How Active Will The Mafia Be In The Presidential Election This Cycle?

John Catsimatidis interviewed two former GOP governors on his radio show yesterday, Jon Huntsman (UT) and George Pataki (NY). Huntsman said he'd support "the party's nominee," but said he has "concerns about some of the things he's said and his stylistic approach, but then I say OK, he has a unique opportunity to bring together constituents under the Republican banner that really have never joined before." So... another Republican putting party over country. Pataki told Catsimatidis he's not prepared to endorse Trump yet. He said he's "not overly concerned about things he’s said during the course of his campaign... I ran for office a lot, I know how easy it is to say something that in retrospect you go 'Woops why did I say that?'" But he doesn't think Trump has shown he's ready for the presidency. "I think he needs to articulate a number of thoughtful positions on the issues for me to be able to endorse him... If he does those things, I’d be happy to support him and help him win the election." I'm not sure what Pataki-- who was governor of New York from 1995-2006-- could do to help Trump win the election, but I suppose he could just keep quiet about everything he knows about Trump's long-standing ties to the Mafia, not a big secret among New York Republican politicians, but one no one talks much about, at least not publicly. Remember, it wasn't just a coincidence that Trump's strongest showing anywhere was in Staten Island-- Mob County, USA-- where he won the primary with a staggering 82.1% of the vote.

Investigative journalist David Cay Johnston has spent nearly 3 decades looking into Trump's relationship with the Mob-- a relationship nurtured by the notorious Mob consigliere for “Fat Tony” Salerno (Genovese crime family) and Paul Castellano (Gambino crime family), McCarthyite and hate-filled closet queen Roy Cohn-- and he wrote about it in his book, Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business and for Politico readers yesterday.

In all, I’ve covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years, and in that time I’ve encountered multiple threads linking Trump to organized crime. Some of Trump’s unsavory connections have been followed by investigators and substantiated in court; some haven’t. And some of those links have continued until recent years, though when confronted with evidence of such associations, Trump has often claimed a faulty memory. In an April 27 phone call to respond to my questions for this story, Trump told me he did not recall many of the events recounted in this article and they “were a long time ago.” He also said that I had “sometimes been fair, sometimes not” in writing about him, adding “if I don’t like what you write, I’ll sue you.”

I’m not the only one who has picked up signals over the years. Wayne Barrett, author of a 1992 investigative biography of Trump’s real-estate dealings, has tied Trump to mob and mob-connected men.

No other candidate for the White House this year has anything close to Trump’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks. Professor Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, said the closest historical example would be President Warren G. Harding and Teapot Dome, a bribery and bid-rigging scandal in which the interior secretary went to prison. But even that has a key difference: Harding’s associates were corrupt but otherwise legitimate businessmen, not mobsters and drug dealers.

This is part of the Donald Trump story that few know. As Barrett wrote in his book, Trump didn’t just do business with mobbed-up concrete companies: he also probably met personally with Salerno at the townhouse of notorious New York fixer Roy Cohn, in a meeting recounted by a Cohn staffer who told Barrett she was present. This came at a time when other developers in New York were pleading with the FBI to free them of mob control of the concrete business.

From the public record and published accounts like that one, it’s possible to assemble a clear picture of what we do know. The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.



...There was something a little peculiar about the construction of Trump Tower, and subsequent Trump projects in New York. Most skyscrapers are steel girder construction, and that was especially true in the 1980s, says John Cross of the American Iron & Steel Institute. Some use pre-cast concrete. Trump chose a costlier and in many ways riskier method: ready-mix concrete. Ready-mix has some advantages: it can speed up construction, and doesn’t require costly fireproofing. But it must be poured quickly or it will harden in the delivery truck drums, ruining them as well as creating costly problems with the building itself. That leaves developers vulnerable to the unions: the worksite gate is union controlled, so even a brief labor slowdown can turn into an expensive disaster.

Salerno, Castellano and other organized crime figures controlled the ready-mix business in New York, and everyone in construction at the time knew it. So did government investigators trying to break up the mob, urged on by major developers such as the LeFrak and Resnick families. Trump ended up not only using ready-mix concrete, but also paying what a federal indictment of Salerno later concluded were inflated prices for it-- repeatedly-- to S & A Concrete, a firm Salerno and Castellano owned through fronts, and possibly to other mob-controlled firms. As Barrett noted, by choosing to build with ready-mix concrete rather than other materials, Trump put himself “at the mercy of a legion of concrete racketeers.”

Salerno and Castellano and other mob families controlled both the concrete business and the unions involved in delivering and pouring it. The risks this created became clear from testimony later by Irving Fischer, the general contractor who built Trump Tower. Fischer said concrete union “goons” once stormed his offices, holding a knife to throat of his switchboard operator to drive home the seriousness of their demands, which included no-show jobs during construction of Trump Tower.

But with Cohn as his lawyer, Trump apparently had no reason to personally fear Salerno or Castellano-- at least, not once he agreed to pay inflated concrete prices. What Trump appeared to receive in return was union peace. That meant the project would never face costly construction or delivery delays.

The indictment on which Salerno was convicted in 1988 and sent to prison, where he died, listed the nearly $8 million contract for concrete at Trump Plaza, an East Side high-rise apartment building, as one of the acts establishing that S &A was part of a racketeering enterprise. (While the concrete business was central to the case, the trial also proved extortion, narcotics, rigged union elections and murders by the Genovese and Gambino crime families in what Michael Chertoff, the chief prosecutor, called “the largest and most vicious criminal business in the history of the United States.")

FBI agents subpoenaed Trump in 1980 to ask about his dealing with John Cody, a Teamsters official described by law enforcement as a very close associate of the Gambino crime family. The FBI believed that Cody previously had obtained free apartments from other developers. FBI agents suspected that Cody, who controlled the flow of concrete trucks, might get a free Trump Tower apartment. Trump denied it. But a female friend of Cody’s, a woman with no job who attributed her lavish lifestyle to the kindness of friends, bought three Trump Tower apartments right beneath the triplex where Donald lived with his wife Ivana. Cody stayed there on occasion and invested $500,000 in the units. Trump, Barrett reported, helped the woman get a $3 million mortgage without filling out a loan application or showing financials.

In the summer of 1982 Cody, then under indictment, ordered a citywide strike-- but the concrete work continued at Trump Tower. After Cody was convicted of racketeering, imprisoned and lost control of the union, Trump sued the woman for $250,000 for alteration work. She countersued for $20 million and in court papers accused Trump of taking kickbacks from contractors, asserting this could “be the basis of a criminal proceeding requiring an attorney general’s investigation” into Trump. Trump then quickly settled, paying the woman a half-million dollars. Trump said at the time and since then that he hardly knew those involved and there was nothing improper his dealings with Cody or the woman.

There were other irregularities in Trump’s first big construction project. In 1979, when Trump hired a demolition contractor to take down the Bonwit Teller department store to make way for Trump Tower, he hired as many as 200 non-union men to work alongside about 15 members of the House Wreckers Union Local 95. The non-union workers were mostly illegal Polish immigrants paid $4 to $6 per hour with no benefits, far below the union contract. At least some of them did not use power tools but sledgehammers, working 12 hours a day or more and often seven days a week. Known as the “Polish brigade,” many didn’t wear hard hats. Many slept on the construction site.

Normally the use of nonunion workers at a union job site would have guaranteed a picket line. Not at this site, however. Work proceeded because the Genovese family principally controlled the union; this was demonstrated by extensive testimony, documents and convictions in federal trials, as well as a later report by the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.

When the Polish workers and a union dissident sued for their pay and benefits, Trump denied any knowledge that illegal workers without hard hats were taking down Bonwit with sledgehammers. The trial, however, demonstrated otherwise: Testimony showed that Trump panicked when the nonunion Polish men threatened a work stoppage because they had not been paid. Trump turned to Daniel Sullivan, a labor fixer and FBI informant, who told him to fire the Polish workers.

Trump knew the Polish brigade was composed of underpaid illegal immigrants and that S&A was a mob-owned firm, according to Sullivan and others. "Donald told me that he was having his difficulties and he admitted to me that-- seeking my advice-- that he had some illegal Polish employees on the job. I reacted by saying to Donald that 'I think you are nuts,'" Sullivan testified at the time. "I told him to fire them promptly if he had any brains." In an interview later, Sullivan told me the same thing.

In 1991, a federal judge, Charles E. Stewart Jr., ruled that Trump had engaged in a conspiracy to violate a fiduciary duty, or duty of loyalty, to the workers and their union and that the “breach involved fraud and the Trump defendants knowingly participated in his breach.” The judge did not find Trump’s testimony to be sufficiently credible and set damages at $325,000. The case was later settled by negotiation, and the agreement was reportedly sealed.

I bet the Mafia connections won't be brought up by a Clinton campaign that knows very well about people who live in glass houses. Bernie, on the other hand... no Mob connections.

Wacky Pataki for Prez? Sure, why not? Everybody else is running

If it's 3:00, it must be Manchester: "Former New York governor George E. Pataki and his wife, Libby, order burritos at a Chipotle in New Hampshire." (Washington Post caption)

" 'I make a joke that every four years, there's the Olympics, there's the World Cup and I come to New Hampshire thinking about running for president,' Pataki told a crowd of 15 people during a speech at a Sea-Doo and snowmobile dealership in Laconia, N.H."

-- former NY Gov. George Pataki, quoted in "Would-be
presidential candidates test waters with a wink"

" 'Basically, it would be like a monkey flying out of a unicorn's [posterior],' if Pataki won the 2016 Republican nomination."

-- GOP strategist Rick Wilson, from the same report (quick,
think of a word for "posterior" that you can't say in WaPo)

by Ken

Two things to note about the above quote, from this report by the Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold:

(1) Um, "a crowd of 15 people."

(2) The line that immediately follows the joke: "Nobody laughed."

Sure, there are more important things I could be writing about, but you know about all of them. Did you know, however, that former NY Gov. George Pataki is in New Hampshire testing the 2016 presidential waters?

See, you're laughing! And I decided that one thing we're sorely lacking in the run-up to Election 2016 is -- ba-dum-DUM -- comedy. Yes, you could argue that the entire GOP field is a joke, but it's not that kind of joke, by which I mean the funny kind. Sen. Rafael "Ted from Alberta" Cruz? Gov. Scott Walker? Former Gov. Jebbo Bush? Sen. Rand Paul? Gov. Kris Krispy?

Stop, you're killing me! But not in the good, wholesome belly-laugh kind of way. Not the kind that makes you ask, "What did the U.S. of A. do to deserve this?" (And then answer, "How much time do you have?")

Whereas for real comedy . . . Pataki for Prez?

This is the man so famously dubbed by David Letterman, back when the Pak Man was first invented, "Wacky Pataki." Okay, it was just a cute rhyme; there was never anything funny about the guy. And to be perfectly accurate, he hadn't actually just been invented. He had actually gone from doing something-or-other in Peekskill, NY, to being elected governor of the state. And with all due respect to Peekskillers, that was pretty wacky. (To refresh your memory: He upset Gov. Mario Cuomo's bid for a fourth term, and proceeded to serve three terms himself, 1995-2006.)

He wasn't even an atrocious governor. Oh sure, he was a bad one, but if you want to know from gubernatorial atrociousness, cast an eye back up to that list of GOP presidential wannabes -- now there's atrocity.

Still, Pataki for Prez? Well, I guess attention must be paid. According to David Fahrenthold's report, at least one recent poll shows the Wackyman commanding a full (or at least rounded-up) 1 percent.

Okay, now you can laugh.

Just one last thing before we turn the floor over to reporter Fahrenthold. Remember that joke the Wackyman told? The one that reduced that crowd of 15 in Laconia to silence? Here's what comes next in the report:

Then Pataki said this election was different: “This time, in all honesty, I see things differently.”

That might be true. But it is also the thing you have to say if you’re a good flirt.

NOW IT'S TIME FOR THE WHOLE PIECE

And I have to acknowledge that I may have misled you somewhat in billing this as comedy, because David Fahrenthold is serious -- well, mostly -- and this is quite a serious exploration of a genuinely interesting dimension of our politics, with all sorts of political currents intersecting. Plus there are appearances, at least by name, of such presidential prospects as former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore and former Rhode Island Gov. and Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

Would-be presidential candidates like Pataki test waters with a wink

By David A. Farenthold
May 1 at 6:54 PM


Pataki, right, answers a question from local radio talk show host Peter St. James in Nashua, N.H., on April 17.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The tall man in a blazer burst into the Chipotle in the middle of the afternoon. He had a smile, a TV camera following him, and the jovial air of a man who expects to be recognized.

“George Pataki, from New York,” he said, shaking hands with the first two diners he met. “We’re doing the non-Hillary tour. We’re actually saying ‘hi’ to people.”

Then the tall man moved on, to quiz the next table about their food. (“Chicken burrito? I gotta try something new.”) When he was gone, the first two diners wondered: Who was that? Do they not have Chipotle where he lives?

“It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m from New York,’ ” said Aaron Lee, 22. “What are you doing here, then?”

Officially, what George E. Pataki is doing is flirting — for the fourth time in 16 years — with the idea of running for president of the United States.

The Republican ex-governor of New York is raising money, visiting early-primary states and telling people that he’s close, close, close to making a decision. “I’m strongly leaning toward making the run,” he told a radio station in New Hampshire. The first three times he considered running, he didn’t.

This is the flirting season in American politics: Right now, more than 20 politicians are officially “considering” or “exploring” a run for president. The key to understanding this strange every-four-years ritual is to understand that there are actually two kinds of flirting.

Read more »

"Silence from the right on James Comey's race talk" -- Jonathan Capehart wonders why our top G-man was merely "ignored" rather than "trivialized"

FBI Director James Comey at Georgetown Thursday

by Ken

In his column today, "Silence from the right on James Comey's race talk," the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart raises a fascinating point in the aftermath of the hard-hitting speech given by FBI Director James Comey on the subject of race and law enforcement Thursday at Georgetown University: Why, instead of cranking up the Right-Wing Noise Machine, has it been greeted with stony silence from the Right?

As Jonathan points out, what Director Comey had to say wasn't all that different from what a number of other public figures have occasionally had to say about the problematic relationship between law enforcement and people of color, and usually the Right-Wing Noise Machine rises up in holy wrath and unleashes a cacaphony of defamatory lies at deafening volume. And so, Jonathan says,

I thought for sure hellfire would rain down upon him from the right. After all, in tone and word, he echoed the sentiments expressed by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder on the same topic. Yet instead of being accused of having blood on his hands or labeled a race-baiter, Comey and his “hard truths” have been met with silence.

This, Jonathan says, was "strong stuff" which Director Comey delivered to his Georgetown audience.

The four “hard truths” articulated by Comey were tough on police. “Much of our history is not pretty,” he said as he acknowledged law enforcement’s role in maintaining the status quo against “disfavored groups.” He talked about the unconscious bias that grips many in law enforcement. He discussed the “different flavors of cynicism” that cops “work hard to resist.” And he talked about the staggering problems facing many young men and boys of color that become part of officers’ “life experience.” In addition, Comey called on police to “better understand the people we serve and protect — by trying to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement.”

"And yet," Jonathan says, "those easily irritated folks on the right who slammed Obama and Holder for saying similar things over the past six months have been rendered mute."

No doubt it is because the new messenger is a white, 54-year-old Republican son of Irish immigrants and grandson of a police chief. What’s disturbing is that they willingly ignore Comey’s entreaties while trivializing the same from the president and the attorney general.

And Jonathan recalls the venom poured forth by the likes of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani:

We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president, that everybody should hate the police, I don’t care how you want to describe it, and that is what those protests are all about. The protests are being embraced. The protests are being encouraged. The protests — even the ones that don’t lead to violence — and a lot of them lead to violence, all lead to a conclusion: the police are bad, the police are racist. That is completely wrong.

No, Rudy, what's wrong is this tissue of lies you've invented in your malfunctioning brain. It earned you four Pinocchios from the Washington Post's fact-checker.

Of course Rudy is very nearly the last person any person of minimal sense and decency should be listening to on -- well, just about anything. In reality, a locale Rudy G knows only as an outsider with his grotesque mug pressed up against the perimeter glass, it might take a team of experts in psychopathology and mental dysfunction and goodness knows what other areas of brain disorder to figure out whether Rudy is too mentally defective to know better or just a big fat liar. But since his career is based on a giant lie -- that he is a mentally functional human being, a persona he is able to mimic only when he can play the role of punishing authoritarian avenger -- it's not surprising that everything about his existence is a lie, or that everything that comes out of his toxic mouth is delusional.

Or there's giant waste of protoplasm that calls itself George Pataki. Or rather, calls itself Governor Pataki -- aka "@GovernorPataki" -- more than eight years after slithering out of the governorship of the Empire State.



Which brings us to the out-of-control diseased opportunist who heads New York City's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, the deviant who, fueled by his sleazy, cynical opportunism, propagated the appalling lie that Mayor Bill de Blasio "has blood on his hands" from the murder of two cops, having nothing to do with the mayor. In Lynch's degenerate world of delusion, anyone who suggests that cops are accountable to anyone except themselves for anything at all is a "cop hater." The shame is the NYC's good cops allow themselves to be represented by this diseased pile of puke, apparently not understanding that the act of supporting him makes them part of the party of cop-garbage -- disgraces to their badges and themselves.

If pondscum like Rudy, "Wacky Pataki" (as David Letterman dubbed him when he was first elected governor), and this good-cop-hating scumbag Lynch had any interest in reality or the real problems of law enforcement, they would be aware that, as Jonathan Capehart puts it, "What Obama and Holder did during those tumultuous months was strike a necessary balance between the fundamental right to protest and support for the men and women who ensure that this right is exercised freely and lawfully."

But the president and the attorney general, who regularly reminds listeners that his brother is a retired police officer, were not shy about placing a critical focus on the excesses of police, as they did after the Aug. 14 flare-up in Ferguson, Mo.

Obama and Holder also were not shy about expressing their innate understanding of the anger and frustration that have sown mistrust between many African Americans and law enforcement. And they did so as a way to guide a larger and much-needed conversation about that relationship.

"With his Georgetown address," Jonathan says, "Comey pushed our ongoing national conversation on race farther along."

If only Giuliani, Pataki and others were as interested in engaging in this part of the dialogue as they are in delivering destructive monologues about how the commander in chief and the nation’s chief law enforcement officer hate the police.

Which still leaves that fascinating difference Jonathan began by noting between the right-wing response to Obama, Holder, and de Blasio on the one hand and Comey on the other. In the end, it turns out not to make much substantive difference. If it's any consolation to Jonathan, I can pretty well guarantee that if there were any indication that Director Comey's presentation was being taken seriously, he would find himself at the business end of the Right-Wing Noise Machine.

Oh, in the case of the African-American federal officials and the self-avowedly progressive white mayor, they do double-dip: not just trashing their talk but demeaning their humanity. Whereas Comey gets just the single dip of having his carefully chosen thoughts stonewalled.

Either way, "ignoring" or "trivializing," the right-wingers seem to me to be acting out a phenomenon nicely described in a piece on the phenomenon of vaccination denial called 'There's No Way Out of It" in the March 5 issue of the New York Review of Books, where author Jerome Groopman quotes Eula Biss, author of On Immunity: An Inoculation, one of the books included in the discussion:

[A]s with other strongly held beliefs, our fears are dear to us. When we encounter information that contradicts our beliefs,…we tend to doubt the information, not ourselves.

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Former NYS Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno is indicted

Joe Bruno (right) and his lawyer, William Dreyer, enter the federal courthouse in Albany, where Bruno was indicted today on eight counts.

by Ken

Ooh, that Rod Blagojevich! Here we New Yorkers are, thinking that when it comes to the most dysfunctional state government in an actual functioning U.S. state, we're sitting pretty. Now, thanks to that damned Governor Blago, we have to scramble.

Okay, take this, Illinois! It was hardly unexpected, but today former State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno was indicted on eight counts of corrupt dealings. Here's how the Albany Times Union's online report starts:

Bruno indicted
Grand jurors accuse Bruno of trading power for money

By BRENDAN J. LYONS AND JAMES M. ODATO, Staff writers
Last updated: 2:56 p.m., Friday, January 23, 2009

ALBANY -- A federal grand jury today indicted former state Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno on felony charges alleging he used his position to extract $3.2 million in private consulting fees from clients who sought to purchase his influence.

An 8-count indictment handed up today charges the 79-year-old Republican with corruption charges that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Bruno pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in U.S. District Court in Albany and was released without bail.

In a 35-page indictment filed at noon, grand jurors asked Bruno to forfeit much of his fortune and assets for his alleged crimes.

Bruno, who reigned for years as one of the most powerful lawmakers in New York, is charged with using his office to deprive the public of the honest services of government.

The indictment marks the culmination of a three-year FBI investigation into the shadowy public and private dealings of the Brunswick politician who rose through the ranks of state government and became arguably the Capital Region's most iconic political leader.

Bruno retired from his state Senate seat in July after 32 years in legislative service. He is now a lobbyist, chief executive of friend Kay Stafford's Latham company, CMA Consulting.

The indictment lays out Bruno's alleged deceptions, such as not disclosing his dealings to ethics authorities. It describes "schemes" involving use of his public office to do business with labor unions, who he steered to Wright Investors Service, a Connecticut firm that paid him nearly $1.4 million from 1994 to 2006, and McGinn, Smith & Co., an Albany investment firm that paid Bruno $632,116 from 1993 to 2005. The firms ended up receiving investment advisory fees or brokerage fees paid by the union benefit funds.

Etc. etc. etc.

On New York political matters I turn to The Albany Project. Here's what Phillip Anderson has had to say so far:

Reading The Bruno Indictment

I'm reading through the indictment filed by the feds against Joe Bruno. It's 35 pages long and describes corruption going back to 1993 - before he even became Majority Leader. All the familiar names are there -- Abbruzzese, McGinn, Wright Investor's Service as well as most of the major unions in the state. The indictment seems to be pretty exhaustive and the numbers cited are simply enormous. Let's just say that it's easy to understand why Uncle Joe was so adamant about not releasing a list of his sham "consulting" firm's clients. These entities were paying him fabulous sums of money and he was going to great lengths to hide these payments, all described in detail in the indictment itself.

It's interesting reading, to say the least. I've uploaded the PDF here, so you can take a look as well.

Happy hunting.

Of course Bruno hasn't been tried yet, but we're looking at a pretty damning indictment. I guess I won't be surprised if it turns out that he was indeed a crook, but I have to say -- and I know this is going to sound preposterous, even embarrassing -- I have kind of a soft spot for the guy.

Maybe it has something to do with the bozos I mentally bracket him with. Like when I think of NYS Senate majority leaders, I think of the great Earl Brydges (1966-72, succeeding the last Democratic majority leader, Sen. Joseph Zaretzki, whose entire tenure was limited to part of 1965, as I wrote about here awhile ago), Warren Anderson (1973-88 -- and weren't those 16 years chock full of fun and good government?), and Ralph Marino (1989-94). Wow, what a bunch! Maybe I'm the only one who thought so, but Bruno actually seemed to evolve in office, and to sort of sometimes think about issues, and even grow with regard to some.

Plus, during the years when Senator Bruno, Republican Gov. George Pataki, and Democratic Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver were the famous "three men in a room" who basically were the state government, it was hard not to feel that Bruno was the most reasonable and reachable. Again, I'm speaking comparatively, but still.

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