business) pre-requisite need not be knowledge or competency; the only pre-requisite is the license.”

Is gambling good for America?

“That’s a very difficult question to answer… As I said, you’re probably going to break everybody that seeks the entertainment part of it or challenges gambling. If you’re foolish enough to challenge it—if you go to Las Vegas, Nevada, with the idea that you’re going to come home with more than you went in there with, you’re going to get a very rude awakening, and if you continue to challenge it, you’ll probably wind up in a shelter home… The people that frequent the casinos throughout the country do not understand the power of the inside, the centaurs, meaning the one-arm bandits. They cannot be beat. The public is naive.”

What does gambling contribute to society?

“It’s the only industry that really gives you nothing back in return. Example: if I buy a Sony TV set, I get entertainment. If I buy a car of my choice, I have transportation. No matter what industry it might be, you get something in return. I don’t know what gambling gives you in return other than a headache and a lot of potential danger.

“If we’re referring to legalized gambling in the State of Nevada, which is where most people go to gamble full-scale, no, there is very little that goes back into society that’s of any use. I think that it’s too one-sided, and I think of the enormous amount of money that the public is pouring in to legalized gambling, there is nothing going back, and you have a handful of people, and, again, free society, that’s fine. But there’s only a handful of people that are reaping the rewards of the millions and millions of people throughout the country (paying all that money into the casinos.)

“There has to be a cycle of return. Again, it might sound like I’m not for a free society, but capitalism—certainly I am; we’re democratic. However, if gambling were to, or the gaming industry—if they were to put money back into education, highways, school teachers, law enforcement, education, then I think gambling

would certainly be healthier, but right now it’s one-sided—very, very one-sided, and the only winners are the major operators … those are your only winners.”

Arthur Anderson did a survey for the American Gaming Institute and found that gaming provided a lot of jobs. Would you agree with that?

“It does create many jobs; there’s no question about it. That’s a fact…but it goes beyond that. It also creates a lot of broken homes. It puts people on welfare. It makes them destitute. So that sentence ending by itself, “creates jobs,” is incomplete; it’s out of context. Sure it creates jobs, but there’s much more to it.”

Who are the winners?

“The major casino operators are the winners, period. The state and the local governments get a ham sandwich, in my opinion.”

Trump Casinos and Drugs

Mr. Trump claims he’s never taken drugs and there’s no reason to doubt him. As pointed out elsewhere, he’s not one to always go along with the crowd. This is a great strength of his. And we all know he lost his stake in Atlantic City casinos. Then why even bring up the subject of drugs in Atlantic City?

It’s because the introduction of casinos into Atlantic City turned the city into a virtual drug den and Trump’s 5 casinos played a substantial role. Crime

increased 300% even before the casinos there began closing. A former Atlantic City Public Prosecutor said, “Drugs are the most serious crime problem facing us.”

The percentage of people dying of heroin overdoses in Atlantic City is over 7 times the national average. (17 compared to 2.3 deaths per 100,000 people.) “South Jersey is the mecca for heroin distribution,” says the founder and CEO of Hope All Day Recovery Center, one of the local drug rehab centers.

How much are the casinos involved? In a drug sweep in 2014 New Jersey State Police arrested 42 casino hotel employees and issued warrants for another 24 for narcotics trafficking. Detectives posed as “high rollers” and found it was very easy to obtain drugs in every one of Atlantic City’s eleven operating casinos. And it hasn’t changed. In April 2016, on one of several trips to Atlantic City to do research for this book, the second staff member I approached at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino agreed to fix me up with heroin. (No, I didn’t go through with the buy.)

Mr. Trump’s casinos played a decisive role in bringing this scourge to Atlantic City. Even though he is personally out of Atlantic City, I don’t recall the news conference where he invited the other 40,000 Atlantic City residents to fly away with him in the Trump Helicopter.

Maybe a businessman can get away with turning a blind eye to that kind of thing, but a candidate for president of the United States had better not. Mr. Trump would do well to make it a mission to harness the necessary resources and accomplish a serious cleanup of the city. That would make him a real super hero.

And what about Mr. Trump’s connections to the Casino Cartel? Many of his best

buddies, ers and advisors are casino owners and operators; the same ones that continue addicting communities while robbing them. Mr. Trump tends to even praise them.

We used to berate the mafia for skimming off a few hundred thousand dollars here or there. Why should we now adulate casino operators who rip tens of billions of dollars off of Americans each and every year while at the same time drugging them into insensibility?

Illegal drugs pose too much a menace to individuals and communities to just ignore them and casinos foster this environment.

One way Mr. Trump could prove his independence from these characters is to go on record as ing a 70% income tax on all casino profits, the proceeds of which would be used to rebuild the communities that have been ruined by casinos.

14 See John Kindt’s articles, The National Impact of Casino Gambling Proliferation: Hearing Before the House Committee on Small Business, 103rd. Congress, 2nd. Session 77 (1994); The Negative Impact of Legalized Gambling on Business; U.S. National Security and the Strategic Economic Base: Impacts of the legalization of gambling.

7. Trumpisms

Although it’s fashionable these days for the media to dissect candidates under a microscope on live TV, it’s unreasonable to expect perfection of them. As discussed earlier, Mr. Trump’s actual accomplishments are well known and stand on their merit. But lest some of his idiosyncrasies be left hidden in the closet we will catalogue some of them here.

Deal making the Trump way

“If I were to represent the country instead of John Kerry, you know that deals would be so much better. I can straighten everything out. It’s so easy. There’s so much fat.” –Donald J. Trump

The REAL mob deal axiom is: “I’ll give them an offer they cannot refuse.” This is at the heart of almost all criminal actions. It’s sometimes called extortion and means exerting control over someone by using the threat of loss or violence. This is about as far as it gets from the win-win negotiation advocated in Trump’s book. He explains that “A deal only works if both parties are happy.”

Victims of extortion are never happy.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trump’s history is fraught with threats employed to get the upper hand. No, not threats of bodily harm or murder, but threats of ruination, eviction or personal bankruptcy. Threats of being tied up in long and expensive lawsuits that would kill a deal. Or threats of being put on the receiving end of barrages of Mr. Trump’s force even though he was clearly in the wrong.

Overwhelming weak adversaries with force is rarely a good idea. Russian suppression of the Balkan States, Poland, The Ukraine, Kazakhstan, to name a few, are examples of the unworkability of the ‘persuade by coercion’ tactic. Russia continues to have trouble from every one of those areas including putting down armed revolts to keep them under heel. Contrast this with the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Hong Kong, as a prize, was worth more than all of the above listed Russian satellites combined, yet China did not resort to firing a single shot to get her back. It was done solely through negotiation with Great Britain. And now over 20 years later, Hong Kong has become an integral part of the People’s Republic of China, with only an occasional mild non-violent student protest to ruffle the peace.

An important characteristic of any true leader is his ability to reason and cooperate with others. This is called Win-Win in Mr. Trump’s “Art of the Deal.” And, make no mistake; Mr. Trump has made good deals in his career.

But for those looking for magic results in Mr. Trump’s negotiations with Mexico or China, it is clear that positive outcomes from his past dealings have been far from inevitable. Proofs of this are the uncountable times he has resorted to the use of law suits and the threat of law suits to cow competitors and adversaries into submission. What is a law suit if not an ission of failure in negotiation? Mr. Trump has got to be one of the most litigious guys in history. It is hard to find any deal he’s been a part of where lawsuits or the threat of them has not played a part.

In the 2016 election there has been talk of lawsuits with regard to media, protestors, and the Republican Party itself. Almost every writer who has attempted to write a book on Mr. Trump has been threatened with a lawsuit. The distinguished author of TrumpNation, Tim O’Brien was sued for $5 billion for “libeling” Mr. Trump. O’Brien’s crime was being skeptical of Mr. Trump’s ever changing assertions of his net worth. (Trump lost the case.)

When a dissatisfied student of the now defunct “Trump University” reported on it, instead of fixing the problem he sued her.

Trump sued a partner in his D.C. Post Office Hotel development when the partner withdrew from the project after Trump remarks about Mexican immigrants he deemed racist.

When the National Football League Commissioner would not grant Trump’s team entrance to the NFL, he ultimately sued both the NFL and its Commissioner Pete Rozelle.

He threatened to sue Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball

team for a comment he made in a video clip suggesting Donald’s casinos had fallen on hard times.

Faced with documented charges of racial discrimination in the 1960’s,Trump could have easily settled by a simple promise to mend his ways. Instead he insisted on his innocence—silly in light of the incontrovertible evidence against him plus the willingness of the Justice Department to settle for a mere promise of better behavior—and sued the Justice Department for $100 million dollars. The Judge threw Trump’s suit into the garbage can.

When he found out that the news network ABC was planning to do a movie about his life, entitled Ambition, he threatened to sue the network if he didn’t like how he was portrayed in it.

No need to go on. Lawsuits have their place. They have become a part of the American way of doing business. Nonetheless, a great “negotiator” should not have to rely on them to resolve every little disagreement.

Mr. Trump lost or failed to follow through on most of the lawsuits mentioned above.

In the following three sections are related other important negotiations where he came up short.

Winning in Central Park: the Wollman skating rink.

The one thing for which New Yorkers uniformly and correctly praise Mr. Trump is his completing the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park. It had been tied up in red tape for years and Trump offered to take it over and complete it for Mayor Ed Koch at cost. Koch agreed and Trump completed it in 4 months.

Although this was indeed a great contribution to the city, Trump was not doing it for purely altruistic reasons. It was part of a strategy to get Koch to grant him what would have been the largest tax concessions in NYC history for the socalled “TV City” project—a development Trump hoped to build on the west side. Trump thought it was almost a done deal and hoped to parlay his successful (and widely promoted) skating rink project into municipal for the much larger TV City project.

Several things went wrong. While Trump was telling the city that NBC would leave New York if he were not granted the tax abatement, the Mayor found the threat to be false. Also, Trump seemed unable to refrain from gloating about the stupidity and inefficiency of New York’s initial handling of the skating rink project; he devoted an entire chapter to it in Art of the Deal, going out of his way to make the Mayor look stupid. Did Trump think this was going to help his case with the city?

Tired of the threats and coercive tactics, Koch ended up rejecting Trump’s proposal and granted him a far, far smaller tax abatement than Trump was looking for.

Trump responded by calling the Mayor a “moron” and a “disgrace” and denouncing the city as “a cesspool of corruption and incompetence.” He even talked about spending $2 million on anti-Koch TV ments.

Unsurprisingly those tactics didn’t get Koch to change his mind. TV City was

never built, but NBC is still in New York some 30 years later.

Trump’s all-time best deal: Harrah’s

In 1982 Trump t ventured with Harrah’s on his second Atlantic City casino. Harrah’s gave him a great deal. A really great deal. Trump would provide the land (which he already had) and the approvals (which his political connections would guarantee) and in return Harrah’s would pay him $22 million dollars up front to cover his project expenses to date, pay him to build the casino, give him 50% share in the profits, and not hold him liable for operational losses in the first five years. What’s more, Harrah’s would operate the casino.

Trump oversaw the construction of the 39-story casino which ended up costing $210 million and opened in May 1984. It was at that time Atlantic City’s largest casino. A side agreement between the two parties required Trump to solve the parking problem—the original Casino plans did not include parking. But Trump apparently decided that he wanted to get rid of Harrah’s, despite the excellent deal they’d made with him. So he delayed on constructing the parking garage. Harrah’s was furious but there was nothing they could do—they’d allowed Trump to put the land on which the parking lot would be situated in Trump’s name. Without a parking garage, the casino would not make money and Trump was indemnified for any loss for 5 years. Harrah’s accused Trump of trying to make them sell its share to him at a reduced price. But Harrah’s had no choice and ultimately did sell its share back to Trump. Once he’d taken over ownership of the casino, Trump built the parking lot.

It sounds like a clever maneuver, but it came at a great cost. Trump had to borrow the entire $223 million for the purchase. In addition, he now had to run the casino himself, something he’d never done before, didn’t know how to do, and didn’t much care for.

He’d traded a great asset, income and certainty, for huge debt and an uncertain future.

Mr. Trump turned perhaps the greatest deal he’d made in his career into a liability that began the decline that almost cost him his entire empire.

How Mr. Trump beat the NFL

Mr. Trump often alludes to what a good athlete he is. This may well explain his desire to own a team in the National Football League. Such a trophy wouldn’t come cheap. In the early ’80s the cost of an NFL team was $40-50 million. But there was another professional football league that had begun scheduling games in 1983: The U.S. Football League.

The USFL had just opened its doors with a simple but direct business plan: do not compete with the NFL. The easy way to achieve this was to schedule all its games in the spring after the NFL season was over. Without competition from the NFL they’d have use of the NFL football stadiums and have the TV audiences all to themselves. The cost of a team in the U.S. Football League was between $6 million and $9 million, far more accessible than an NFL Franchise. Trump saw a way of using the USFL as his entrance fee to the NFL. So after its first year of operation, he bought into the USFL by purchasing the New Jersey Generals for about $9 million. He d he’d paid only $5 million for it to make himself look good, which immediately devalued all the other teams in the league.

The USFL was a modestly budgeted spring league before Trump arrived. But he hit the ground with his wallet out and immediately started spending money on talent. He recruited NFL stars such as Kerry Justin, MVP quarterback Brian Sipe and 3-time Pro-Bowler Gary Barbaro. The following year he signed another quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie, to the largest contract in professional football: $7 million. Trump’s spending violated the league’s salary cap rule and sparked a bidding war. Now the sky was the limit and many teams who didn’t have Trump’s deep pockets didn’t like it.

But Trump had a secret plan. He wanted to turn his $9 million dollar USFL team into a $50 million NFL team. He told fellow owners that he was going to go head to head with the NFL and then engineer a merger between the two leagues. In fact, he was only interested in his own team being absorbed by the NFL. His first step was to get the league to move its schedule from the spring to the fall

putting it in direct conflict with the NFL. Though not the only one wishing to do that, his was by far the loudest voice. According to Charlie Steiner, the Generals’ radio sportscaster, “the league didn’t want to do this, but basically Donald had them by a choke hold.” When the schedule was changed to the Fall, the fate of the USFL was sealed.

Although Trump had promised the other USFL owners they’d have no trouble getting their games televised in the fall of 1986, when it came right down to it the three big networks negotiated its usual contracts with the NFL but none with the USFL. Once more Mr. Trump’s art of negotiation failed him in a crucial situation. This was a major setback. The USFL needed that coverage. So Trump fell back to his usual Backup Plan B, suing the NFL for $1.69 billion for violations of antitrust laws. As before, others agreed with this course of action, but Trump was the loudest voice and he donated his own lawyers to handle the case. He used the infamous “secret weapon” Roy Cohn (subject of an earlier section of this book) and Harvey Myerson, who was later convicted of bilking clients out of millions of dollars and called a “pathological liar” by a former partner in an article in the American Lawyer magazine.

After more than two months of testimony, the jury returned a verdict of YES, the NFL violated antitrust law. Trump grinned until he heard the award. Instead of granting the requested $1.69 billion, the jury awarded the USFL $3 dollars (three dollars). With interest, the total award came to $3.76. The animosity of the suit ruined any chance of a merger with the NFL. And the decision finished off the USFL. Despite a TV contract with the then fledgling ESPN they chose not to play in 1986. The league folded after a loss estimated at $163 million.

A documentary made for ESPN by Mike Tollin, host of the U.S. Football League’s “Highlights” show, made the case that had the USFL continued on its original path it would not have folded after 3 years and that it was Trump who pushed if off its path. “The thing that was so distressing,” Tollin said, “is that none of it ever seemed to matter to Trump. It was just a little investment that didn’t work out too well, so he moved on to the next thing. Didn’t matter that

hundreds of people lost hundreds of jobs, from peanut vendors to ticket takers on up.” Actually it was more like 1,000s of people who were affected by the closing of the league.

In the Art of the Deal, Trump spun the cause of the league’s demise as follows: “If there was a single key miscalculation I made with the USFL, it was evaluating the strength of my fellow owners.”

Trump genes

“I’ve always said that negotiation is not really learned. It’s almost innate. It’s in the genes. A negotiator is born…negotiation is something that I’m very familiar with. I built an empire on negotiation.” –Donald J. Trump

Do genes really matter?

While it has never been proven, and is highly unlikely, that genes play any appreciable role in business or negotiation, since Mr. Trump calls it up so often to explain his greatness, the subject of his genes will receive some attention here.

Whether or not you hold that genes play a definitive role in a man’s character or ability, it is instructive to see the models and examples on which Mr. Trump relies.

Grandpa Friedrich: prostitution & gambling start an empire

Donald’s grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, arrived in New York from in 1885 at the age of 16. Six years in New York was enough for him, and in 1891, at the age of 22, he followed the excitement of the gold rush to the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Settling in Seattle, the young Friedrich opened the first commercial Trump enterprise in the New World. His store was set in the middle of 3 blocks of saloons, gambling houses, and whorehouses. The district was named “The Line” and had already achieved notoriety throughout the northwest as a place where “anything went.” If a man had money he could be provided with all the sex, booze, and gambling he desired—to suit even the most jaded taste.

Maps of the time first labeled the whorehouses as “Women’s Boarding,” and then “Saloons.” The prostitutes were called “Dressmakers” and had to pay a special “dressmaking tax” which at the time was a major source of city revenue. Besides the houses of ill repute, “The Line” boasted saloons, gambling parlors, pawnshops, bawdy houses, bookie dens, vaudeville theaters, loan offices, and the time-honored opium parlors.

It was there, on the north side of Washington Street, that Friedrich Trump opened his 2-story “Dairy Restaurant.”

Before Trump took it over, the establishment had been called “The Poodle Dog” and aside from the pitchers of beer and trays of food that were served, there was another specialty that was featured in ads from that time: “Private Rooms for Ladies.” The referenced ladies were prostitutes. Friedrich gave his customers what they wanted. “It was business, not personal.” It was there in Seattle, on Oct. 27, 1892, that Friedrich became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

By the end of 1892 the news was out that John. D. Rockefeller had invested in Monte Cristo, the biggest mining boomtown in the U.S. named after the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Although most people who went to Monte Cristo did it in search of gold and silver, Friedrich had other plans.

By February 1983, Friedrich had sold the fixtures in his Dairy Restaurant, and on the 24th of that month, flush with cash from beer sales and prostitutes, he decided to speculate on 40 acres of land owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad about 12 miles east of Seattle. It had one small shack on it and the area in which it was located had already attracted many other land speculators. Friedrich picked it up at the bargain price of $5 an acre.

It was the first piece of real estate in the Trump family empire.

One week after buying that lot, Friedrich left Seattle for Everett, an exploding new town on the coast of Possession Sound, not far from the Monte Cristo mines. It was there that both the railhead and the mining company’s headquarters were situated. Land there was $1,000 an acre, far more than Friedrich could afford, but he had a plan. Arriving in the middle of winter with over twelve feet of snow covering everything, Friedrich decided where he wanted to set up shop and promptly “discovered gold” there. At least he said he did. Someone finding gold or silver on land that had not been previously bespoken, could stake a claim to the mineral rights below the surface of that land.

But in Trump’s case, “his” land was already part of a larger parcel owned by Everett’s biggest developer. There was no ore under the surface, and though he had no right to build anything on the surface, he promptly erected a boarding house.

All in all, a much better proposition than having to actually pay for the land.

According to an Everett News article Fred Trump’s boarding house sat right in the center of a district where the establishments “are supposed to lure men to moral and financial destruction.” Friedrich made a constant, if not huge profit.

In 1896 Trump ran for Justice of the Peace and won by a vote of 32–5.

Yet all was not well in Everett. The expected production of silver and gold ore did not materialize. With the U.S. economy softening, Rockefeller sold his interests in the town, followed by other developers.

The following year real gold was discovered in the Yukon and Friedrich was quick to cut his ties to Everett and head north. His plan was to duplicate his successful actions, but bigger and better. He had no interest in personally digging for gold—but he’d take advantage of the opportunity to provide the diggers with food, alcohol, gambling, and female companionship. His first enterprise was a “tent restaurant” that served steaks from horses that had succumbed on the trail. He graduated from there to a structure made of real wood in the city of Whitehorse (now the largest city in northern Canada). Built again on land he didn’t own, he kept his New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel open 24 hours a day, with the real money being made in the gambling rooms and from the prostitutes he made available to his clientele.

He ended up making far more money from gambling, alcohol and prostitution than all but a handful of the most successful prospectors. When he left the Yukon at the age of 32 he’d accumulated a fortune worth more than $8 million dollars in 2015 money. Friedrich returned to New York and invested his fortune in real estate, mostly in the borough of Queens.

In 1918 he died suddenly, some say of flu, others from alcohol. Either way, responsibility for the Trump family fell to his son, Fred, Jr.

Father Fred – Influence buying, Mob connections, and KKK

“I learned from my father. He was a great teacher.” –Donald Trump

Influence buying. When grandfather died, Fred, Jr. (Donald’s father) saw much of his father’s wealth swept away in the financial crisis of 1921. Fred, Jr. went to work as an unskilled worker as soon as he graduated from high school and there learned various construction trades. It was there he also began learning the tricks of the real estate trader.

At the age of 21, Father Fred went into business with his mother forming Elisabeth Trump and Son with the expectation that customers would have more confidence in him if they thought a mature woman was running the show. It was a great time to do business in New York—the city was expanding in every way. Manhattan came to represent a bastion of wealth, glamour, corruption, and danger.

Fred concentrated his business in the comparatively safe environs of Brooklyn and Queens. Elisabeth Trump and Son was successful, first at individual building projects, and then graduating to the development of small groups of houses on subdivided properties. Within 2 years it had completed dozens of homes. As the price of real estate continued to soar, the Trumps built ever-bigger homes on ever-bigger plots of land. The stock market crash of 1929 brought this all to an end. The Trumps, stuck with properties no one wanted to buy, were forced to go out of business. Fred opened a grocery store to make ends meet.

The U.S. economy reached rock bottom by 1933, and speculators had already begun the process of picking up cheap properties with the certain knowledge that they would be the source of future fortunes. Well-connected investors could find out which distressed properties would soon be coming available. Betterconnected investors could wrangle courts into appointing them as trustees for prime properties lost in bankruptcies. In short, with the right connections, one could pick up properties at extremely low prices.

Fred wanted to get back into the game, but in 1933, he had no such connections. But Fred was vigilant. He watched the bankruptcy scene like a hawk hoping to find an opening he might exploit.

The opening came with the demise of one of the largest mortgage companies in Brooklyn, Lehrenkrauss & Company. Lehrenkrauss was a family owned

enterprise licensed as an investment bank by the state of New York, which had, by its own ission, engaged in a massive campaign of deception. It had sold bonds worth many times more than the mortgages that backed them, and fraudulently altered books. With the company bankrupt and the senior Lehrenkrauss convicted of grand theft and carted off to jail, thousands of these bondholders were suing the company.

Fred, having some experience with mortgages from his earlier work in Queens, noticed that one small part of the Lehrenkrauss operations —the part that collected mortgage payments from debtors—might have retained some value. He determined to acquire that part of the business. It wasn’t easy. He needed to court some Brooklyn political power brokers and forces with another Queens-based bidder, but he ultimately succeeded in getting it.

Fred didn’t make much money from processing mortgage payments. The real value of the award was the insider information it provided. From its recent records, Trump could see which homeowners were behind in their payments and predict imminent foreclosures. With this knowledge, he was able to buy up distressed properties before they ever went on the market. But it was slow going.

At this precise moment an angel visited the Brooklyn real estate market in the guise of the Federal Housing Authority. The FHA was one of FDR’s New Deal programs to stimulate the economy after the crash of 1929 by encouraging home ownership. Before the inception of the FHA only 30% of New Yorkers owned their own homes. Lenders had required a 50% down payment and prospective homeowners only had 5 years to repay the balance. The FHA was a game changer, requiring only 20% down, extending payback time to 30 years, and providing lenders with 100% insurance.

What this meant to Fred Trump was that he would now have potentially many more customers for whom to build houses, and more importantly, he’d be able to operate with little or no risk to himself. If he could get FHA insured loans.

Billions of dollars of financing was being funneled through a bureaucracy of political appointees at the top of which (in New York) was a man named Thomas “Tommy” Grace. Before taking his FHA job, Tommy was a member of a law firm named Grace and Grace comprised of him and his brothers. Tommy retained his connection to that law firm throughout his tenure in the FHA and continued on the firm’s payroll.

Fred cleverly retained Tommy’s brother George to represent a professional association of builders that Fred both set up and chaired. (Later, George became Fred’s partner in a major Brooklyn housing project, Starrett City. But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here.)

In August 1936 Tommy authorized a Federal government commitment to insure the financing of a 400-home Trump development. And the commitments continued. Because of these government subsidies and guarantees, Trump became one of Brooklyn’s biggest builders by 1940.

(For maintaining his connection to and funneling projects to his family law firm while heading up the FHA in New York, Tommy was indicted for fraud. The case was dismissed because it was brought after the 3-year statute of limitations had expired.)

The Mob. Several decades earlier in the 1930s, when the end of prohibition took away their illegal liquor business, Italian-American gangsters increased their presence in the New York construction industry and in the labor unions. These men used violence and the threat of violence to control the supply of labor and materials, and to extract payments from contractors. They often determined which companies would receive contracts for major developments. Murders were committed as needed to remind those who needed reminding who was calling the shots in New York

construction. Mob bosses were so feared that they could shut down a project with just a word, burden a developer with extra costs, or slash the cost of labor by sending cheap non-union workers to a site.

Mafia involvement in New York made construction more expensive and more dangerous than anywhere else in the USA.

Since many of Trump’s properties were purchased from public authorities such as the City of New York, he realized it would serve his interests to stay on the good side of the local politicians and the mob. So it was, when the FHA began funding homes for veterans after WW II, Trump teamed up with a mobconnected masonry contractor to develop his big Beach Haven project. By the time he ed Trump, his new partner, William “Willie” Tomasello was already partnered with of the Genovese and Gambino crime families in a number of other real estate developments in New York.

According to the Organized Crime Task Force in the 50’s Tomasello’s source of capital was a complex web of relationships linking him to the Gambino and Genovese crime families as well as to Lucky Luciano. (See Blair, Trumps p. 171.) Tomasello’s mob connections saved Trump from disruption of his supply of building materials and gave him access to non-union laborers (such as Tomasello’s son in law) who could be paid lower wages. Fred told federal investigators that without Tomasello’s money he would not have been able to do the project, as it would have been too risky.

Fred itted to federal prosecutors that he’d purposely over-assessed the estimated cost of the project by over $4 million when applying for his government loan and that he’d held on to that extra $4 million of government money even though it violated the profit guidelines permitted for FHA loans. The investigators also found that he’d siphoned off another 1.4 million dollars from s of his Shore Haven project. His justifications were labeled “outright misrepresentation” by the investigators, and although he was not

indicted for these actions, the FHA subsequently banned him from participating in future projects.

Racial Discrimination and Fred Trump. In 1970 the Justice Department brought a major discrimination suit against Trump, details of which are to be found elsewhere in this book in the section on Roy Cohn. The suit charged Trump with refusing to rent to African-Americans. Although at the time it was Donald himself who was in charge of all the company’s rental activities, a company employee testified that the policy of discrimination came from the very top of Trump organization, from Donald’s father, Fred.

This wasn’t a new issue. It had been going on for decades. Much earlier, on June 1, 1927, a New York Times article reported that Father Fred was arrested and released after a Ku Klux Klan demonstration turned into a fistfight with Queens’s police. The brawl reportedly consisted of over 1,000 Klansmen and 100 police officers. The seven men arrested, including Fred, were all wearing Klan attire and shared lawyers. The address provided to police by the arrested Trump was a house owned by the Trump family.

The photo was featured on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune on May 31, 1927 and shows the actual demonstration at which Father Fred was arrested.

We do not hold the son responsible for the sins of his father. But when questioned about this incident Donald Trump has categorically denied that it happened despite the above proofs.

It is the same with his mafia ties. If he were only to come clean about them he could possibly be forgiven. But his continual denials make one wonder what else he may be hiding. Such dark secrets bode ill for a president of the United States.

“I only got one million dollars from my father.”

Does anyone really care?

In Republican debates, to rebut Trump’s claim of being a “self-made billionaire,” Mr. Trump was “accused” of inheriting $200 million dollars from his father. In the first place, if true, that wouldn’t exactly be a crime. The odd thing was that Mr. Trump strongly denied it and ridiculously stated he only got $1 million from his father and turned that into billions.

By the time Donald Trump was born, Father Fred was a multi-millionaire complete with a self-built 23-room mansion and a pair of chauffeur-driven limousines (one Rolls Royce and one Cadillac) in which young Donald was

carted back and forth to school. Donald was brought up in one of the wealthiest families in Queens, New York and clearly received hundreds of times more than the “1 million dollars” he claims.

Trump had no need to minimize the money and help he received from his father. Yet he did.

Here are some verifiable things Trump received from his father Fred:

At the end of the 1970s Father Fred made himself Chairman of the Board of his company and promoted Donald to President of the company. One of the first actions of the new president was to persuade Fred to refinance his 80 properties, worth at the time about $200 million. (See Blair. D.T.M.A. That’s evidently where the $200 million figure came from that was mentioned in the debate.) Donald used that money for new investments. Trump’s first major deal was converting the boarded up Commodore Hotel next to Grand Central Station into a Grand Hyatt. Mayor Abe Beame, a long time friend and ally of Father Fred, gave Donald the first-ever property tax abatement on a New York City hotel, worth at least $400 million over 40 years. In 1980, the Chase Manhattan Bank gave Donald a $35+ million unsecured line of credit. At the time of this financing, Donald was only 33 years old and had yet to complete a single project. The line of credit facility was no doubt granted in deference to his father’s good credit, built on 20 years of banking at Chase (and reportedly Chase’s largest Queens depositor). The $35+ million line of credit was used variously as follows: a) $28 million to cover overspending on his Hyatt Hotel project. b) $8.9 million for startup costs for Trump Plaza Casino in Atlantic City (despite Chase Bank regulations forbidding casino loans.) According to the Los Angeles Times, in 1981 Donald also received a $7.5 million loan from his father.

Aside from being critical in procuring financing for the Hyatt Hotel Project and Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza, father Fred played a major role in financing the West Side Project. Manufacturers Hanover Bank required that Fred Trump coguarantee the entire construction loan as well as put up about $2 million cash. Fred attended the closing and signed financing agreements. (See Blair, D.T.M.A. p. 63) Although Donald spent years working on the Trump Tower project, Father Fred had to guarantee that project as well, appearing at the closing to sign the financing agreements. When Trump signed the contracts for construction of Trump Plaza Casino in Atlantic City, Father Fred was yet again required to be on hand to sign all of the contracts to provide financial credibility to the deal. When Trump found himself unable to make a loan payment on his Trump Castle Casino in 1990, his father came over to Atlantic City one fine day and infused $3.5 million into the casino by “buying chips” that he had no intention of using for gambling.

The above add up to many orders of magnitude greater than $1 million.

Even more valuable than the financial assistance perhaps, were the political and other connections that Fred ceded to his son. This included his long-term relations with New York’s Governor Hugh Carey, NYC Mayor Abe Beame, and Chairman of the NYC Planning Commission, John Zuccotti. Fred’s buddies would prove vital in obtaining the zoning variances, tax abatements and financing which were the lynch pins of the favorable Donald was able to obtain for his building projects.

Mayor Beame publicly said on at least one occasion: “Whatever my friends Fred and Donald want in this town, they get.” (Reported in Barrett and Blair.)

The above assistance was obviously very helpful. Isn’t that what fathers are for? So why deny it?

8. Trump Debt-Handling Model: Bankruptcy

“I don’t think it’s a failure; it’s a success,” –Donald Trump to Associated Press when his casinos filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004.

Mr. Trump says he’s the best person to shepherd the U.S. through its debt crisis because he’s been there so many times himself. He has said several times that if elected president he’ll be quick to pare off a lot of the U.S. national debt.

“Pare off” is an interesting turn of phrase. It means reducing the amount by cutting some of it off. Most famously, “paring off debt” is the stuff of Chapter 11 bankruptcies. One day you (or your company) owe a billion dollars and the next day you owe only one tenth of that amount. Mr. Trump is somewhat of an expert at this.

Insolvency does not mean you are a bad person. It simply means that after borrowing money based on promises to pay it back within a certain time, you find yourself unable (or unwilling) to repay it.

A few hundred years ago in Western Europe, those found guilty of this would be put in jail. It was called debtors prison and mostly affected the very poor. The prospect of jail time was usually enough deterrent to persuade more wealthy debtors to come up with the money. But it was also a matter of honor. If someone lent you money based on your word, and you went back on that word, you’d be vilified. The Bible calls people who borrow and then don’t repay their debts “wicked”. ¹⁵

People glibly mention the four times Mr. Trump reached insolvency. The number should be 5.

Mr. Trump in an August presidential debate was quick to point out that he had never filed for personal bankruptcy and the action of putting his businesses into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy was part of his keen business sense.

In other words it wasn’t Trump who was insolvent, it was all his companies. And it wasn’t his fault. It was the fault of circumstances beyond his control. Or maybe the why was God. But if it was the Almighty, he must have been pretty pissed at Mr. Trump to target him five times.

You can better judge whose fault it was after reading this chapter.

#1 – 1991-The Trump Taj Mahal

Trump acquired the Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City in 1988. It was his third hotel in Atlantic City and he knew he couldn’t afford it. When persuading the New Jersey regulators to grant him the license to operate it he was crossing his fingers under the table as he promised them that his finances were in great shape and no way would he ever resort to financing the casino using high interest “junk bonds.” Accepting Trump’s promise at face value regulators approved his license application and he proceeded to finish constructing the largest Casino in Atlantic City. The casino opened in 1990 and within one year could not meet its loan payments.

Why? Because contrary to what he promised the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, in order to complete construction he obtained over one billion dollars from the sale of junk bonds he would have to repay at an interest rate of 14%. This brought his total debt on casinos alone to $1.4 billion dollars. Interest alone on the junk bond debt was $140 million a year. The Taj Mahal could not that.

Steve Wynn is a fellow billionaire who has successfully built and operated 10 of the largest and most famous casinos in the world including in Atlantic City. He has achieved his success without resorting to the mechanism of bankruptcy. And he had this to say about Trump’s acquisition of the Taj:

“From the very first, the Taj Mahal was an ugly child, ill conceived, without a central plan, without a clear idea of where it was going. He was destined to fail. In a town where in the last ten years no 60,000 sq. foot casino had ever been fully utilized, on what basis would someone build one with 120,000 sq. feet?”

Before long Mr. Trump was 3.4 billion dollars in debt, with the interest mounting. All 3 casinos that bore his name (Trump Castle, Trump Taj Mahal, and Trump Plaza) were headed for bankruptcy. Trump’s bankers were at his door trying to collect their money.

If an average person falls behind on his mortgage payments, the banks aren’t very sympathetic. “Pay up or we’ll force you to move out.” But Trump had given his bankers a big problem. They’d loaned him so much money that if he went down, they might go down with him. There’s an old saying: If you owe the banks a little, you’re at their mercy. If you owe the banks a lot, they’re at your mercy. In fact, the bankers had been blackmailed.

The New York Times reported that throughout the marathon talks with bankers

and bondholders that entire year, Trump continually played the same card: If he was not allowed to keep some of the casino assets, everything would be brought down and he’d tie up things interminably in bankruptcy court. They had no choice but to bail him out. So they made a deal. The banks agreed to give him more time to pay and to reduce the interest rates on the loans. In return Trump had to give the banks 1/2 his ownership and 1/2 the equity in his casinos, plus sell his yacht and his airline to make his payments. Most humiliating of all, the banks put him on a budget, putting a cap on his personal spending.

It shall not be said that Trump learned nothing from this experience. Ted Connolly, a Boston Bankruptcy attorney who studied Trump for his book The Road Out of Debt: Bankruptcy and Other Solutions to Your Financial Problems. Connolly reported that in this first bankruptcy, Trump “had a lot of personal liabilities, guarantees on the business debt, which would have wiped him out.” What Trump learned he must do was “leverage the amount of business debt to negotiate away his personal liability. And from that, he learned not to put his personal wealth at risk anymore. And so in the next three bankruptcies, he didn’t have any personal guarantees.”

#2 – 1992-Plaza Hotel Bankruptcy

Less than one year after the Taj Mahal deal was struck, Trump was back in bankruptcy court. Trump bought the Plaza for $390 million in 1988, promising to turn it into “the most luxurious hotel in the world.” By November 1992 Trump owed $550 million on the hotel and could no longer meet its debt service payments. His lenders were once again after him. This time he was forced to give up 49% of the hotel to Citibank and 5 other lenders. Donald was given more lenient to repay the money owed and maintained his position of “chief executive” though he was denied any salary or role in the day-to-day operation of the hotel.

Doug Heller, Executive Director of Consumer Watchdog, had this to say of him:

“Here’s a guy who’s failed so miserably so many times and it’s not as though he had to claw his way back after seven years in credit hell. He just said. ‘OK, this isn’t my problem anymore.’ For him, it’s just been a platform to the next moneymaking scheme.”

#3 – 2004-Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc. was a holding company for Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. It went public in 1995 and raised over $130 million dollars from investors in its initial public offering. It subsequently brought Trump Marina and Trump Taj Mahal under its umbrella. It had also accumulated $1.8 billion dollars in debt by 2004. Trump again filed for bankruptcy. This time Donald was forced to reduce his share in the company from 47% to 25%. It was here he lost control of the company and lost control of his name.

Mr. Trump’s attitude toward it? “I don’t think it’s a failure, it’s a success,” he said.

At the end of the year in an interview he said that the Trump brand is bigger than Pepsi and emphasized that Atlantic City was just a grain of sand on the beach to him. “The casinos represent less than 1% of my net work, OK?” In the wake of this bankruptcy Trump bragged to CNN: “This is a very small portion of my net worth. It’s less than 2%.”

#4 – 2008-Trump Entertainment Resorts

Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts emerged from bankruptcy in 2005 not in good shape. They were not making needed upgrades, there were problems with the casino management, the company was still burdened with a lot of debt, and now there was new competition. When the economy turned downward in 2008, so too did Trump’s real estate holdings. With casino revenues faltering they missed a $53.1 million bond interest payment. Trump and his daughter Ivanka suddenly resigned from the company’s board and were quick to distance themselves from the operation: “Other than the fact it has my name on it…I have nothing to do with the company.” But 48 hours after they resigned, the company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. The filing listed $2.6 billion in assets and $1.74 billion in liabilities across its three casinos.

This time the company had its debt reduced by the banks from nearly $2 billion down to $500 million and Trump was able to retain 10% of the company. “We’re happy. It’s a great victory.” Trump said in an interview with the New York Times.

#5 – 2014-Trump Entertainment Resorts

Since he was forced out of the company’s management, Mr. Trump has only held a minority interest in Trump Entertainment Resorts, though it still bears his name. However, he’s so quick to talk about all the many “buildings he owns” when what he really means to say is “buildings that bear his name” that it is only fitting this 5th bankruptcy be included in our survey since the company and the casino still bears his name. It is his legacy, after all. But it’s a touchy point.

When this bankruptcy was filed in 2014, there were only two Trump casinos left in Atlantic City. The third, Trump Marina Hotel & Casino had already met its demise, closed its doors and been boarded up. The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino was soon to follow and in fact closed its doors shortly thereafter in September 2014. That left the Taj Mahal as the last casino standing. It’s a sad story. Its assets were now listed as $100 million against total liabilities of $500 million. And although Trump sued to have all traces of his name removed from the property, as of April 2016 the Trump name was still alive although maybe “not so well” in Atlantic City.

Who were the real losers?

In discussing Trump, Lynn M. LoPucki, a bankruptcy expert and Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA Law School, points out that it is very unusual for anyone to have that many large businesses go through bankruptcy. He also brings to attention the fact that most of the debt Trump incurred was through bonds that were sold to the public. “People knew who Donald Trump was and for that reason were willing to trust the bonds, and they got burned,” LoPucki said. “The people who invested with him or based on his name lost money, but he himself came out pretty well.” The value in his casino stocks went from a high of $35 per share to 25 cents. Anyone who bought and held the stock lost 99% of his or her money.

There is another category of losers: the 12,000 people who once had jobs in the 3 Trump Atlantic City casinos and who are now either out of work or living under the threat of the Taj Mahal closing.¹ Some see his reckless acquisition of these properties when he could not afford them, and the fact he overextended his debt way beyond what was possible to service, as the chief causes in their loss.

No Shame, No Regret, I do what I do just to pare a little debt

Anyone can make a mistake. Anyone can lose in a bad investment. Anyone can be caught in circumstances beyond his control. And anyone can sometimes cause unintended damage or distress. But the best in us will show some remorse for loss our actions cause to others. Mr. Trump’s crashes are larger and cause greater damage than most others, but he remains unrepentant and unapologetic. He explained in a CNN interview:

“I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt. … We’ll have the company. We’ll throw it into a Chapter 11. We’ll negotiate with the banks. We’ll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on The Apprentice: ‘It’s not personal. It’s just business.’”

Bankruptcy is a very serious failure in the capitalist system. There’s nothing worse, other than fraud. From that perspective, Trump could be called one of the nation’s greatest failures.

Does that make him qualified to lead the United States out of its debt crisis?

15 Psalms 37:21

16 At this writing the Taj is teetering on the brink, rated the second poorest performing casino in an already depressed Atlantic City and under heavy debt.

9. Trump School of Scandal

Eleven years ago Mr. Trump rolled out his new Trump University. He is now facing three lawsuits from the District Attorney of New York and thousands of disgruntled students who claim they did not receive what they were promised.

The facts have been pretty well reported. In particular, Steve Brill of Time Magazine thoroughly dissected the court documents. According to Mr. Brill the two cases filed in San Diego on behalf of thousands of Trump students has Mr. Trump “defending a product that short-changed thousands of vulnerable customers, a large part of whom were elderly.” Court records show that Trump University collected approximately $40 million from its students who included veterans, retired police officers and teachers. Trump personally received $5 million for it despite his claims that he started Trump University as a charitable venture.

Students paid an initial fee of $1,495 and were then pressured into mentorship programs which they were told would reveal Mr. Trump’s secrets on how to make a million dollars in real estate. The mentorship programs cost between $9,995 and $34,995. Mr. Trump promised prospective students they would be taught by experts who he would personally select. Per court documents he now says he played no role at all in choosing them.

In promotional videos for Trump University, Mr. Trump promised: “We are going to have Professors and Adjunct Professors. We’re going to have terrific people, terrific brains…the best of the best.” Per court documents most of the teachers had no experience in real estate, let alone investments. Some were themselves involved in bankruptcy proceedings.

One of the two San Diego cases has been allowed by the judge to be brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.

7,611 people attended paying courses while another 80,000 attended free seminars. Authorities in New York and Maryland ordered Trump to remove the “U” from his school’s name due to not meeting the standards of a real university. The new name is Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.

The Better Business Bureau has varied its rating of the Trump University from A to D-minus. Charges and counter charges make it difficult to assess what its final rating was before Trump University was forced to close its doors.

Mr. Trump points to 10,000 “rave” student surveys to prove that “98% of the students were happy with what they got.” Per court documents there were only a total 7,611 paying students. So some if not all of those 10,000 surveys must have come from non-paying seminar attendees. Commenting on those surveys, Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Kim Wardlaw ruled in one of the motions that Trump lost: “the recent Ponzi-scheme scandals involving one-time financial luminaries like Bernard Madoff…demonstrate (that) victims of con artists often sing the praises of their victimizers until the moment they realize they have been fleeced.” Mr. Trump calls the legal actions against him “minor civil cases” and promises to win them all when they come to trial in about three years. He may be right. In the New York case at least, a judge ruled that many of the claims against Trump University couldn’t be pursued due to expiration of the statute of limitations. However, when Trump sued one of the first plaintiffs for slander for filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and her credit card company, the courts threw out Mr. Trump’s suit and awarded the woman $790,000 in legal fees.

The 600-pound ape with the dunce cap sitting in the corner

Per court documents one-third of the people who took the 3-day $1,495 program (2,144 out of 6,698) demanded and received refunds. Per court documents the mass of plaintiffs in the class action suits also claim they demanded refunds but were refused because they had not asked for them within 72 hours of the start of their program.

To summarize: Thirty-three percent of paying students at Trump University demanded (and received) their money back. And many more say they also demanded their money back but were refused. Conservatively, these facts demonstrate that more than 50% of Trump’s students were seriously dissatisfied. Mr. Trump does not contest these facts. He its he paid millions of dollars back to students who weren’t satisfied and cites that act as “proof” that Trump University was “honorable.”

This isn’t just a matter of somebody giving a slightly critical review like: “the professors were OK, and the curriculum was somewhat useful to me.” No. This is 50% of initially pro-Trump people feeling so betrayed by what they received from Trump University that they went to the extreme of demanding their money back.

This has nothing to do with “polls” or “approval ratings.” We are talking about the quality of Trump’s product and the degree to which he delivered the service that he’d promised his students.

The School is now closed. Whether or not Mr. Trump prevails in court against a handful of students three years from now is irrelevant. It’s not really all that important, but the Trump University was a failure and Mr. Trump should just acknowledge it.

10. Trump: “Mexico is not our friend.”

For 100 years Mexicans and other Latinos have been coming to the U.S. seeking a better life. Whether arriving legally or illegally, for the most part they have been warmly welcomed into the United States (officially and unofficially). They’ve shown themselves to be hard workers and quick learners and in many areas have become the backbone of industries such as construction and agriculture. They’ve gone to American schools, graduated from American universities, gotten married, had children, and become lawyers, doctors, engineers and emerged as valuable components of many communities in the U.S.

Yet Mr. Trump began his presidential campaign by proclaiming to the American public that, “Mexico is not our friend… They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

On his first day in office he has promised to deport 12 million Mexicans and other Hispanics. He will find out the same thing the Germans found out 75 years ago: there aren’t enough trains.

Mr. Trump has given the clue to understanding why he thinks like this: he’s itted he gets his information on international affairs mostly from TV. Way back when he was a kid he undoubtedly formed his view of Latinos from watching Pancho Villa movies.

Pancho was a real bandito, but one with panache. He went to Hollywood to personally star in movies made about his colorful life.

What Mr. Trump never found out (maybe because his father’s TV was broken that day) is that Villa went from bandit to revolutionary general and eventually became a Mexican national hero.

Time moves on, but Trump’s ideas not so much.

American Trade with Mexico

The agreement governing trade between Mexico and the U.S.A. is called NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). The agreement was negotiated by a Republican President (George H.W. Bush) and ratified by Republican majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in 1994. Trump says that NAFTA is a “terrible deal” because it creates a “trade deficit” for the U.S. In other words more is imported from Mexico than is exported to it. He didn’t notice that 14 of the top 15 trading partners with the U.S. also send more goods and services to the U.S. than they receive in return. (Of those top 15 countries, only the Netherlands, ing for 1.6% of total trade exports sends less to the U.S. than she imports.)

Another thing Mr. Trump did not observe is that all these countries could not be selling to Americans if Americans weren’t all too willing to buy. They do it because we Americans have become the most acquisitive people in the history of the world. We will buy 3 shirts when 1 will do, drive 2 cars when we can actually afford only 1, buy houses that exceed our budget, and will recklessly go deeper and deeper into debt to feed this habit.

Twenty-two years ago Canada and Mexico entered into NAFTA with uncertainty. Now Canada has become America’s #1 trading partner with Mexico becoming the second largest U.S. export market and #3 in overall trade.

Together Mexico and Canada for over 1/3 of the international trade with the USA. Economists and most interest groups consider NAFTA has been of economic benefit to all 3 countries and to the region as a whole.

So why does Trump go after it so hard? Because blaming others is what Mr. Trump does.

The American economy is not well. Many American workers live from paycheck to paycheck. Many work two jobs to make ends meet. Many others cannot find work. It’s so easy to blame Mexico for “stealing” American jobs or to blame China or blame the Ford motor company or Democrats. Build a wall! Impose tariffs on Mexican products! Bully U.S. corporations with factories abroad! Such threats are easy to make. Just because a trade war is easy to start does not mean it will result in improved conditions, either in the US or anywhere else.

What can we expect to happen if Mr. Trump starts a trade war by, for example, making good on his promise to impose a 35% tariff on all Mexican made automobile parts? What happens if he shreds NAFTA? For starters, millions of jobs will be lost on both sides of the border. And in Mexico, the emergence of a radicalized political party with greatly cooled attitudes toward the U.S. would make future relations between the two countries much more problematic.

Trump knows his course of action can do nothing but cause trouble. How do we know that? Currently class action lawsuits brought against Trump and Trump University are being presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Trump loudly complained that he could not get a fair ruling from Judge Curiel because of his Mexican heritage. (Note: Curiel was born in Indiana and is as much an American as Trump.)

Trump knows that his remarks about and threats to Mexicans and Americans of Hispanic descent are incendiary enough to potentially cause the judge to look upon Trump with disdain. Of course Trump could avoid this by better respecting people and treating others the way he would wish to be treated by them. Instead he blames the Judge even though the Judge has gone out of his way to be fair to Trump such as by ruling to postpone the Trump University trial until after the November election.

There are several ways to accomplish things on the international stage. One is by

cooperation and coordination. The other is by heavy-handed threats and extortion. Diplomats and great leaders use the first method. Bullies and mafia types rely on the second.

Fortunately NAFTA is a treaty. The U.S. Congress has ratified it. Trump, even if elected, cannot just cancel it on a whim. But if he is elected, and a Republican congress is returned with him, NAFTA could soon become a relic of the past.

Do Walls Work?

There was certainly a time when they did. But not very recently. A thousand years ago a wall encircled every city worthy of the name. For a few hundred years, a city wall proved a good strategy to keep gold and citizenry safe; and then it wasn’t. Ways were developed to breach walls, going under or over or through them. Gatekeepers were bribed, and trickery employed such as that which gave rise to the famous “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

The Great Wall of China

The greatest wall in history is the Great Wall of China. It was begun 300 years before Christ by Emperor Qin, largely to find work for his soldiers who, at the time, had nothing better to do. It took fifteen hundred years to complete. Aside from the material cost, over 400,000 men died building it. The Great Wall of China was built atop the ridges of mountains. So a potential enemy was often looking at a climb of over 2-3,000 feet (1,000m) of sheer cliff before even reaching the wall. Then he’d be facing the man-made base which added another 15 to 50 feet (5-15m). The wall itself was some 30 feet (10m) high in most places, topped by ramparts another 30 feet (10m) or so higher.

Compare the enormity of the Great Wall of China with the dinky 21-foot (6.5m) wall Trump’s is proposing for the Mexican border at ground level.

And the ironic thing? It never effectively prevented invaders from entering China from the north. Not even a little. Not even once. Those who came ed right through.

The Berlin Wall

The most important wall of the 20th century was the Berlin Wall, built by the East German army in 1961 on orders from the Russian Premier. This wall was made of concrete, 12 feet (3.5m) high. Its stated aim was to keep western troops out of East , but it also served to halt the stream of departing East Germans, said to number as many as 1500 per day. The western allies responded by constructing their own facing boundary wall.

How did that work out? Not so well. The Wall immediately became the focal point of tension between east and west and served to escalate those tensions. Soon Russian and American tanks were facing off against each other at “Checkpoint Charlie.” The west feared an imminent invasion from Soviet Russia. Troops and tanks continued to increase on both sides of the wall. It was serious enough that American President Kennedy considered the use of nuclear weapons. Washington and Moscow looked poised for war.

And then Kennedy diffused it. How? Not with more troops or bigger tanks. Not with a higher wall. He did it with communication. He sent his brother Robert to set up a back channel to allow personal communications between the White House and the Kremlin. Through that direct link assurances from each leader led

to the withdrawal of forces from both sides. A wall is the opposite of communication. You can build the shiniest, most beautiful walls but if you want to resolve situations, you will eventually need to resort to communication.

The dismantling of the Berlin Wall was a great event for Europe. I went to Berlin shortly after the wall came down. It was impossible to tell who was happier: those from the East side or those from the West. The piece of the wall I brought back with me still adorns my office. Not as a trophy, but rather a little reminder that walls may not be the answer.

Mr. Trump’s Mexican Wall

It is the most frequently crossed international boundary in the world, with hundreds of thousands of legal crossings made every day. Two things Mr. Trump may not have noticed: 1)over 1/3 of that border has already been walled off; and 2) After four decades that brought the 12 million current immigrants—most of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped and may have even reversed according to the most recent data from the Pew Research Center. It is estimated that the next 700 miles of wall would cost up to 10 million dollars per mile or even more in some stretches. No one will commit to a hard number because it’s clear the costs will escalate as soon as the project begins. The final figure to finish the wall could well exceed one trillion dollars.

To paraphrase the responses by the current and two former Mexican presidents to Trump’s plan: “No way, José.” When Trump heard that he pushed back: “The height of the wall just increased by 10 feet.” Mexicans smiled at that and said to themselves that Trump could build it as high as he wanted because they wouldn’t be jumping over it anyway. Mexicans apparently excel at the art of tunnel building. See photo of an actual tunnel UNDER the wall. Close to 100 tunnels have been discovered along the border in the last 8 years including “super tunnels” reinforced with concrete and equipped with railway tracks, lights and ventilation systems. These tunnels can be 600 yards long, 25 yards below the surface and up to five feet high. It has been estimated that for every tunnel found, ten more remain unfound. A Mexican wall would have little to no effect on this tunnel traffic.

It is not improbable for Mr. Trump to get Mexico to pay for a wall through threats or blackmail or various other pressures applied to an already struggling Mexican president. But this is a case where winning would be tantamount to losing. If the Mexican President folds under Trump’s duress and agrees to build it, he’d be considered a leper amongst his own people and would never again win an election. Others much less friendly to the United States will be elected in his stead. And we’d have created an enemy at our southern border when Mexico is the second largest destination for American exports in the world.

I was in Mexico City the week of March Super Tuesday. After the Republican debate that followed Trump’s wins, Mexican newspapers were full of pictures of Trump heralding: “The Phony,” “The Liar.” And the people I interviewed about it were puzzled about why Mr. Trump was trying to pick a fight with them. This is not some new problem. President Eisenhower was faced with the same situation 65 years ago. Over a million illegal crossings of our southern border were estimated to be occurring each year. He solved it with only 1,075 border patrol agents, about 10% of the number employed today. Eisenhower was known for his tough approach to the rule of law. He first noisily deported a small number of workers found to be in the USA illegally. But at the same time he implemented a real solution instituting a legalized guest-worker program,

permitting up to 400,000 Mexicans per year to in their country for temporary jobs in the U.S. With current technology this program could be reimplemented and expanded in a secure way that would be colossally cheaper and far more effective than a $1 trillion wall.

And speaking about security, there are those who like to assert the idea that the wall will somehow improve our security from terrorist attacks. And how would it do that? None of the 9/11 terrorists came into the United States across the southern border. None of the perpetrators of any of the terrorist actions committed on U.S. soil in the past 10 years swam across the Rio Grande River. Why would they when they can fly first class from Turkey or Madagascar, or Spain or Italy?

What’s more, security is a key element of NAFTA. Police forces and the military branches of the three NAFTA countries work together on illegal immigration, drug interdiction, and otherwise policing the borders. If Trump manages to sour relations between the U.S. and Mexico, police and military cooperation will inevitably worsen, and he will end up reducing border security on the MexicoU.S. border, not improving it.

As for drug interdiction, see next section.

Will a Mexican Wall ease America’s drug problem?

Not much, unfortunately. Of the 4 main types of illegal drugs (heroin, methamphetamines, marihuana and cocaine) it is mostly the cocaine traffic crossing the Mexican border that proponents of a wall expect it to interdict. But according to the U.N. Office of Drug Trafficking there are at least 3 routes on which cocaine can and does travel from Colombia & Peru into the U.S. Currently most of the traffic goes through the Mexican border, but only a few years ago more than 50% was coming in by sea direct to USA coasts such as Florida and California. Those routes are still available to the cartels if too much resistance is encountered at the Mexican border. A wall is a case of plugging up one hole and watching another open up somewhere else. Drugs are causing terrible harm to our society. But as Atlantic City’s Public Prosecutor said, “You have to eliminate the demand for them in order to stop the criminal distribution of drugs.” There are solutions that could curb that demand, but Mr. Trump has never shown he was aware of them. Building a wall and instantly deporting 13 million Hispanics (as Mr. Trump has promised to do on his first day in office) would have exactly three effects on U.S. communities: 1) the street price of drugs would skyrocket, leading to 2)increased crime; and 3)With the Mexican cartels being disrupted through the deportation process, the path would be cleared for Trump’s chums in the American Mafia to take back control over drug distribution within the U.S.

Latinos for Trump

Although Trump loves to brag: “Latinos love me,” polls in the US show the opposite. Only a very small number of Hispanics actually him.

Diplomats of just about every Latin American country have (officially or unofficially) expressed confusion, worry, or derision of Mr. Trump. Many high profile Latin American stars have denounced him based on the concept that an attack on the Mexican community is an attack on all Hispanic communities in

the U.S. and the rest of Latin America. The President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto , has likened him to Mussolini and Hitler.

A notable exception is the leftist Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. His view is that a Trump presidency would be bad for the United States but good for Latin America because it would encourage left-wing movements in the region. He points to the rise of progressive leaders who came to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela during the reign of President George H.W. Bush and makes the comparison that Trump’s “primitive” politics which alienate much of the world would have a similar effect.

The only other major world leader routing for Trump is Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, and we won’t be trying to make the case that Putin’s interests are intended to secure the prosperity and success of the United States.

11. China and the Currency Manipulation

“Internationalists? Aren’t we all? There’s no escape, the world’s too small.”

Albert Einstein is one of the most well known people of our time. He was a proud German who nevertheless renounced his homeland when it became a dictatorship and actively fought against it during the Second World War. You could attribute that to his being a Jew, but if so, he was a very strange Jew, indeed. One who wouldn’t be caught dead in a synagogue. An “Internationalist” is what he really was—someone who advocates greater economic and political cooperation between nations. This is not an absolute condition. Any relationship between nations can be subject to greater or lesser cooperation.

America once thought itself totally immune from military attack what with huge oceans protecting its eastern and western flanks, an undeveloped Mexico to the south and a few Royal Canadian Mounted Police riding horseback across the Canadian wastes. We were untouchable. Over time, things like intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear suitcase bombs, nuclear submarines, and the threat of Star Wars satellite laser weapons gradually eroded that security. The events of 9/11 brought that era officially to an end. The US public could no longer bury their heads in their flat screen TVs. For the first time we saw ourselves vulnerable.

Currency is the mechanism by which we exchange goods and services amongst ourselves and between countries. Republican candidates, particularly Mr. Trump, have placed currency manipulation at the top of their list of solutions to trade problems. Currency manipulation is the act of artificially holding down the value of a currency in order to make one’s exports more competitive internationally. According to a recent IMF report, over half the world’s countries practice currency manipulation in one form or another.

The Financial crisis of 2007-2008 began with a crash of American securities tied to the burst U.S. housing bubble. In one fell swoop almost all the liquidity was sucked out of the U.S. economy, driving it to the brink of collapse.

Had that been allowed to occur, the value of the U.S. dollar would have fallen down a very deep hole. To prevent it, the U.S. government authorized the Fed to prop up the U.S. dollar by eventually infusing over $ 700 billion into the economy. Other nations (notably China and the European Community) came to our rescue by purchasing additional U.S. bonds. The fix worked. The U.S. economy did not collapse and neither did the world economy. But can we call the actions we took at that time to bolster the value of our dollar anything other than currency manipulation?

Now, Mr. Trump has China in his cross hairs, blaming it for just about every domestic economic problem we face. He threatens to “declare China a currency manipulator” on his first day in office and use that as a pretense for applying high tariffs to Chinese imports. Making China’s monetary policy the scapegoat for all the economic problems besetting the U.S. economy is simplistic. Currency wars begin in an atmosphere of insufficient internal growth. The country that starts down this road typically finds itself with high unemployment, low or declining growth, a weak banking sector and deteriorating public finances. In these circumstances if we are so inept as to be unable to generate sufficient growth through purely internal means, then the promotion of exports through a devalued currency becomes the growth engine of last resort.¹⁷ Does this sound like a familiar scenario?

We should take every possible action and give every assistance to persuade American companies to keep their U.S. based factories operating as well as persuading American companies with foreign manufacturing facilities to relocate them back to the US. Unfortunately, getting a few thousand jobs back from China is not going to solve our credit card debt, mortgage debt, student debt, health care problems or the impending crisis in social security. It’s not even

going to solve unemployment.

An approach is called for that kick starts the U.S. economy in a direction that forces it to produce products and services that are seen as valuable to the rest of the world. The United States economy is still strong enough to do this and we should have enough innovators and entrepreneurs to figure out a workable program.

If Mr. Trump had made the currency manipulator claim 10 years ago it might have had some merit, but in the past ten years China’s currency has fallen 35% with respect to the U.S. dollar. In early 2016 China had to work to keep the Chinese Yuan DOWN, which means if allowed to float free, the Yuan would in all likelihood RISE with respect to the dollar. In other words, while China may have been a currency manipulator in the past, it no longer qualifies as such.

If Mr. Trump becomes President and makes good on his promise to declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office, China would interpret it (correctly) as the first shot in a currency war. The U.S. economy is not strong enough to play a Russian-roulette-currency-war. China does not want a currency war either. But if we start one, they have several options, including going it alone. China has cultivated many strategic partners amongst its neighbors and around the world. If they choose to challenge the U.S. dollar as the planet’s main reserve currency, considerable economic dysfunction could befall the U.S. There would be consequences for China as well if she did this. But economists say that the consequences to the U.S. could be catastrophic if China were to desert the U.S. dollar.

Tread softly, Mr. Trump.

17 Rickards, James. “Currency Wars”

12. Trump Wins #6 Spot on Economist Global List

“I’ve been a closer all my life, It’s what I do — I win. Other people don’t win. I know more about winning than anyone.” –Donald Trump

The Economist Magazine is a weekly English language newspaper, founded by a businessman and banker, which has been in continuous publication since 1843. Though edited in its London Offices, more than half of its readership is in the U.S. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is an independent business within the Economist Group that provides countries, industries, and management groups with forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis.

In March 2016, the EIU released a list of the Top 10 Global Risks.

Citing his hostile attitude to free trade, his alienation of Mexico and China, and his militaristic tendencies towards the Middle East, the EIU rated a Trump presidency the 6th most serious risk facing the world today. (Note Mr. Trump’s risk score (12) is the same as that for Jihad terrorists.)

Here is the complete list:

This is not just the opinion of one reporter. Most world leaders currently share this fear. To even get the chance to use his negotiating ability, Mr. Trump will need to get these leaders willing to sit down with him with at least a neutral attitude. Should Mr. Trump become president, to gain acceptance of any of his plans, he will have to persuade the rest of the world that their fears are groundless.

13. The Man on TV Who Fires People

After he was a successful real estate titan and an unsuccessful casino operator, and before he was a presidential candidate, Donald Trump was the man on TV who fires people. Despite promoting the concept of win-win negotiation in his books and lectures, the Apprentice is an example of anything but that.

Sixteen candidates are chosen to compete. On the first day they are split into 2 teams and given tasks to accomplish. At first the candidates try to work together as a team but the 16 candidates soon realize that the real game Trump has created for them involves getting rid of each other. As one after another of the candidates is fired by Mr. Trump, the season becomes more and more tense and sordid as the candidates descend into savage actions.

Real organizational skill consists of establishing a team with a common purpose and keeping the in good communication with each other. You can see a glimmer of it in the family team of Mr. Trump and his children, who all seem to get along great in the business. But nothing could be further from that than in Trump’s “reality” world of the Apprentice.

The Apprentice may have shown up some of Mr. Trump’s organizational weaknesses. Perhaps the biggest is his penchant for knocking the hats off his executives. In the first episode of the first season, the men have doubled their money in the fulfillment of their given task. Doubling your money in a single day is not something to scoff at, particularly when the men had never met each other before much less worked together. In any real life scenario the men would be validated.

The women on the other hand tripled their money. They did it by selling a little sex with the lemonade. “You buy this glass of lemonade for $5 and it will come with a kiss.” If you believed in “gene pools” as Mr. Trump does, you might wonder if he considered this was expected behavior based on the source of his grandfather’s fortune. But there’s no need to go back that far: every casino engages in the “flesh” game in greater or lesser degree, including all those with which Mr. Trump was involved. The Apprentice would better be called an “Unreality” show since the twisted framework of the challenge represents as unrealistic a scenario as the one in Lord of the Flies.

Real apprenticeship is a valuable operation in business and in life. Once a period of training is completed, the apprentice spends time practicing what he has learned under a skilled practitioner. This is a vital element in perfecting skills in a whole host of professions from chefs, plumbers, carpenters, photographers, designers and advertising executives, to Chief Financial Officers and Chief Executive Officers. Trump’s father spent time apprenticing him on building sites early in his career. If Mr. Trump thinks his TV program has anything to do with how a successful apprenticeship program looks in the real world, it may be because he became too ensnarled in a dog-eat-goat casino corporate business environment.

“But it’s just a reality show,” you might say. “It’s just Hollywood.”

Not so much. Al Glasgow, Trump’s loyal Atlantic City casino consultant, in describing the Atlantic City Trump Team to David Johnston, painted a picture of constant chaos, office intrigues and strategizing how best to get rid of the executive in the next office. Glasgow just shook his head in dismay and disbelief at the costly internal warfare he called “disorganized crime,” among the Trump executives. “Instead of bringing in the business and making money, they’re all stabbing each other in the back, all busy trying to figure out how to fuck the other guy and get on Donald’s good side.”

He was talking about real life in the Trump Casino Lane, not Reality TV.

14. How Much Is Trump Worth?

So how much is Donald Trump worth anyway? Answering that question has become quite a sport among news and financial analysts, not made any easier by Mr. Trump who changes the figure seemingly at whim.

In 1990 when he claimed to be worth $3 billion but was unable to make the interest payments on his loans, his bankers put his net worth at $295 million. (See Johnston.)

In 2005, Deutsche Bank valued his net worth at $640 million at the same time Mr. Trump was calling it $3.6 billion.

In July 2015 Trump claimed a net worth of $10 billion while Forbes put it closer to $4 billion.

When asked how he computed his net worth in a 2007 deposition, he told lawyers, “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feeling.”

The subject of his net worth has been rather a sore point for Mr. Trump. He once sued author Timothy O’Brien for $5 billion for lowballing his net worth. (Trump lost the case.) CNN reported that Trump inflates his net worth by listing in his assets billions of dollars of “goodwill” at which he values the Trump name. (Ask the now defunct Trump Atlantic City casinos how much that name was worth to them.)

You see the word “Trump” emblazoned on a building. But does he own it? Did he build it? Or did someone just pay out some money for the right to use his name? Take the 52-story building known as the Trump International Hotel and Tower. It’s featured on the Trump Hotel Collection website. Trump refers to it as one of his properties. You would think because Trump’s name is outside in bright lights, that he owns it. Not exactly. All he really owns is some of the condos, the restaurant inside, the parking garage below, and the antennas on the roof. Same with a beautiful new hotel in downtown Manhattan called the Trump Soho. He didn’t design it and he didn’t build it nor did he invest any capital in it. But it has his name on it.

We’ll probably never know his real net worth since his is a private company and he need not disclose his assets. And who cares, anyway? None of the above comes even close to addressing the issue of Mr. Trump’s true worth. That is because they only consider the things he has, when there is far more to Mr. Trump than that.

There is more to Trump than greed

“My whole life I’ve been greedy.” –Donald J. Trump

Who a person is and what he has easily get confused. True, the most obvious things about a person are often the articles he owns. We are quick to judge people by their possessions because they are easy to see and to count. Five houses are bigger if not better than 1 house; kings have palaces while most people would tell you there’s nothing worse than having no house at all. Political pundits fixate on spreadsheets because they are so easy to quantify. But most

people agree that the figures on a financial statement do not tell you very much about a person.

Take presidents. Were Mr. Trump to win the next election, he would become the richest-ever U.S. president. But the number of zeros next to a president’s name has never been a measure of his potential to succeed. Of two of the greatest Presidents in U.S. history, Lincoln was amongst the poorest while George Washington was the wealthiest.

What they had in common was their actions. Both of them placing service to the country—and all the people living in it—ahead of any personal interests. What they also had in common was their integrity.

Day after day Mr. Trump seeks to awe us with the amount and grandeur of his possessions. In a 2016 speech in Boca Raton, Florida, he sought to prove his value to the Florida attendees (and demonstrate what a great President he’d be) by pointing to his assets. “Nobody has ever run for president…who’s done what I did… with such great assets.” He then honed in on Florida, “Speaking of Florida, Doral¹⁸. We love Doral, in Miami. Hundreds of acres owned by Donald Trump. Some of the greatest assets in the world.” One way or another it comes up in almost every speech. Recently we heard, “I love South Carolina. I have great properties in South Carolina.” That’s great that he has golf courses in South Carolina. But so what?

In Jan. 2016, at his Wounded Warrior event, he gave us a rare glimpse into what has motivates him:

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States. I want to grab all that money. I want to be greedy for the United States.”

What do you, the reader, think about greed? Jesus said: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”¹ Greed is abhorred in the Book of Proverbs, by the Prophet Muhammad and by every other religion and culture. A greedy politician may be the last thing the USA needs right now.

And truly, there’s more to Mr. Trump than greed.

Who or what he is

“It’s what I do—I win. Other people don’t win. I know more about winning than anyone.” –Donald J. Trump

Who the heck is that Mr. Trump anyway? You see pundits shaking their heads in bewilderment when trying to explain him. Is he basically an extraordinarily successful guy who always wins and whose experience will allow him to fix the things ailing America? Or is he the fast-drawing racist bully who can pull a gun faster than John Wayne and stare down bears better than Davy Crockett?

I’d say no to both of the above.

I’d say a year ago he was not a serious presidential contender. But he might have been a little bored. Somewhere along the line, on a slow news day, it occurred to

him that it might be fun to run for president. He never expected to win. Not for a minute. But once he announced, he found himself in the race and he had to reinvent himself. That’s actually not a bad thing. We should all reinvent ourselves from time to time.

Now that he’s just one election away from becoming the leader of the free world, in the few quiet moments that he may still be able to find in the midst of a hectic presidential race, he realizes he’s in way over his head and that running for president (not to mention having to run the country if he wins) is no cakewalk.

Despite all the nasty connections listed in this book, that’s not really “who he is.” Roy Cohn? Roger Stone? The Casino Cartel? The real Donald Trump never needed any of those to succeed. They’ve only held him back.

But now they’ve somehow glommed onto him. When you hear him talk irresponsibly about nuclear weapons, he’s just mimicking Sheldon Adelson; when you hear him accusing Hillary Clinton of being ‘an enabler’ he’s just exactly parroting Roger Stone. As expressed several times earlier, he needs to take steps to extricate himself from the effect of these folks. Whether or not he wins the presidency, that is the only way forward for him

If he were really to throw off those chains we’d feel the shock of that explosion around the world.

And what would he achieve by doing that? The biggest thing is that he’d be able to start trusting himself again.

18 Trump National Doral Miami, a golf community in the ‘Trump collection’

19 Luke 12:15

15. Making America Great Again—What Does That Even Mean?

There are many things Americans may disagree with or dislike about the U.S. Thanks to our First Amendment right to free speech, people get to voice those grievances. The problem is that almost everyone, including most politicians, simply leaves it at that: carping criticism. Most of the time criticism of others is merely an ission that one has failed to take responsibility for something. To be of much use, criticism had better be the first half of a sentence that ends with: and now we’ll __________!!!!

If one is promising to make America great again, he’d better have a pretty good picture of what he means by “great” as well as an understanding of the mechanisms that are currently making things “ungreat.” Anyone unable to be more specific than “make America GREAT” had better skip it because the “it” is never going to happen.

Here’s an example of the right way. In 1928 Herbert Hoover ran for president on a platform of “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” That was clear enough for everyone to visualize and he knew he’d at least be able to make good on the chickens. Compare that to a campaign of: “something great in every pot.” I’d be fine with the chicken, personally. Vegans maybe not so much. But the nonspecific “something great” in your pot might turn out to be stewed cat’s livers.

The simple formula most successful politicians employ is:

Free the society from those things he sees wrong with it.

Use force to demand it do what is right. Use his personal abilities and charm, and carry forward with great persistence, decision and thoroughness to enlist and overcome barriers to ultimately bring about political reform or the improvement of a failing country.

The first thing that can go wrong with that plan is the person executing it fails to see what is really wrong. The second pitfall is he uses force to demand things that lead the country in a counter-productive or even destructive direction.

A Trump shortcoming is that he does not seem to ever look at himself at all. When was the last time you heard him apologize for anything or it he was wrong. That reduces the insight he might otherwise be able to bring to other more important issues. He tries to make up for that lack with what we called in an earlier chapter his “Star” power.

It is said that Mr. Trump doesn’t consult polls and has no actual advisors, or foreign policy experts, or speechwriters or campaign managers. (At least any that he listens to.) He depends on his ability to “glow” things right. And when that doesn’t work he roars. And when he can’t roar he fights battles. But when he ends up fighting fellow Republicans—that turns out to be not such a great solution. His greatest potential downfall is making far too heavy a use of his “glowing” skill just because it’s easy. He’s always been so good at this one thing that he never looked much to other skills.

Mr. Trump will be the first to it he has an imperfect understanding of the overall international situation and no idea of the organizational steps needed to control a beast as grotesque as the U.S. Government. Observers have more than once commented that Trump’s billion-dollar company is run more like a mom and pop operation than a Fortune 500 endeavor. The flirtations with casinos, his bankruptcies, and his recent reliance on name branding rather than building things of value, does not mean he can not begin to create more valuable things. It

just means he hasn’t done it as yet. Maybe running for president is a first step.

Besides the Mexican wall, his clearest stated plan is grabbing a big pile of cash from Mexico and China. This is somewhat illogical since Mexico can’t afford it and we owe more money to China than they owe to us. This is not a scenario where Mr. Trump or anyone else can just magnetize his way through to a victory.

Making America Great Again means getting Americans productive by giving them the means (tools and raw materials) to make things that they want to make and that are valuable to themselves and to others. And then, not standing in their way and letting them get on with it.

On the international front it will require coordination and cooperation with other countries, even when meeting threats.

16. A Personal Appeal to Mr. Trump

By the time this book reaches the streets, Mr. Trump will likely be the Republican nominee, or an Independent nominee, or he may even be Mr. President.

Win or lose, the message still needs to be sent.

Mr. Trump, at this writing people are deciding whether to vote for you or not. Hillary is a known quantity. That’s both her strength and her weakness. You, on the other hand, are almost totally unpredictable. Many who vote for you think it unlikely you’ll make good on your promises to make things better, but have decided that even a slim chance is better than “same old, same old.”

Others fear you’ll destroy our 250-year old American experiment or even bring the world to its knees. It’s a high-stakes gamble. But so is democracy. With all its flaws, there’s no arguing that it’s worked fairly well for us so far.

Mr. Trump. If you look at your history, from when you actually built buildings in New York all the way to the present, not one of your projects, not one of your companies, not one of your dealings with Mayors, City Commissioners or Governors, neither your casinos nor your TV shows—not one of these dealings was based on democracy. You didn’t achieve anything by conducting a vote and having the next move decided by the opinions of a majority. You didn’t make your first million or your first billion by caucusing municipal officers or the tenants in your buildings. You hated being beholden to a board of directors.

This is not a criticism. In many ways you are no different from the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Mellons. They were called rogues and they were called Robber Barons, yet they ended up becoming models of success in our country.

They were all businessmen, just like you. They also shared your disdain for politicians. When Republicans once tried to recruit David Rockefeller to run for president, his famous response was, “Why should I take a demotion?” With such contempt he would have made a terrible president, and he probably knew it— David Rockefeller was no dummy. But he was no doubt also aware that being a president required the use of a different skill set.

When you’ve run campaigns to get a zoning variance or tax abatement approved by a city council so you could erect a building, what strategies did you employ?

Anyone not fully backing you became the enemy. You surrounded them on every side. You hired their own people away from them. You set them against each other. You delayed their progress in hopes they’d give up. You made threats, offered enticements, exaggerated potential dangers, was careless with the truth, and vilified anyone who disagreed with you. Sometimes this worked and sometimes not. But in pursuing this strategy many came to detest you.

You’ll say that winning a popularity contest or making friends was not a part of the exercise. So what if a Mayor of New York comes to hate you as several have? So what if he comes to believe that your attitudes and methods are shoddy and that you are ripping people off and ripping the city off? What could he really do? He doesn’t have nuclear weapons and he is pretty much constrained by certain rules of polite behavior.

That’s NOT the case when you’re facing a head of state such as Vladimir Putin

over any of the contentious issues that divide us, or consulting religious fanatics in search of a solution in the Middle East, or negotiating trade agreements with the Peoples Republic of China, or persuading governments such as Mexico, Venezuela or Colombia to your ideas.

Putin has nuclear weapons. So does North Korea. Pissing them off has considerably greater consequences than pissing off a Mayor of Atlantic City.

To succeed you need to learn to temper that star power of yours and use the softer arts. You need to try to treat others, as you’d want them to treat you. You’ve made it clear that you hate others lying about you or exaggerating your shortcomings. Well, they may feel exactly the same way about it.

Never mind that your rudeness may not be “presidential.” It’s not even good manners. Throughout history certain values have differentiated barbarians from cultured persons. These virtues have been universally revered and attributed to wise men and gods alike. They include treating people with justice, loyalty, fairness, honesty, kindness and comion.

Such treatment inherently rejects the use of disrespect, impoliteness, hate, or disbelief.

People who seek to live by these aren’t weak. They’re wise.

Every Boy Scout in the world learns to live by a version of these. Even the Marines know about them.²

Mr. Trump, should you become the president and fail to adopt these virtues, the consequences of your presidency may be severe.

People round the world certainly fear such an eventuality.

What if you try to impose bullyboy politics on the world at large? What if you use the clenched fist to pressure friends (even if cloaked in a silk glove)? What if you use callous brinksmanship on enemies that drive them to irrational acts?

Mr. Trump, lots of people talk about making a better world. But you may actually be in a position to do it.

If you become president you would do well to give serious thought to the above cautions. a) Eliminate a dangerous vulnerability by coming clean of all past or present mafia connections and sideline the casino crowd, b) practice the virtues, and c) surround yourself with really good people who you can trust to help you in the ballbreaking adventure ahead.

A word to foreign leaders

No one can claim to speak for national leaders or suggest actions for them.

I hope they will draw patience from the understanding that one of the strengths of America is that a president can never last more than 8 years and if he acts destructively he will usually not last more than 4, and maybe even much less

than that.

Dr. Ben Carson, a latter-day and unlikely Trump er, famously pointed out that even if Trump “turns out not to be such a great president … we’re only looking at four years.”

To fellow Americans

As an aside, to my fellow Americans I say this. If Mr. Trump ends up as president and starts wreaking havoc on domestic or international fronts, if his inauguration is accompanied by a wave of tyranny wafting over our land, I urge you to avoid direct opposition to him.

Avoid violent conflict.

Much can be achieved by simply withdrawing your from tyrannical actions.

No one can make you follow illegal laws. You do not have to actively an oppressive government.

In a country such as ours, should Mr. Trump foment autocratic or repressive actions, if enough people withdraw their cooperation he will not last very long.

20 A list of virtues with explanations can be found in a little booklet entitled “The Way to Happiness” by L. Ron Hubbard.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to those who helped me in this endeavor, both directly and indirectly. That includes the librarians at the University of Delaware’s Morris Library, Widener University’s Wolfgram Memorial Library, the Atlantic County Library System and the Atlantic City Free Public Library Heritage Collection. Thanks to the folks in Atlantic City who shared their experiences with me including the casino employees who shall not be named.

Wayne Barrett’s original reporting of Mr. Trump’s mob ties is an investigative classic and his encouragement was particularly important. David Johnston’s voyage into the world of the Casino Cartel should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in economics or public service. Glenda Blair’s back-stories & dissections of the Trump bankruptcies make for fascinating reading. Tim O’Brien’s insight into Donald the man, John O’Donnell’s of Trump’s failed foray into Atlantic City, and William Hurt III’s incisive look into his activities are all outstanding works. The magnitude of Atlantic City’s political greed, corruption and mob-influence, and the ruinous role of the casinos, is nowhere better told than in the book by Ovid Demaris.

Thanks also to my wife, not just for her often valiant over the last 8 months I’ve sweated over this project, but for the decades of constancy, love and she has lavished upon me.

And, finally, to my sister, Fran, for turning my hodge-podge of a manuscript into the semblance of a book, I give double thanks. She’s the best.

Bibliography

Click your ereader’s Back button to return to your place in the book. Anastasia, George. Blood and Honor. Inside the Scarfo Mob. William Morrow and Company, New York. 1991. Barrett, Wayne. The Deals and the Downfall. Harper Collins. 1992. Blair, Gwenda. The Trumps: Three Generations that Built an Empire. Simon and Schuster, 2000. Blair, Gwenda, Donald Trump, Simon and Schuster, 2003. Blair, Gwenda. The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate. Simon and Schuster, 2015. Block, Alan. East Side-West Side: Organizing Crime in New York. 1930-1950. Transaction Publishers, 1983. Clancy, Tom, and Stiner, General Carl (Ret.), Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces, Berkeley Books, New York, 2002 Crawford, Phillip Jr., The Mafia and the Gays, Create Space Independent Publishing, 2015. Critchley, David. The origin of organized crime in America : the New York City mafia, 1891-1931 Routledge Advances in American History, 2009. Cummings, John. Mobster: The Improbable Rise and Fall of John Gotti and His Gang. Warner Books. London. 1991. D’Antonio, Michael. Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2015. Demaris, Ovid. The Boardwalk Jungle, Bantam Books, New York, 1986.

Fischer, Steve. When the Mob Ran Vegas. MJF Books, 2007 Gomes, Danielle & Bonnsinga, Jay. Hit Me! Fighting the Las Vegas Mob by the Numbers. Lyons Press, Conn. USA, 2013. Hortis, C. Alexander, The Mob and the City: The Hidden History of How the Mafia Captured New York, Prometheus Books, 2014. Hurt, Harry III. Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. Johnston, David, Temples of Chance: How American Inc. bought out Murder Inc. to win control of the Casino Business. Doubleday, NY, 1992. O’Donnell, John R. and Rutherford, James. TRUMPED! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump — His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall. Simon and Schuster, 1991. O’Brien, Timothy L. TrumpNation: The art of being the Donald. Grand Central Publishing, 2007. Rickards, James. Currency Wars: the making of the next global crisis. Penguin Books, 2012 Simon, Bryant. Boardwalk of Dreams, Oxford University Press, NY, 2004 Slater, Robert, No Such Thing as Over-Exposure, Inside the Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump, Prentice-Hall, 2005. Trump, Donald J. with Tony Schwartz. The Art of the Deal. Warner Books, 1987. Trump, Donald J. with Gordon, Michael G. Entrepreneurship 101, John Wiley & Sons, 2010. (Foreword and Chapter 1 written by DJT) Trump, Donald J. with McIver, Meredith. Think Like a Champion, Vanguard Press, 2009. Trump, Donald J. Wealth Building 101, John Wiley & Sons, 2007.

Trump, Donald J. with McIver and Kiyosaki, Robert T. with Lechter, Sharon, Why We Want You to be Rich, Rich Press, 2006. Trump, Donald J. Time to Get Tough, Regnery Publishing, 2011. Tuccille, Jerome, Trump: Saga of America’s Masterbuilder, Donald I. Fine, New York, 1985. Von Hoffman, Nicholas. Citizen Cohn, Random House, 1988.

About the Author

H.B. Glushakow was born 5 months to the day before Donald J. Trump. After attending the City College of New York and New York University, Glushakow worked as an investigative reporter for Ramparts Magazine and several other periodicals. In the late 1960s he established an electrical contracting company in New York. It is there that he came face-to-face with the corruption and mob influences rampant in the New York construction industry. Glushakow later turned to the power quality and alternative energy fields where he worked for over 20 years. As a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers he has participated in standards development, various power quality projects, and the incorporation of wind energy into metropolitan structures. But he never gave up his interest and action in political and social issues. He recently created a muckraking website to expose corruption in international standards which resulted in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) issuing a Code of Ethics for the first time in its 120-year history. He has authored a number of books and technical papers. Glushakow lives with his wife half the year in the United States and half the year in China.