America's Problem: Trump Is Married To The Mob

Trump's Mafia connections have been dogging him for his whole life. Somehow they didn't impress his supporters-- except maybe in Staten Island where Mon connections are considered a plus. Yesterday David Von Drehle gave it another try in the Washington Post: All The President's Wiseguys. Trump, he wrote, "spent plenty of time in mobbed-up milieus. As many journalists have documented-- the late Wayne Barrett and decorated investigator David Cay Johnston most deeply-- Trump’s trail was blazed through one business after another notorious for corruption by organized crime. New York construction, for starters. In 1988, Vincent “the Fish” Cafaro of the Genovese crime family testified before a U.S. Senate committee concerning the Mafia’s control of building projects in New York. Construction unions and concrete contractors were deeply dirty, Cafaro confirmed, and four of the city’s five crime families worked cooperatively to keep it that way."

This would not have been news to Trump, whose early political mentor and personal lawyer was Roy Cohn, consigliere to such dons as Fat Tony Salerno and Carmine Galante. After Cohn guided the brash young developer through the gutters of city politics to win permits for Trump Plaza and Trump Tower, it happened that Trump elected to build primarily with concrete rather than steel. He bought the mud at inflated prices from S&A Concrete, co-owned by Cohn’s client Salerno and Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino family.

Coincidence? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Trump moved next into the New Jersey casino business, which was every bit as clean as it sounds. State officials merely shrugged when Trump bought a piece of land from associates of Philadelphia mob boss “Little Nicky” Scarfo for roughly $500,000 more than it was worth. However, this and other ties persuaded police in Australia to block Trump’s bid to build a casino in Sydney in 1987, citing Trump’s “Mafia connections.”

His gambling interests led him into the world of boxing promotion, where Trump became chums with fight impresario Don King, a former Cleveland numbers runner. (Trump once told me that he owes his remarkable coiffure to King, who advised the future president, from personal experience, that outlandish hair is great P.R.) King hasn’t been convicted since the 1960s, when he did time for stomping a man to death. But investigators at the FBI and U.S. Senate concluded that his Mafia ties ran from Cleveland to New York, Vegas to Atlantic City. Mobsters “were looking to launder illicit cash,” wrote one sleuth. “Boxing, of all the sports, was perhaps the most accommodating laundromat, what with its international subculture of unsavory characters who play by their own rules.”

But an even more accommodating laundromat came along: luxury real estate-- yet another mob-adjacent field in which the Trump name has loomed large. Because buyers of high-end properties often hide their identities, it’s impossible to say how many Russian Mafia oligarchs own Trump-branded condos. Donald Trump Jr. gave a hint in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”

For instance: In 2013, federal prosecutors indicted Russian mob boss Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov and 33 others on charges related to a gambling ring operating from two Trump Tower condos that allegedly laundered more than $100 million. A few months later, the same Mr. Tokhtakhounov, a fugitive from U.S. justice, was seen on the red carpet at Trump’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

Obviously, not everyone in these industries is corrupt, and if Donald Trump spent four decades rubbing elbows with wiseguys and never got dirty, he has nothing to worry about from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. But does he look unworried to you?

Perhaps it's worthwhile to go back to a NY Times piece from 1988, long before anyone ever saw a lowlife like Trump in the white House, even as a visitor, Mob Role In New York Construction Depicted. "Vincent (Fish) Cafaro, a former captain in the Genovese organized-crime family in New York," explained The Times, "told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that the Mafia rigged contracting bids in NYC by demanding a 2% kickback from winning bidders and their unions. 'Legitimate guys ain't got a chance,' he said. He told the senators that the Mob-- the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese and Colombo crime families-- controls 75% New York's construction industry.

Cafaro, who told them he had been involved with the Mafia since 1958, was indicted with Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno for "racketeering, extortion, plotting murders, gambling and conspiracy." He became an informer for the FBI and wore a wire at Genovese Family meetings from October 1986 to March 1987. In 1989 and 1990, Cafaro testified against Gambino boss John Gotti and then disappeared into the federal Witness Protection Program.

Remember Staten Island Mafioso figure and congressman, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm? He was involved with Anthony "Fat Tony" Morelli. Trump's "Fat Tony" was Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno. During the Republican primaries Ted Cruz tried getting the Trump Mafia story out into the media. Not many people cared. New Yorkers had known about it for decades and Trump fans in the Old Confederacy were already under Trump's spell. Michael Daly, though, gave it a shot for the Daily Beast: The Klansmen and Mobsters in Donald Trump’s Closet.

Cruz sought to rouse the mob ghosts of Donald Trump’s earlier days, saying on NBC that “ABC, CNN, multiple news reports have reported about his dealings with, for example, S&A Construction, which was owned by ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, who is a mobster who is in jail.”

Trump did deal with S&A Construction in the early 1980s, though not necessarily out of choice.

S&A was indeed owned by Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno of the Genovese crime family, but he was sentenced to 100 years in prison back in 1986 and died behind bars in 1992.

So an apologist might just shrug and say it was what everybody had to do back in the day in order to build anything at all.

A Trump supporter might even suggest that he and indeed all his fellow builders were victims of the mob in that era.

But few of the builders who accepted S&A concrete as an offer they could not refuse actually met with Salerno, as Trump is said to have done in the office of Roy Cohn the lawyer and fixer, who represented The Donald as well as the Don.

The Smoking Gun also reported that the now-extensive licensing of Trump name began with two lines of glamorized Cadillac limos-- the Trump Golden Series and the Trump Executive Series-- produced by Dillinger Coach Works, which was itself apparently named after the famous gangland figure John Dillinger. The company was owned by two convicted felons, one of whom, John Staluppi, has been identified by the FBI as a member of the Columbo crime family.

And only Trump helped a lady friend of a mob-connected union boss secure financing for three duplex apartments priced at nearly $10 million directly beneath the Trump penthouse in the signature Trump Tower. Verina Hixon’s complex included the building’s only private swimming pool, an addition that required structural alterations to the building.

As reported by Wayne Barrett in his book Trump: The Deals and the Downfall and confirmed by law enforcement officials as well as by people who worked on Trump Tower, the beautiful Hixon was a close pal of union boss John Cody, an avowed admirer of Jimmy Hoffa and also close to Cohn.

The value of Cody’s goodwill became clear when his union, Teamsters Local 282, called a citywide strike just as Trump Tower was near completion. The Trump site was exempted.

The danger of Cody’s displeasure became equally clear when Trump grew so weary of Hixon’s demands that he finally said no. Concrete deliveries ceased not just at Trump Tower but at sites across the city. Hixon soon got what she wanted.

Then Cody was sentenced to federal prison in 1984 for extortion and for attempting to murder the man who took over the union following his arrest. The extent of Cody’s fall became clear when Hixon was forced out of the tower. Trump no longer had her beneath his 68th-floor aerie, which is in truth on the 58th floor, the numbers in the tower’s elevators going from 1 to 6 and then 16 to 68 to make it all seem huger.

As he expanded into the casino business in Atlantic City, Trump agreed to pay twice the market value for land occupied by a bar owned by the sons of two Philadelphia Mafia bosses, the boys having made a name for themselves as part of a crew called the Young Executioners. The purchase, also reported by Barrett in his book, was reportedly routed through the secretary of Paddy McGahn, a thrice-wounded Marine war hero who had become as influential in his city as Roy Cohn was in New York.

In bringing high rollers to Atlantic City, Trump used a helicopter service owned by Joseph Weichselbaum, a mob-connected drug smuggler who lived in a Trump apartment while awaiting sentencing on narcotics charges in 1987. The case was prosecuted in Ohio but was moved to New Jersey for reasons that remain unclear.

As reported by The Smoking Gun, the case was then assigned to The Donald’s sister, federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Some serious ghosts would soon be rising from that supposed coincidence had somebody not thought to quickly shift the case to another judge. Barry’s now-deceased husband, John Barry, often served as The Donald’s lawyer in New Jersey.

Trump’s dealings with mob figures appear to have included at least one member of Chinese organized crime. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Government Affairs reported in 1992 that Danny Leung was both a vice president for marketing at Trump’s Taj Mahal casino and an associate of the 14K Triad.

“He was formerly a business partner with Eddie Louie, a 14K Triad member and the brother of Nickie Louie, aka Louie Yin Poy, a former leader of the Ghost Shadows Gang,” the committee reported. “Leung has also given complimentary tickets for hotel rooms and Asian shows to numerous members and associates of Asian organized crime.”

The committee notes, “The 14K Triad comprises over 30 subgroups which include an estimated membership of over 20,000… The 14K engages in a variety of criminal activities including heroin trafficking, alien smuggling and counterfeit credit card manufacturing, and has connections in the United States for all of these purposes.”

More recently, Trump was joined in building the Trump SoHo by the son of a convicted extortionist described in court papers as a Russian gangster. Court records also show that the son has himself been convicted of felony assault and of bilking investors out of millions in a stock scheme.

Trump has insisted that he only had minimal dealings with the felon, Felix Sater, and was unaware of the man’s record until it was reported in the newspapers. Trump has also insisted that he had minimal dealings with John Cody, telling The Daily Beast that “I barely knew him,” describing the union boss as “a bad guy.” Trump has further denied ever encountering Salerno, though the encounter has been described by a Cohn assistant and there is no disputing that Trump did business with the mobster’s firm.

Trump with father figure, right-wing Mafia lawyer Roy Cohn

A couple of months before the election, we noted that even Trump campaign volunteers at the lowest level had to sign a 2,271-word non-disclosure agreement in which they also promise they won't compete against or say anything bad about Trump, his company, his family members [including Barron] or products-- now and forever." The bizarre requirement meant that even online volunteers had to sign the form, even if they'd never meet a Trumpanzee family member, attend a Trumpanzee rally, meet a Trumpanzee campaign staffer in person or step inside a Trumpanzee campaign office. Those years and decades with the slimiest and most dishonest lawyer in contemporary American history, Roy Cohn, had certainly rubbed off on Señor Trumpanzee. And in more ways than one. Also during the campaign, the Wall Street Journal described Signore Trumpanzee's deep ties to the Mob, writing that through his shady businesses in NYC and Atlantic City he "sometimes dealt with people who had ties to organized crime, while giving Trumpanzee the opportunity to describe himself as "the cleanest guy there is."

Some developers avoided working directly with unsavory figures by operating through a general contractor. Mr. Trump said he preferred to negotiate business matters personally, because he made more money that way.

Referring to a concrete contracting firm that law enforcement said was affiliated with one of New York’s Mafia families, Mr. Trump said: “That was a major contractor. You hear stories that they may have been [mob-controlled].

“In the meantime, I was a builder. I was never going to run for office.… I’d go by the lowest bid and I’d go by their track record, but I didn’t do a personal history of who they are.”

Many of the associations the Journal explored have been previously reported piecemeal. In the early 1990s, Mr. Trump’s license to operate casinos in Atlantic City was re-examined after a book by reporter Wayne Barrett alleged a number of organized-crime connections. New Jersey officials determined Mr. Trump remained eligible.

In its own examination, the Journal reviewed thousands of pages of legal and corporate documents and interviewed dozens of Mr. Trump’s business associates.

The gambling business now is largely corporate, but at the time when Atlantic City was newly opened to casinos and a family friend suggested Mr. Trump build there, many banks shunned the industry.

“Any project in the gaming arena in general is a difficult project to finance, because of the natural prohibition that a lot of institutions have,” Mr. Trump told New Jersey casino regulators in 1982.

Some of the people he dealt with in Atlantic City illustrate why the FBI agent counseled caution.

Kenneth Shapiro owned part of a site where Mr. Trump wanted to build his first casino. Mr. Shapiro was a Philadelphia scrap-metal dealer and property investor, described by law enforcement as an “agent” of Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo.

A co-owner of the site was Daniel Sullivan, a gregarious six-foot-five Teamster and labor consultant with a criminal record that included a weapons violation. “He knew a lot of organized-crime figures and they knew him,” said Walter Stowe, a former FBI agent.

Mr. Sullivan also was a tipster to the FBI. Gangsters “knew he was an informant. I don’t know why nobody ever tried to kill him,” Mr. Stowe said.

Mr. Trump negotiated with Messrs. Shapiro and Sullivan, now both dead, to lease their property. “They are not bad people from what I see,” Mr. Trump said at a regulatory hearing in 1982. His project nonetheless faced obstacles because of their involvement.

Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Trump and another partner had a deal to acquire an interest in a drywall company. New Jersey casino regulators told Mr. Trump any dealings with Mr. Sullivan beyond the property lease could delay casino licensing. He backed out of the drywall deal.

When the hotel-casino was near completion, the regulators said Messrs. Shapiro and Sullivan might need casino licenses too, as site owners, but could have trouble getting them. Eventually, Mr. Trump bought the two out.

Mr. Trump also used Mr. Sullivan as an adviser on New York labor issues. These included a 1980 dispute over the use of undocumented Polish workers to demolish the Bonwit Teller store on Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower, Mr. Sullivan said in lawsuit testimony. Mr. Trump, in testimony of his own, said he didn’t know there were undocumented workers at the site.

Mr. Trump told the Journal he knew Mr. Sullivan and considered him “OK” because he traveled with FBI agents. He said he didn’t know of any underworld connection Mr. Shapiro might have had.

Mr. Shapiro was a conduit the Scarfo crime family used to buy influence with Atlantic City’s then-mayor, Michael J. Matthews, according to a 1984 indictment of the mayor. The late Mr. Matthews pleaded guilty to extortion. Mr. Scarfo, now in prison, didn’t agree to an interview.

Mr. Trump, as a casino owner, couldn’t legally contribute to the local politicians who controlled such matters as zoning and signs. Mr. Shapiro told a federal grand jury he secretly gave thousands of dollars to the mayor on Mr. Trump’s behalf, said people familiar with his account.

“Donald was always trying to maneuver politically to get things done,” said Mr. Shapiro’s brother Barry Shapiro.

Kenneth Shapiro said he never was reimbursed for the money given the mayor, according to his brother and two other people. “Donald just reneged; that’s his automatic thing,” Barry Shapiro said.

Asked about this, Mr. Trump said he didn’t make contributions to the Atlantic City mayor. “I’m not interested in giving cash, OK?...The last thing I’m doing is now handing cash.”

As for Mr. Shapiro, “I never remember him asking me for money. He was always straight with me...I didn’t know Shapiro well other than to know that we did a pretty small little land transaction down in Atlantic City, which was fine.”

A major profit source at one Trump casino was a racehorse trader named Robert LiButti. His gambling losses earned Trump Plaza $11 million between 1986 and 1989, state documents show.

Mr. LiButti had been convicted of tax fraud related to horse sales in 1977 and was barred from attending races in New York for trying to conceal his horse ownership. A Trump employee told New Jersey regulators that Mr. LiButti repeatedly invoked the name of gangster John Gotti and called him “my boss,” according to a 1991 state investigative report.

“LiButti was a high-roller in Atlantic City,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “I found him to be a nice guy. But I had nothing to do with him.”

Jack O’Donnell, who ran Trump Plaza in the late 1980s, said, “It isn’t like [Mr. Trump] saw LiButti once or twice-- he spent time with him, saw him multiple times,” and even attended a birthday party for Mr. LiButti’s daughter.

The daughter declined to be interviewed but confirmed to Yahoo News that Mr. Trump attended a birthday party for her.

It was illegal in New Jersey for casinos to keep high-rollers happy by giving them cash gifts. Regulators, in a ruling that didn’t cite Mr. Trump personally, fined Trump Plaza for funneling Mr. LiButti $1.65 million via gifts of expensive cars quickly converted into cash.

Mr. Trump agreed in 1988 to buy a horse from Mr. LiButti for $250,000, Mr. O’Donnell said in a book he wrote after quitting Trump Plaza. The horse, named D.J. Trump, had cost the LiButti family just $90,000 a year earlier, according to Blood Horse magazine. Mr. O’Donnell said Mr. Trump aborted the deal after the horse had a health problem.

Mr. Trump didn’t respond to questions about the horse and the birthday party.

...A lawyer Mr. Trump relied on and socialized with in his early years was the hard-driving attorney Roy Cohn. Among Mr. Cohn’s clients were several gangsters, including Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, co-owner of a concrete company important to New York builders. Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res said that during heated negotiations with contractors, Mr. Trump would pull out a photo of Mr. Cohn and say, “I’m not afraid to sue you and this is who my lawyer is.”

Mr. Trump called that “totally false.” He said people in the construction industry “don’t get scared by holding up a picture.”

Mr. Trump was a character witness for Mr. Cohn in proceedings that led to the lawyer’s disbarment shortly before his death in 1986.

Mr. Cohn had many clients who, like Mr. Trump, weren’t mob-affiliated, such as the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. “Roy was a great lawyer if he wanted to be,” Mr. Trump said in an interview.

Messrs. Cohn and Trump had a common associate in Teamsters official John A. Cody. Mr. Cody had a lengthy arrest record and was close to mob bosses Carlo Gambino and Paul Castellano, according to a Justice Department memo from 1982, when Mr. Cody was convicted of racketeering.

Mr. Cody led a powerful union local that represented drivers who delivered cement to New York construction sites.

When he called a strike, Mr. Trump still received cement for Trump Tower, said Mr. Cody’s son, Michael.

“My father wasn’t that generous, unless there was a reason,” Michael Cody said.

...In the 2000s, Mr. Trump dealt with another figure who had gangland ties. It happened when a small real-estate firm called Bayrock Group rented space in Trump Tower, two floors below Mr. Trump’s offices, and negotiated deals with Mr. Trump to put his name on buildings and give him equity in them. One person Mr. Trump worked with at Bayrock was Felix Sater.

In the early 1990s, well before Mr. Trump knew him, the Russian-born Mr. Sater was a stockbroker but lost his license and went to prison after he jabbed a margarita glass into a man’s face in a bar fight.

Later in the 1990s, Mr. Sater was involved in a Mafia-linked scheme to pump up marginal stocks, dump them on unsuspecting investors and stash the profits abroad. The scheme relied on gangsters from three mob families for protection, said a Justice Department news release. It quoted the New York police commissioner at the time as saying the operation could have been called “Goodfellas Meet the Boiler Room.”

Mr. Sater pleaded guilty to racketeering, cooperated with prosecutors and had his conviction sealed. It was then, around 2000, that he joined Bayrock and sometimes dealt with Mr. Trump on real estate.

Bayrock’s projects included the Trump SoHo condos in New York and Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Its marketing in Fort Lauderdale included a letter in which Mr. Trump said, “This magnificent oceanfront resort offers the finest and most luxurious experience I have ever created.”

The New York Times described Mr. Sater’s criminal history in an article in 2007. Mr. Trump, giving a court deposition days later, said he was unaware of it until then.

Two federal press releases in 2000 had referred to Mr. Sater’s past, one from the National Association of Securities Dealers and one from the Justice Department. The Justice Department one announced the indictment of 19 people in the pump-and-dump stock scheme Mr. Sater was part of, including several it identified as members of La Cosa Nostra.

The Justice Department release said a Genovese crime-family soldier, Ernest “Butch” Montevecchi, had protected Mr. Sater from an extortion effort.

Mr. Montevecchi declined to comment.

In a 2009 court proceeding, Mr. Sater described the Bayrock real-estate business, which is no longer active, as one he “built with my own two hands” and where he was probably the No. 2 person. In an interview, Mr. Sater said he had atoned for his crimes by cooperating with the government in the pump-and-dump case and on national-security matters. He declined to answer questions about Mr. Trump.

More recently, Trump's Organized Crime dealings have been with the Russian Mafia rather than the old traditional Italian Mafia. In Trump’s Russian Laundromat, veteran journalist Craig Unger details how the Russian mafia has used the president’s properties-- including Trump Tower and the Trump Taj Majal-- as a way to launder money and hide assets. "Whether Trump knew it or not," writes Unger, "Russian mobsters and corrupt oligarchs used his properties not only to launder vast sums of money from extortion, drugs, gambling, and racketeering, but even as a base of operations for their criminal activities. In the process, they propped up Trump’s business and enabled him to reinvent his image. Without the Russian mafia, it is fair to say, Donald Trump would not be president of the United States."

Will Stories of Mob Ties and Crooked Deals Sink Donald Trump?

Does Donald Trump have an Achilles heel?

by Gaius Publius

The Trump phenomenon is taking off and shows every sign of "having wings," to not mix a metaphor. According to this excellent analysis by Lee Drutman, "What Donald Trump gets about the electorate," Trump has found a policy sweet spot with Republican voters (as opposed to the party's money-bought leaders):

As the punditry attempts to make sense of the continued popularity of Donald Trump, the prevailing establishment narrative has been simple: He's an anti-establishment buffoon; he's channeling an angry mood; his moment will pass. But as Ezra Klein argued on Monday, this narrative may be wrong. What if Trump actually represents a sizable electorate that Beltway elites have marginalized?

The data on this is pretty clear. Put simply: While most elite-funded and elite-supported Republicans want to increase immigration and decrease Social Security, a significant number of voters (across both parties) want precisely the opposite — to increase Social Security and decrease immigration. So when Trump speaks out both against immigration and against fellow Republicans who want to cut Social Security, he's speaking out for a lot people.

By my count of National Election Studies (NES) data, 24 percent of the US population holds this position (increase Social Security, decrease immigration). If we add in the folks who want to maintain (not cut) Social Security and decrease immigration, we are now at 40 percent of the total electorate, which I'll call "populist." No wonder folks are flocking to Trump — and to Bernie Sanders, who holds similar positions, though with more emphasis on the expanding Social Security part and less aggression on immigration.

The underlying data is fascinating. A taste — here's how the electorate feels about Social Security:

▪ Increase Social Security benefits: 50.7%
▪ Keep Social Security benefits the same: 43%
▪ Decrease Social Security benefits: 6.2%

And here's how the electorate feels about immigration:

▪ Increase immigration a lot: 4.4%
▪ Increase immigration a little: 9.9%
▪ Leave immigration as is: 42.9%
▪ Decrease immigration a little: 20.5%
▪ Decrease immigration a lot: 22.9%

Add the middle group to the top group on Social Security and you get a whopping 93% of the electorate. Add the middle group to the bottom two groups on immigration and you get a similarly impressive 86%. Trump is simultaneous selling to both of these large groups.

In addition, unlike all of the other top candidates, Trump is his own billionaire, more or less, and the billionaires backing the rest of the candidates hold exactly opposite views — they want to decrease Social Security benefits (to keep taxes low, among other reasons) and increase immigration (to make available the cheapest non-union labor possible). Thus, while all of the other Republican candidates have to mouth words crafted for them by the wealthy who pull their strings — words that hold little appeal for voters, including Republican ones — Trump, who pulls his own strings, can freely offer policies counter to what elite Republicans want.

He's on a roll in the polls, he's a natural crowd favorite for a certain kind of crowd, and he's apparently having a wonderful time. So what's likely to bring him down politically?

David Cay Johnston on Trump and the Mob

Arrogance is unlikely to do it; that may be his strong suit. And as others have argued, his vicious (and expensive) nativism is a feature to Republicans who live at the intersection of extreme economic insecurity and frightened-male racism. Does Donald Trump have an Achilles heel? David Cay Johnston thinks so; he thinks Trump has several in fact.

From a recent National Memo article, Johnston writes:

I have covered Donald Trump off and on for 27 years — including breaking the story that in 1990, when he claimed to be worth $3 billion but could not pay interest on loans coming due, his bankers put his net worth at minus $295 million. And so I have closely watched what Trump does and what government documents reveal about his conduct.

Reporters, competing Republican candidates, and voters would learn a lot about Trump if they asked for complete answers to these 21 questions.

So, Mr. Trump… 

There follow his 21 questions. The whole piece reads well — Johnston has a unique gift for making his subject clear — but I want to focus on just a few of them:

▪ Regarding Trump and the mob:

6. Trump Tower is not a steel girder high rise, but 58 stories of concrete.

Why did you use concrete instead of traditional steel girders?

7. Trump Tower was built by S&A Concrete, whose owners were “Fat” Tony Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and Paul “Big Paul” Castellano, head of the Gambinos, another well-known crime family.

If you did not know of their ownership, what does that tell voters about your management skills?

8. You later used S&A Concrete on other Manhattan buildings bearing your name.

Why?

And:

11. You sent your top lieutenant, lawyer Harvey I. Freeman, to negotiate with Ken Shapiro, the “investment banker” for Nicky Scarfo, the especially vicious killer who was Atlantic City’s mob boss, according to federal prosecutors and the New Jersey State Commission on Investigation.

Since you emphasize your negotiating skills, why didn’t you negotiate yourself?

12. You later paid a Scarfo associate twice the value of a lot, officials determined.

Since you boast that you always negotiate the best prices, why did you pay double the value of this real estate?

13. You were the first person recommended for a casino license by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, which opposed all other applicants or was neutral. Later it came out in official proceedings that you had persuaded the state to limit its investigation of your background.

Why did you ask that the investigation into your background be limited?

▪ On Trump and crooked deals:

1. You call yourself an “ardent philanthropist,” but have not donated a dollar to The Donald J. Trump Foundation since 2006. You’re not even the biggest donor to the foundation, having given about $3.7 million in the previous two decades while businesses associated with Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment gave the Trump Foundation $5 million. All the money since 2006 has come from those doing business with you.

How does giving away other people’s money, in what could be seen as a kickback scheme, make you a philanthropist?

2. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman successfully sued you, alleging your Trump University was an “illegal educational institution” that charged up to $35,000 for “Trump Elite” mentorships promising personal advice from you, but you never showed up and your “special” list of lenders was photocopied from Scotsman Guide, a magazine found at any bookstore.

Why did you not show up?

And:

9. In demolishing the Bonwit Teller building to make way for Trump Tower, you had no labor troubles, even though only about 15 unionists worked at the site alongside 150 Polish men, most of whom entered the country illegally, lacked hard hats, and slept on the site.

How did you manage to avoid labor troubles, like picketing and strikes, and job safety inspections while using mostly non-union labor at a union worksite — without hard hats for the Polish workers?

10. A federal judge later found you conspired to cheat both the Polish workers, who were paid less than $5 an hour cash with no benefits, and the union health and welfare fund. You testified that you did not notice the Polish workers, whom the judge noted were easy to spot because they were the only ones on the work site without hard hats.

What should voters make of your failure or inability to notice 150 men demolishing a multi-story building without hard hats?

About that last, it's not the hard hats; it's the illegal Polish workers and his lack of "labor troubles" at the site. What kind of deal do you have to cut, and whom do you have to cut it with, to fly that low under the construction radar?

▪ Regarding his gaming licenses:

13. You were the first person recommended for a casino license by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, which opposed all other applicants or was neutral. Later it came out in official proceedings that you had persuaded the state to limit its investigation of your background.

Why did you ask that the investigation into your background be limited?

14. You were the target of a 1979 bribery investigation. No charges were filed, but New Jersey law mandates denial of a license to anyone omitting any salient fact from their casino application.

Why did you omit the 1979 bribery investigation?

David Cay Johnston is not alone in asking these questions.

CNN on Donald Trump and the Mob

A simple Web search on "trump mafia new jersey" produces a number of links, including this one, from CNN:

Donald Trump and the mob

Chris Frates, CNN Investigative Correspondent
Updated 12:37 PM ET, Fri July 31, 2015

Donald Trump's glittering empire of New York skyscrapers and Atlantic City casinos have long had a darker side, allegations that the mob helped build them.

Trump's alleged ties to New York and Philadelphia crime families go back decades and have been recounted in a book, newspapers and government records.

"The mob connections of Donald are extraordinarily extensive," New York investigative journalist Wayne Barrett told CNN in an interview.

Barrett, the author of the 1992 unauthorized biography "Trump: The Deals and the Downfall," wrote that Trump's life "intertwines with the underworld."...

In a recent Federalist article, David Marcus writes that Trump bought the property that his Atlantic City casino Trump Plaza would one day occupy -- for twice market price -- from Salvatore Testa, a Philly mobster and son of one-time Philly mob boss Philip "Chicken Man" Testa. (Springsteen fans might recognize the elder Testa from the opening lines of the song, Atlantic City.)

In his book, Barrett writes that Testa and a partner, who together headed a Philly mafia hit-squad called the Young Executioners, bought the property for "a scant $195,000" in 1977. In 1982, Trump paid $1.1 million for it.

"The $220 per square foot that Trump paid for the Testa property was the second most expensive purchase he made on the block, even though it was one of the first parcels he bought," Barrett wrote.

The casino was built with the help of two construction companies controlled by Philly mobsters Nicademo "Little Nicky" Scarfo and his nephew Phillip "Crazy Phil" Leonetti, according to, as Marcus notes, a New Jersey state commission's 1986 report on organized crime.

Trump also had a decade-long relationship with Scarfo's investment banker, according to Barrett's book. ...

There's much more in this article, and there are more articles.

What's the Next Move?

For those who call the shots in the Republican Party, what's the next move? They may or may not want to allow Trump to be their nominee, but they certainly won't let him run third-party. (I'm guessing the former won't be permitted and the latter will get Trump "an offer he can't refuse," but that's just me.)

So what do they do, these party bosses and owners, these Kochs and Friesses and Adelsons? Do they wait for Trump fever to die down (to mix a metaphor begun at the top of this page) and risk it growing stronger instead? Or do they make a move?

If it were me and I wanted him gone, I'd make the move and soon. There seems to be plenty to work with, to use for both behind-the-scene threats and for on-camera deep-fat frying. Would even the party's economically insecure racists follow Trump all the way to mobtown, or would they abandon him at the border? What's a bridge too far for Trump supporters? Whatever the answer, this may be the party's strongest move, short of a "friendly" DA filing a RICO indictment.

If I'm right — if big-money Republicans, those backing all other candidates, want to make him gone; and if they're willing to destroy Trump economically and as a brand to do it — this fall's Republican story will be even more interesting than what we've seen already. Republican oppo research is relentless, and Republican tactics seem to have little short of murder as an upper bound. R-on-R violence is violent indeed.

Of course, those are two big ifs in the paragraph above. Ann Coulter, for example, wants to see Trump nominated. How many in that small group of Republicans in a position to decide share her view? I think we're about to find out.

GP

Springsteen's "Atlantic City." As noted in the article, Mob boss Philip "Chicken Man" Testa is mentioned (as "Chicken Man") in the first line of the song.

Is There Any Actual "News" In The Michael Grimm Sentencing? Not For Our Brilliant Journalists

Friday, Brooklyn Federal District Court Judge Pamela Chen gave Mafia thug-turned-congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, a very harsh dressing down-- very harsh. No one can ever accuse Pamela Chen of not being one harsh dresser-downer. "That this type of crime is common does not lessen its significance," the judge said. "Your moral compass, Mr. Grimm, needs some reorientation." She then gave him an astoundingly-- criminally-- light sentence, a mere 8 months, starting in mid-September.

My sister and her family live on Staten Island, and in 2010 redistricting seems to have put our childhood home in Brooklyn within one block of NY-11, the district that had elected and reelected Grimm, not despite his Mafia status but, at least in part, because of it. Growing up, my neighborhood diversity could be measured between Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, Reform Jews, Hasidic Jews and cultural Jews. And there were also a few Italians. Role models among people I knew ranged from successful Jews like Albert Einstein, Felix Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis, Arthur Miller, Jonas Salk, Sandy Koufax, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, Golda Meir, Samuel Goldwyn, George Gershwin and Jacob Javitz to, for a few, Bob Dylan. "The Italians" had a different set of role models: the Mafia. These were the days that the biggest names in New York were Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese... Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno, Profaci, Gigante... "Fat Tony" Salerno... I'd have gravitated to Fiorello LaGuardia, Arturo Toscanni, maybe Enrico Fermi if I was looking for a role model. But even many of the entertainers and politicians-- from Sinatra to slimy U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato-- were Mob-connected.

It wasn't until I became friends with now infamous murder victim Susan Berman that I came to grips with the fact that the Jewish immigrant experience included a hefty Mafia participation as well. Back to the earliest 1900s there were brutal Jewish crime organizations in NY, like Harry Horowitz's Lenox Avenue Gang, as violent and vicious as any other street gangs operating in the city. By the 1920s Arnold Rothstein was one of the country's top gangsters, the first to turn a variety of criminal enterprises into corporate endeavors. Detroit's top bootlegging gang, the Purple Gang, was run by the Jewish mob. Murder Inc. was a large Jewish-run group of killers for hire. And names like Meyer Lansky, Mickey Cohen, Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel, Red Levine, Bo Weiberg, Moe Dalitz, Charles "King" Solomon, Abner "Longy" Zwillman, Jacob Shapiro, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, Joseph "Doc" Stacher, Hyman "Curly" Holtz, Louis "Shadows" Kravitz, Harry Teitelbaum, Philip "Little Farvel" Kovolick and Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg, Hyman Abrams, Alex "Shondor" Birns, Israel "Ice-Pick Willie" Alderman (a Minneapolis associate of my murderded friend Susan's murderer father David "Davie the Jew" Berman) and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the head of Murder Inc., became notorious nationally.

Almost no one ever gets tried for being in the Mob-- not Al Capone, not Lucky Luciano and not Michael Grimm. But at least the prosecutors had a plan to make Capone and Luciano pay for their crimes. Long before Grimm ever thought about running for Congress, he was a Mafia mole inside the FBI, but he is also a mole for right-wing factions of the Israeli government and has been protected to a great extent by Bibi Netanyahu himself. Oh, and with all the talk about about the Jewish mobsters who helped build and run Las Vegas, how could I have not mentioned that long after the death of my friend Susan's father "Davie the Jew" Berman, who ran the Flamingo Hotel for the Mafia, the frontman for the Mob in Vegas is still Jewish: Republican kingpin Sheldon Adelson, who is determined to get another organized-crime-friendly Republican, Marco Rubio, into the White House.

No one calls Adelson a vicious mobster,  just a casino mogul

Who Would Have a More Bizarre Foreign Policy, Mitt Romney Or GOP Staten Island Organzied Crime Figure Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm?

Rachel explained Romney's foreign policy adventure pretty thoroughly Monday night (above). Tuesday we talked about why we found it reckless and amateurish and Reuters is still wondering what Romney's foreign policy is.

In a speech filled with rhetoric rather than substance, and with repeated and false accusations about President Barack Obama’s national security record, Romney once again talked about how he would “strengthen our partnerships”-- and once again failed to explain how he would manage relations with our friends in Europe, with whom we work closely on every major global challenge.

One central thesis in Romney’s speech, and in his criticism of the administration overall, has been that under Obama the U.S. has abandoned its allies. In addition to providing no evidence to support this claim, Romney barely mentioned the closest U.S. allies: our North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners. In fact, this neglect has been a consistent theme throughout Romney’s campaign.

...Also largely absent from Romney’s speech was Russia, the country he described as America’s number one geopolitical foe. Continuing disagreements with Russia, however, cannot hide the fact that Obama’s clear-eyed, pragmatic reset in relations with that nation has led to real progress in reducing Cold War-era nuclear arsenals, tangible benefits in opening supply routes to Afghanistan, and new cooperation on issues ranging from Iran to counterterrorism.

Romney’s three attempts to outline a foreign policy strategy, however, have not offered any policy prescriptions, guidelines or principles about how he would handle relations with Russia.

Our European partners are now being treated with trust and respect-- and they have responded in kind, in renewed and strengthened partnership addressing crises across the globe. So what kind of partner would our European allies get in Romney? Ask our friends the British: They had the most recent experience during the Summer Olympics.

And over in the U.K., our British friends are reading about how Romney's fantasy of American power is revealing a fragile grasp of global realities. "Rather than lay out a vision for American power, or even an alternative to the national security stewardship of Barack Obama, Romney has been content to simply say why he thinks the president has done a lousy job, without offering voters any sense of what he would do differently as commander-in-chief."

So what about Mafia Congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm? Romney has ordered him to get nowhere near the presidential campaign and removed him from all positions connected to it after his criminal activities started leaking out. He has his own foreign policy, which had him sneaking off from the GOP frat party in the Sea of Galilee to visit some organized crime connections in Cyprus. The FBI was in hot pursuit and one of Rep. Grimm's Cyprus connections, Panayiotis “Peter” Papanicolaou, is in jail now.

This week both the NY Times and the NY Post ran stories they've been working on for a very long time... about Grimm's connection to the Mafia here at home, specifically he Gambino Crime Family. (DWT started following Grimm in 2006 when he was a dirty FBI agent--soon fired-- with Mob connections and a role in the Duke Cunningham case. He went from that to being a Republican congressman. Hey, why not? Ironically, his first conversation with Boehner was to demand that Members of Congress be allowed to pack heat on the House floor. Wisely, Boehner has avoided him ever since. The Post got excited about Grimm's Gambino connection.

Staten Island Rep. Michael Grimm investigated the Gambino crime family as an FBI agent-- before opening a restaurant with a business partner so close to one of the mob clan’s capos, he considers him an “uncle,” according to sources and court documents.

not Fat Tony, Fat Tom (R-NY)

The first-term Republican’s ex-business partner, Bennett Orfaly, regularly travels to the federal lockup in Fort Dix, NJ, to visit his pal Anthony “Fat Tony’’ Morelli, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said.

Morelli’s mob assignments included overseeing the family’s investments in pornography, labor racketeering and illegal dumping, law-enforcement sources said.

Late Gambino boss John Gotti put him in charge of the family’s Florida rackets, one source said.

Morelli, who is serving time on several convictions, is “like an uncle” to Orfaly, another source said.

Asked about his Gambino connections, Orfaly declined to comment. Grimm is under investigation for alleged fund-raising irregularities in his 2010 campaign.

As an FBI agent, Grimm was responsible for keeping tabs on John Gotti’s brother Peter. He also worked undercover on a case that resulted in the arrest of Gambino soldier Greg DePalma.

...An Israeli named Ofer Biton, who until recently was jailed on an a charge of immigration fraud.

He was released to house arrest on a $1.5 million bond after Orfaly posted his stake in several restaurants co-owned with Biton, according to court papers.

Biton’s lawyer, John Meringolo, says the feds are threatening his client with more serious charges unless he testifies against Grimm in the fund-raising probe.

...Before his election to Congress in 2010, Grimm and Orfaly had been partners in an Upper East Side eatery, Healthalicious.

McGinley [Grimm's lawyer] says that prior to making his run, Grimm sold his share of that business to Orfaly.

But three sources familiar with the ongoing probe, told The Post the purchaser was Biton. Either way, Biton now owns Healthalicious outright, sources said-- and he is partners with Orfaly in several Manhattan pita restaurants.

As far as Biton goes, prosecutors claim that a decade ago, he was a member of an ecstasy ring in California and was wiretapped talking to a senior Israeli organized-crime associate. Biton was never charged with any drug crime.

In addition to his problems with the feds, Grimm also faces a civil lawsuit by Healthalicious workers, alleging wage violations when he was part-owner.

A lawyer for the workers, Michael Faillace, said they settled with Orfaly, but Grimm asked that an agreement with him be postponed until after the election.

ewwwwww... Republicans

That's what Staten Island elected to Congress in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010. The NY Times piece, where, unlike The Post, they reject sensationalistic reporting, sounds at least as tawdry as The Post's! Investigative powerhouse Alison Cowan asserts that the role of Healthalicious in the Grimm story was to "burnish his image as an entrepreneur" in his political biography.

It could not be determined whether Mr. Grimm ever had dealings with Mr. ["Fat Tony"] Morelli before or after he resigned from the F.B.I. in 2006.

New York City records indicate that Mr. Grimm’s ties to Mr. Orfaly begin as early as 2006, when Mr. Grimm began laying the legal framework for the restaurant that the two men would jointly operate at Second Avenue and 83rd Street.

Their work together continued for at least three years. In June 2009, both men signed a city health department application to renew a license for the restaurant, documents show.

A few months later, the accountant for the restaurant, Wayne Muratore, was listed in campaign finance documents as the first treasurer of Mr. Grimm’s 2010 campaign for the House. Mr. Muratore did not respond to phone calls or e-mails.

Mr. Grimm has said that he sold his interest in Healthalicious before taking office in January 2011, although he has given varying accounts of how and when the deal transpired.

Pictured below is Grimm's partner, Orfaly, leaving the U.S. Courthouse with Grimm fundraiser, Ofer Biton. Not sure who's daughter is being used as a shield.

Ryan Visitin' Uncle Sheldon Today

Today Paul Ryan is kissing the ring of Organized Crime figure Sheldon Adelson at his casino in Las Vegas, the Venetian. Although no one expects Adelson to lure Ryan into the same kind of honey trap he caught House Armed Services chairman Buck McKeon in, Ryan should be steering clear of this kind of character. Adelson makes most of his billions not from his Las Vegas gambling empire, but from his shady dealings in Red China. Ryan has enough ethical problems of his own without being seen with a pimp and whore-monger like Adelson. But, at this point Republicans must figure it's just not avoidable. Adelson is the Daddy Warbucks of the GOP. He's doled out more dark, dirty cash to Mitt Romney and to the Republican Party-- not to mention an unprecedented $5 million each to Boehner and Cantor-- than anyone else... in history. He owns them-- with his pro-outsourcing/anti-labor/pro-wars-in-the-Middle East policy agenda.

Because the slobbish avatar of greed and divisiveness is also very litigious, media outlets are extremely careful of writing about his career as a criminal chieftain. Yesterday's NY Times, however, ran a tip-toe-around his pimp business in a new report by Michael Luo and Edward Wong. It starts with an explanation of one of Adelson's many "fixers" in Beijing. (Keep in mind, Adelson owns hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling debts at his casino from Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who gets top security briefings the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army are very interested in.)

When Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, needed something done in China, he often turned to his company’s “chief Beijing representative,” a mysterious businessman named Yang Saixin.

Mr. Yang arranged meetings for Mr. Adelson with senior Chinese officials, acted as a frontman on several ambitious projects for Mr. Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, and intervened on the Sands’s behalf with Chinese regulators. Mr. Yang even had his daughter take Mr. Adelson’s wife, Miriam, shopping when she was in Beijing.

“Adelson and I had a good relationship,” Mr. Yang said in a recent interview in Hong Kong. “He should thank me.”

Mr. Yang joined the Sands in 2007 as the company worked to protect its interests in Macau, where its gambling revenues were mushrooming, and pressed ahead with plans for a resort in mainland China. Boasting of ties to the People’s Liberation Army and China’s state security apparatus, Mr. Yang was hired for his guanxi, that mixture of relationships and favors that is critical to opening doors in China, according to former executives.

But today, Mr. Yang, along with tens of millions of dollars in payments the Sands made through him in China, is a focus of a wide-ranging federal investigation into potential bribery of foreign officials and other matters in China and Macau, according to people with knowledge of the inquiries.

The investigations are unfolding as Mr. Adelson has become an increasing presence in this year’s presidential election, contributing at least $35 million to Republican groups. On Tuesday, Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, is to appear at a fund-raiser at the Sands’s Venetian casino in Las Vegas; Mr. Adelson is likely to attend, according to a person close to him.

In the political arena, Mr. Adelson is perhaps best known as a hawkish defender of Israel. But whatever the outcome of the inquiries involving his businesses in China, an examination of those activities suggests a keen interest in Washington’s China policy and highlights the degree to which politics and profits are often intertwined for Mr. Adelson.

The Sands has faced a conundrum in China as a casino company whose fortunes are heavily dependent on its operations in a country where gambling is illegal, except in Macau. The company relies on the good will of Chinese officials, who mete out approvals and have the power to curtail the flow of mainland visitors. As a result, Mr. Adelson has sought to use financial clout and connections to exert political influence at the highest levels of government.

On the front lines of those efforts was Mr. Yang, who was paid a $30,000-a-month retainer by the company before he was fired in 2009, he said. At times, he acted as Mr. Adelson’s personal guide to the Chinese establishment. Among the dignitaries he took Mr. Adelson to see was Wan Jifei, a leading international trade official whose father had been vice premier. That led to a lunch with other trade officials at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.

The Sands later hired Mr. Wan’s daughter, Bao Bao, a socialite and jewelry designer, to do public relations. And the trade agency Mr. Wan ran became a partner in the Sands’s biggest venture, the Adelson Center for U.S.-China Enterprise.

Bribery, state secrets, millions of dollars unaccounted for... this is what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (not to mention Cantor and Boehner) have enmeshed themselves in my embracing the Mafioso slob from Vegas. "What became of any missing money and whether any of it wound up in the hands of Chinese officials," explains the Times, "are among the questions being examined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission." And these are on top of the investigations going on about Adelson's involvement in the prostitution business-- an open secret in Macau-- and about huge bribes to Chinese officials and Adelson's involvement with Chinese organized crime. No one was ever charged with any crimes when Adelson bribed Tom DeLay on behalf of China while DeLay was still running the House of Representatives and could do China's bidding in return for Adelson's cash.

Chinese leaders at the time were worried about a pending House resolution condemning the country’s bid for the 2008 Olympic Games because of its human rights record. According to Mr. Weidner’s deposition in the Suen case, Mr. Adelson promised Beijing’s mayor he would do what he could. Mr. Adelson called his friend Tom DeLay, then the House majority whip, catching him at a Fourth of July barbecue. Mr. DeLay said he would check on the resolution’s status.

Several hours later, Mr. DeLay called and told Mr. Adelson he was in luck. The resolution was stuck behind a series of other bills.

“So you tell your mayor, it can be assured that this bill will never see the light of day,” Mr. DeLay said, according to Mr. Weidner.

The next morning, the Sands executives met with Qian Qichen, a Chinese vice premier, at the Purple Light Pavilion, where the government’s leaders greet foreign dignitaries. Mr. Qian suggested he would ensure a limitless supply of gamblers to Macau.

In May 2004, the Sands Macau became the first foreign-owned casino in the enclave. On opening day, a mob estimated at 20,000 pushed over crowd-control barriers, ripping doors off their hinges. In its first year, the casino’s profits exceeded its entire $265 million cost. ... The Sands pursued a strategy of engaging with Beijing. It stepped up participation in China-related programs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and hired Myron Brilliant, its senior vice president for international affairs, as a consultant. He suggested establishing a trade center, to help American businesses pursue opportunities in China. Not only could the center funnel convention traffic to Macau, it could foster better relations with Chinese officials.

It goes on and on and on. And Adelson will pay any amount to stay out of prison. And he's counting on a Romney Administration and a Republican Congress to make sure of that.

Maybe the DCCC Apologized To Sheldon Adelson Too Soon?

Organized crime figure Sheldon Adelson is now the #1 biggest donor to the Mitt Romney campaign and to the Republican Party. He also gave unprecedented $5 million dollar bribes-- walking around money-- to both Eric Cantor and John Boehner. Boehner, horrified, immediately turned the tainted cash over to the NRCC. Cantor has been using it to build personal power by electing preferred stooges in GOP primaries, like Richard Hudson over Tea Party fave Scott Keadle in North Carolina. Romney, the GOP and Cantor are reveling in all that Adelson cash knowing full well it's all suspect money and that Adelson is under investigation by the Feds for a life that is a veritable crime spree.

When the DCCC reported on a blog that Adelson runs a Chinese prostitution ring-- which a former senior executive in his sleazy gambling empire has testified is true-- Adelson threatened to sue and the DCCC immediately backed down and, tail between their legs, apologized. Yesterday Las Vegas Review Journal columnist Steve Sebelius suggested they shouldn't have and went on to list some of the known knowns about Adleson.

Adelson has elected not to sign a contract with the Culinary union, which is his right. But Adelson went further: When the Culinary staged a pre-opening protest at The Venetian, the casino's staff demanded police arrest demonstrators, and when officers refused, Sands sued. A federal judge determined the sidewalks outside Strip casinos are public forums, but Sands appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court before being rebuffed.

Or the time Adelson took offense when an event hosted by Temple Beth Shalom honoring then-Mayor Oscar Goodman was moved from The Venetian to the Four Seasons after Goodman refused to come to the casino because of the union dispute. Adelson confronted Rabbi Felipe Goodman in his office and spoke to him so harshly it brought the rabbi to tears, Rabbi Goodman later told the Review-Journal.

Republicans are fond of excoriating President Barack Obama for not being sufficiently pro-America. But where are their cries of outrage at the online video in which Adelson says it was unfortunate that he wore an American and not Israeli uniform during his military service?

"I am not Israeli," Adelson says. "The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and one of my daughters was in the IDF."

What about the irony of Adelson denouncing President Obama for "socialist-style" policies while, according to Forbes magazine, seeing his own personal fortune jump more than any other person in America under Obama's tenure?

"What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we've been experiencing for almost four years," he said. "That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people's lives."

Of course, Adelson's most lucrative casinos are in Macau, which is territory controlled by actual socialists. It's there that Adelson's company is under investigation for allegedly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But now, Adelson has pledged to spend millions electing the man who could appoint the next attorney general, who will oversee that investigation.

All of that to say this: There's no need to reach for salacious, unproven details to suggest Adelson isn't very nice. There's plenty to prove that case.

ProPublica has detailed many of the official probes of Adelson's worldwide crime empire, which, under normal circumstances would make even pikers like Romney and Cantor as wary of accepting Adelson's cash as Boehner was. He made his billions through organized crime, both in Las Vegas and, even more so, in China. He's caught the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon, in a gambling honey trap and although everyone assumes he uses the connection to benefit Israel, who's to say the classified information he gets from McKeon doesn't go straight to China? And late Saturday the Wall Street Journal and other publications started breaking the story that there are more charges pending-- criminal money laundering of immense sums of crime money, spanning the globe.

Federal authorities are investigating whether Las Vegas Sands Corp. [Adelson's company] and several of its executives violated money-laundering laws by failing to alert authorities to millions of dollars transferred to its casinos by two Las Vegas high rollers, according to lawyers and others involved in the matter.

The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles is examining the casino company's handling of money received several years ago from a Mexican businessman later accused of drug trafficking and a former California executive subsequently convicted of taking illegal kickbacks, according to the people involved.

The probe comes as the casino giant, controlled by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, faces possible legal trouble on another front. U.S. authorities are also investigating whether Sands violated U.S. antibribery laws in its operations in the Chinese territory of Macau.

Senior Justice Department and Treasury officials say they have grown concerned in recent years about the risk that casinos could be used for money laundering and terrorism financing, and that compliance standards in the industry aren't strong enough. The Sands investigation could become an important test case of federal efforts to force casinos to become more like banks in knowing where customers are getting their money.

...The Sands money-laundering probe is focused on whether the casino and some of its executives ignored warning signs about two customers and failed to alert federal authorities about large quantities of money they had deposited, people familiar with the matter said. Both were so-called whales, the kind of big-spending gamblers who are heavily courted by casinos. Both spent the majority of their money at the Venetian casino, which is owned by Sands, according to court records and people familiar with the matter... The case has its roots in a series of money transfers in the mid-2000s by Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese-born Mexican national who owned three Mexican pharmaceutical companies and was a Vegas high roller, say several people familiar with the investigation.

In July 2007, Mr. Ye Gon was indicted in the U.S. on charges of trafficking products used to make methamphetamine, four months after Mexican authorities and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raided his Mexico City home and found more than $205 million in U.S. dollars. He has said he is a legitimate businessman and didn't supply the illegal narcotics trade.

Mr. Ye Gon clearly had been a lucrative casino customer. He told the Associated Press in a 2007 interview that he would bet $150,000 a hand at baccarat during his gambling sprees, and that the Sands-owned Venetian casino gave him a Rolls Royce. He lost more than $125 million at Vegas casinos, including the Venetian, according to a 2007 affidavit by a federal agent who reviewed casino records, although $40 million of that was lent to him by casinos and never paid back.

It isn't clear whether prosecutors suspect Mr. Ye Gon was trying to launder money through the casinos to make it appear clean, or was simply transferring money there for gambling purposes. Either way, if the money was illicit, it could be considered money laundering, according to lawyers involved in the case.

In 2006, Mr. Ye Gon made tens of millions of dollars in transfers to Sands accounts from Mexican "casas de cambio," which are currency-exchange firms that have been the focus of several recent money-laundering probes in the U.S., several people involved in the case said. He transferred a total of around $85 million to casinos owned by Sands and other operators, court filings indicate. Prosecutors have told lawyers representing Sands employees that Mr. Ye Gon's use of Mexican exchange houses to handle such huge transfers was a red flag.

In a court filing, a DEA agent said a woman he described as Mr. Ye Gon's former mistress suggested Mr. Ye Gon used the casinos to launder money. According to the mistress, "the traffickers instructed him to use his bank accounts to send the money to Las Vegas where he could launder it and that the money in Mr. Ye Gon's accounts at the Venetian was drug money," the filing said.

...At the time of Mr. Ye Gon's arrest, another high roller, Ausaf Umar Siddiqui, then a vice president at retail chain Fry's Electronics with a salary of about $200,000, was making big bets at Sands casinos.

Sands received more than $100 million from Mr. Siddiqui through a circuitous route, according to court filings in a later criminal case against him for taking kickbacks from Fry's vendors. Filings in that case indicate that Mr. Siddiqui created a company called PC International LLC to receive kickbacks, then wired more than $100 million to two Sands companies, Venetian Marketing Inc. and WDR LLC, over a three-year period ending in 2008. That company also wired about $20 million to Destron, an MGM Resorts subsidiary, according to the filings.

...Federal prosecutors said that Mr. Siddiqui spent that money, and millions more, at the casinos, which gave Mr. Siddiqui huge lines of credit, free luxury hotel suites and free private-jet rides, according to court filings. Separately, documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that Mr. Siddiqui used an internal Sands credit system that allowed high rollers to deposit millions of dollars in accounts in Las Vegas and then access the funds in Macau, or vice versa.

Federal agents arrested Mr. Siddiqui in 2009 on charges of taking illegal kickbacks. He pleaded guilty and now is serving a six-year prison term. Mr. Siddiqui's lawyer declined to comment on the probe.

That same year, the government's case against Mr. Ye Gon was dismissed after prosecutors found problems with evidence and witnesses. He still is being held in custody pending extradition to Mexico, where authorities want to put him on trial for drug trafficking and money laundering, according to court records filed in the extradition case.

Flabbergasted? Think these revelations require a comment or two? I'm dumbstruck that this stinking heap of garbage is buying our country. I'm at a loss for words. So I turned to singer/songwriter Elliot Astur and a song, "Dear America," that Ed Schultz played on his show:

Obama Plays The China Card Against Romney-- What Will Organized Crime Boss Sheldon Adelson Do?

I have nothing against China. In fact, I have tremendous admiration for the country and their history. The very first real hit song I ever had on my indie label was named China (and I'll make a fraction of a cent in royalties if you click that link!) But the U.S. has a real China problem and it's all about how greed-obsessed self-serving plutocrats in our own country-- people like Mitt Romney, though not just Mitt Romney-- have bribed our political elites into allowing them to enrich themselves by hollowing out the U.S. manufacturing base by sending entire industries to cheap labor markets, particularly China. When you hear a politician talking about "free trade," that's what they're talking about. And that would be 90% of Republicans and all the Blue Dogs and New Dems (i.e., the Republican wing of the Democratic Party).

And there's a much darker side to this mess, recently enabled by a ruling, Citizens United, by the most corporate-dominated Supreme Court in American history, a ruling that opens the door, for the first time, to foreign money coming in and buying elections for politicians that serve their interests. That's why John Boehner is Speaker of the House pushing pro-China trade policies and why we have a Senator Ron Johnson pushing China's interest rather than Wisconsin's instead of Senator Russ Feingold and why we have a Senator Pat Toomey pushing China's interest rather than Pennsylvania's instead of Senator Joe Sestak. Chinese money, laundered through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing SuperPACS, helped buy the 2010 congressional elections for the GOP. And now they want to make sure they put in a U.S. president who will push their interests as well. And that would be Mitt Romney. They're not wiring bags of Renminbi and yuan to Romney's accounts in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and the Bahamas (as far as anyone knows). Instead, they're laundering the money through organized crime boss Sheldon Adelson, the biggest single contributor to Romney's campaign and to the GOP... and a dirtbag fighting multiple foreign corrupt practices charges that could land him in prison if Romney isn't elected, a man who bridges the gap between the America Mafia and the Chinese triads. Cash from Adelson's gambling and prostitution empire in China is flowing into the American electoral system at a rate never before imagined in the country's history. Friday, the National Memo nervous about Adelson's penchant for suing journalists who probe too deeply into his mob connections, gingerly examined a few hard-to-ignore superficial aspects of the Adelson-Chinese Organized Crime relationship. (Keep in mind, Adelson has vowed to spend $100 million on buying Romney the White House-- and his motivation is decidedly NOT simply his primary loyalty to Israel over America.)

Not much more than a decade ago, his Sands Hotel and Casino ranked fifth in revenues on the Las Vegas Strip. With a mere billion in the bank, he ranked 274 on Forbes’ list of Richest Men in America. Now with a net worth of $25 billion, he is ranked the eighth richest American, just behind the notorious Koch brothers.

Adelson owes his improved fortures to Macau, the island province recoverd by China in 1999 after more than 400 years of colonial rule by Portugal. What was once a government monopoly on gambling was opened up by Beijing authorities to private operators, with 21 bidders for three licenses. Despite its financial weakness compared with its Vegas competitors, Adelson’s company came out on top.

The questions that continue to haunt Adelson are why officials in Macau and Beijing decided to award a gaming license to him-- and how he conducted business there in the years since. Indeed, those questions are the subject of ongoing litigation between Adelson and two executives who formerly worked for him: Richard Suen, who claims to have successfully escorted the Vegas billionaire through the complex, mystifying political systems of China and Macau; and Steven C. Jacobs, who ran the Sands China casino in Macau until Adelson abruptly fired him.

Although Adelson promised Suen a payment of $5 million plus two percent of LVSI’s net profits in Macau as a “success fee,” he was never paid. In 2008 a Las Vegas jury awarded Suen $43.8 million for his role in Adelson’s campaign for a Macau license. But the court’s decision was overturned on appeal and the case will be retried in 2013.

Their business relationship began in November 2000, when Adelson hired Suen as a consultant to advise how he might gain influence with the Communist leadership in Beijing and thus win a gaming license in Macau. Suen testified that he believed Adelson’s “strong affiliations with the Republican Party” would win him the attention of top government officials, including then-Vice Premier Qian Qichen, who oversaw Macau.

It was Adelson’s political connections, according to his own testimony, that got him the highly unusual meeting with Qian. His opportunity arose when members of Congress filed legislation designed to prevent China from hosting the 2008 Olympics due to human rights violations. Adelson simply used his clout as a major Congressional donor to kill the bill, calling “four or five” Representatives. At a Fourth of July picnic, he spoke with then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) about the bill.

Bejing soon won the Olympic bid, and Adelson subsequently met with Vice Premier Qian in 2001 at the Purple Light Pavilion-- the illustrious Beijing venue where Qing Emperors once received imperial emissaries and foreign generals. In February 2002, China’s rulers awarded Adelson a gaming license for Macau.

Not long after the Sands Macau opened in 2004, Adelson’s corporate profits began an astronomical rise. Since then, Adelson and his company have built two more casinos on the Chinese island. In 2012, first quarter revenue nearly doubled from 2011 for the Las Vegas Sands Corp, with one casino alone averaging nearly $4.5 million in revenue per day.

Yet despite his stratospheric wealth Adelson is, much like his Vegas casino in 1999, “currently vulnerable.” Probes by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission could threaten his empire.

If those probes find wrongdoing, the chief witness may be Jacobs, former CEO of Sands China, the Macau casino, is also suing the mogul and his company for wrongful termination. Among other claims, Jacobs has alleged in court papers that Adelson demanded secret investigations of high-ranking Macau government figures in order to thwart regulation of his businesses. The plaintiff is Jacobs, who received a $2.5 million bonus two months prior to his dismissal, claims Adelson wanted him to use improper “leverage” against senior government officials-- and to refrain from disclosing information concerning the company’s alleged involvement with the island’s “Triad” criminal gangs, among other issues, to the LVSI board of directors.

According to Jacobs, Adelson was determined to “aggressively grow” the junket business, which brings high-rolling gambling patrons to special “VIP rooms” at Macau casinos-- despite credible allegations that the junkets are controlled by Triad racketeers. In 2010, Reuters reported that a top Triad gangster and junket owner had shared in profits from a Sanda VIP room.

Attorneys for Jacobs have filed court documents stating that he is a cooperating witness in probes under way by the Justice Department and the SEC into whether Adelson’s firms have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by maintaining a top Macau official on the Sands China payroll.

As a casino operator in Las Vegas, Adelson is subject to Nevada laws regulating gaming. Should federal authorites uncover any overseas malfeasance, the gambling baron could lose his license-- and taint all of the money donated to his political favorites. No wonder he wants more and better friends in Washington.

The rotund, swinish Adelson is exhibit number one for why Eisenhower-era 91% tax rates on billionaires must be brought back if America is to continue as a democracy. That simple.