Who's More Mobbed-Up, Herr Trumpf Or The Clintons... Does It Matter?

Paul "Big Paul" Castellano, Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, Roy Cohn, Herr Trumpf

Of the times we've covered Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, then of the Genovese crime family, currently enjoying the hospitality of a federal penitentiary, one batch of stories was about a Mafia-affiliated Republican congressman from Staten Island, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (currently in federal prison on a variety of fraud convictions) and one was about Herr Trumpf's mob connections. The Mafia connections to each man have been more or less swept under the rug with some consistency, even though the Mob connections are central to each man's rise. (Grimm has more more intimately involved with Anthony "Fat Tony" Morelli than with Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, but Trumpf is absolutely an Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno man.)

As we mentioned the other day, Cruz has been trying to get the Trumpf-Mafia connections out to the public again. New Yorkers have known about it for decades but Trumpf fans in the Old Confederacy haven't been exposed to that side of Herr yet. A few days ago, Michael Daly, writing for theDailyBeast.com, summarized Trumpf's Mafia connections, which went way beyond just any of the Fat Tonys.

In fairness, all major New York builders had to deal with mob-linked firms and unions well past the time Donald Trump built his signature tower. The same was true in Atlantic City when he built his casinos. Trump’s dealings there went beyond Mafiosi to include at least one member of a triad. A U.S. Senate report suggests he had no trouble working with the Chinese when it came to this alleged organized crime member (PDF).

On Sunday, Sen. Ted 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.

Hillary with her pal Giovanni Gambino in Charleston, South Carolina

But the Mafia isn't likely to be a battleground for Trumpf if Hillary is the Democratic Party nominee. Way too close for comfort for her to get into with him. There have been allegations that the Clinton's used their foundation as an international money-laundering operation. I'm skeptical but I have it on some really excellent sources that, despite some craziness around a Charles Kauthammer connection to the story, it's essentially true. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I'm sure if Hillary tried bringing up Trumpf's Mafia connections this is what he'd start talking about:

The Clinton Foundation is "organized crime" at its finest!

Here is a good, concise summary of how the Clinton Foundation works as a tax free international money laundering scheme.  It may eventually prove to be the largest political criminal enterprise in U.S. history.  This is a textbook case on how you hide foreign money sent to you and repackage it to be used for your own purposes. All tax free.

Here's how it  works:

1. You create a separate foreign "charity." In this case, the Clinton's set it up in Canada.

2.  Foreign oligarchs and governments, then donate to this Canadian charity. In this case, over 1,000 did -- contributing mega millions. I'm sure they did this out of the goodness of their hearts, and expected nothing in return. (Imagine Putin's buddies waking up one morning and just deciding to send untold millions to a Canadian charity).

3. The Canadian charity then bundles these separate donations and makes a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation. 

4. The Clinton Foundation and the cooperating Canadian charity claim Canadian law prohibits the identification of individual donors.

5. The Clinton Foundation then "spends" some of this money for legitimate good works programs. Unfortunately, experts believe this is on the order of 10%. Much of the balance goes to enrich the Clinton's, pay salaries to untold numbers of hangers on, and fund lavish travel, etc.  Again, virtually all tax free, which means you and I are subsidizing it.

6.  The Clinton Foundation, with access to the world's best accountants, somehow fails to report much of this on their tax filings. They discover these "clerical errors" and begin the process of re-filing 5 years of tax returns.

7.  Net result-- foreign money goes into the Clinton's pockets tax free and untraceable back to the original donor. This is the textbook definition of money laundering.

Oh, by the way, the Canadian "charity" includes as a principal one Frank Giustra. Google him. He is the guy who was central to the formation of Uranium One, the Canadian company that somehow acquired massive U.S. uranium interests and then sold them to an organization controlled by Russia.  This transaction required U.S. State Department approval, and guess who was Secretary of State when the approval was granted.

As an aside, imagine how former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell feels. That poor schlep is in jail because he and his wife took $165,000 in gifts and loans for doing minor favors for a guy promoting a vitamin company. Not legal but not exactly putting U.S. security at risk.

Sarcasm aside, if you're still not persuaded this was a cleverly structured way to get unidentified foreign money to the Clinton's, ask yourself this:

Why did these foreign interests funnel money through a Canadian charity? Why not donate directly to the Clinton Foundation?  Better yet, why not donate money directly to the people, organizations and countries in need?  This is the essence of money laundering and influence peddling.

Now you know why Hillary's destruction of 30,000 e-mails was a risk she was willing to take. Bill and Hillary are devious, unprincipled, dishonest and criminal and they are Slick!

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."

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.

Mafia's Rep In Congress-- Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm-- Is Still Not In Prison

Ken used to be an opera critic for the NY Times but, that aside, neither of us get many calls from ace Times reporters working on explosive investigative pieces about criminal congressmen. A couple years ago, though, several Times reporters called me because, it turns out, DWT was the first to report anything at all about a rogue FBI agent named "Mikey Suits" who went over to the Dark Side-- first to the Mob and then to the GOP for the Mob. It was 2005 and there was a frantic scramble to coverup a $400,000 payoff from Tom Kontogiannis to George W. Bush via bribe-happy San Diego Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham. Kontogiannis needed a presidential pardon and gave Randy "Duke livin' large free of charge" Cunningham the cash for Bush. No one has ever traced that biggish bundle of dough. But the Gambino Crime Family opertaive, "Mikey Suits" was involved with various "business" dealings with Kontogiannis (now in prison).

During the Romney campaign, enough Grimm dirty laundry started leaking out that Romney staffers made the Staten Island congressman a persona non-grata and removed him from his campaign position and took his name off the official Romney website. The specific impetus was when Grimm snuck off from the 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.

At the time, both the NY Times and the NY Post ran stories they'd been working on for a very long time... about Grimm's connection to the Mafia here at home, specifically he Gambino connection. Ironically, Grimm's 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.

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.

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.

Now keep in mind that before Grimm ran for Congress in Staten Island, he had been kicked out of the FBI, mostly for taking payoffs from Kontogiannis. Kontogiannis' story would be the biggest political blockbuster of our lifetimes. He's been told he'd be found dead in his cell if he ever tries to tell it though-- and it involves Saudis, Greeks, a $400,000 cash bribe to George Bush and... the freshman crook who represents Staten Island in Congress today. This past Friday, Biton plead guilty in a sweet deal that saves Grimm a lot of trouble.

A former fund-raiser for Representative Michael G. Grimm, whose campaign finances are under investigation by federal prosecutors, pleaded guilty on Friday to visa fraud.

The former fund-raiser, Ofer Biton, an Israeli immigrant who helped direct hundreds of thousands of dollars from supporters of a revered rabbi to Mr. Grimm’s campaign before his election to Congress in 2010, was arrested last August and charged with lying on his visa application.

Followers of the rabbi, Yoshiyahu Pinto, have said in interviews that Mr. Grimm or Mr. Biton told them that the campaign would find a way to accept donations that were over the legal limit, were given in cash or were given by foreigners who did not have permanent resident status.

Congressional campaigns are not allowed to accept cash donations of more than $100 and foreigners without resident status are barred by law from donating to political campaigns. At the time of Mr. Biton’s arrest, lawyers not involved in the case said that the charges appeared to have been meant to persuade him to cooperate with the authorities in the investigation of Mr. Grimm, a Staten Island Republican, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

There are rumors, completely unconfirmed, that Biton has promised to cooperate with DOJ prosecutors in the probe of Grimm. I'll believe it when I see it. The New York Daily News is reporting that the plea agreement does not mention cooperation as a condition, but the government and the judge agreed to spring him from house arrest, which he's been serving for the past 10 months. "After Biton was arrested a year ago, the feds said he was refusing to cooperate with their probe into whether Grimm received illegal campaign contributions."

Grimm has refused to take questions related to his Mafia connections and right now he's too busy picking fights with Rand Paul anyway. Grimm is tight with another Mafia-related Republican politician, New Jersey's corrupt governor, Chris Christie.

No, that's not Fat Tony; it's another Grimm Mafia pal

Why Did The Beltway Media Completely Miss The Entire Michael Grimm Career In Crime Story?

It boggled my mind that the Beltway media adamantly refused to give Michael Grimm's criminal career any serious coverage for years, even while one of the most respected investigative journalists in the country, the NYTimes' William Rashbaum, was already blowing the whistle on him. It wasn't until he threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony that reporters started imagining Grimm might actually be a criminal type. God forbid they actually look into his past. The guy was a member of the Gambino Crime Family who has been involved with not just criminal, but grotesquely thuggish activities for many years. Did they think "Fat Tony" Morelli was the name of his neighborhood baker? Is that too hard for Beltway journalists to grapple with? Well, the answer is "yes."

Grimm's criminal activities-- from New York to Florida and Texas and out to Cyprus and Israel-- are beyond the ken of DC wanna-be reporter kids whose idea of covering a crime is Aaron Schock's office paint and belt color. It didn't seem to matter inside the Beltway that long before he was a sleazy congressman from Staten Island, Grimm was a Mafia thug who got tangentially involved in a hushed up case of New York mobster/real estate developer Tom "Gus" Kontogiannis giving Randy "Duke" Cunningham $400,000 to try to buy a pardon from then President George W. Bush. Kontogiannis, a Long Island Republican real estate developer, could have his picture in a dictionary next to the definition of "sleaze." And he knew just where to turn for a presidential pardon after pleading guilty in a serious bribery, kickback and contract-rigging scandal that cheated Queens school students out of $5 million dollars worth of computers: Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Kontogiannis' partner in crime-- who also plead guilty, was the District School Superintendent and a failed Republican candidate for Congress (financed, of course, by Kontogiannis), Celestine Miller who wound up with 4 houses (worth approximately $1 million) + $80,000 in campaign contributions for her participation in the felony. Kontogiannis bought a boat, now abandoned and worthless, from ole "Duke," the "Kelly C." for at least $400,000 more than it was worth, to obtain Duke's help in getting Bush to pardon him. More recently, Grimm tried getting Kontogiannis off the hook for a life that was basically, like his own, an unending crime spree.

And none of this seemed to the Beltway media like it was worth investigating? Something this outside the DC box is just too unfathomable to this sad crew of unserious, self-congratulating novices. Thursday, reporting for the New York Daily News, Dan Friedman, an actual reporter, broke the news that Grimm had received $100,000 in under-the-table payments from a secret ownership stake he maintained in Healthalicious after his election to Congress, an election that was largely paid for with a combination of foreign and Organized Crime money. When Grimm, cornered and offered a sweet deal that lets him off the hook by 95% of his criminal behavior, pled guilty to filing false tax returns, he swore that all his illegal conduct occurred before he was elected to Congress in 2010.

But in the December 2013 affidavit unsealed by a Brooklyn federal judge, an FBI agent claimed Grimm had maintained a secret stake in Healthalicious during his 2010 campaign and after his election.

Grimm received payments into 2011, after he joined Congress, the FBI asserted.

Stuart Kaplan, a lawyer for Grimm, called the claims "completely false." Kaplan said prosecutors had been confused by the eatery's complicated accounting.

In the affidavit, part of a request for a warrant to access Grimm's emails, FBI Special Agent Geoffrey Ford wrote that Grimm pocketed undeclared payments that started at $10,000 a month through the secret deal.

The payments came from a business partner recruited to act as the public face of the eatery. Sources said that person was Bennett Orfaly, an Israeli with close ties to reputed Gambino crime family Capo Anthony "Fat Tony" Morelli.

Ford wrote that Grimm hid his involvement in the business, removing his name from legal documents, because of the "illegal business practices" he engaged in there.

A cooperating witness told investigators Grimm received approximately $100,000 in cash from 2010-2011 through this arrangement, the affidavit states.

Grimm did not disclose those payments in financial disclosure forms covering that period that he filed as a congressman.

Meanwhile, the DCCC can't even recruit a plausible candidate to run for the open seat. The former congressman Grimm first beat, Michael McMahon, has told friends that a Democrat can't win the seat while Obama is president. Then Assemblyman Michael Cusick dropped out. The DCCC is likely to wind up with Brooklyn Councilman and ex-state Senator Vincent Gentile (Bay Ridge). No one thinks he can beat Republican Dan Donovan.

“Vinnie Gentile couldn’t raise enough money to buy all of the four-leaf clovers and lucky rabbits feet to help him win this race,” one Staten Island Democratic operative told the Observer.  “I don’t know what messaging Vinnie Gentile is going to use to run against Dan Donovan, and Vinnie Gentile doesn’t have an accomplished legislative record for somebody who has been in office for more than 20 years.”

The operative said it was telling that Mr. Cusick presumably saw he did not have a path to victory, particularly after seeing a DCCC poll on the race. But the run could be a way for Mr. Gentile, who is term-limited, to raise his profile for a judgeship in the future.

Some suggested running Mr. Gentile would be a sign that the Staten Island Democratic establishment have given up on winning the seat this year.

“If the Democrats run a Brooklyn candidate in the congressional special, it signals that they aren’t serious about the race. At that point, the Democratic nomination is a fire sale: no offer will be refused. Fog a mirror, and we’ll run you,” said Gerry O’Brien, a Brooklyn-based political consultant who recently worked on the campaign of Republican Joseph Tirone, Mr. Cusick’s opponent for his Assembly seat.

Things Are Going Badly For Ted Cruz... And The GOP In General... But More For Cruz

A new national poll of registered Republicans released this morning by CNN showed only one candidate of those still standing losing support since January, when so many other candidates suspended their campaigns and went home-- Cruz:

• Herr Trumpf 49% (+8)
• Rubio 16% (+8)
• Cruz 15% (-4)
• Dr. Ben 10% (+4)
• Kasich 6% (+5)

And there was worse news for Cruz in the poll. Trumpf's re-branding seems to be working, as only 14% of registered Republicans picked Cruz for "most honest and trustworthy," behind Trumpf at 35% and Dr. Ben at 22%. Stand up comedian Marco Rubio scored 13%. But then there was a question asking how likely voters would be to back each candidate in the general election. 48% of registered Republicans said they would either "probably not" (13%) or "definitely not" (35%) support Herr Trumpf. Rubio elicited 29% in those two categories and Cruz was at 31% of registered Republicans who are inclined to not support him against Bernie or Hillary in November.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, once rejected by the Senate for a George W. Bush judicial appointment because of his ties to the KKK, is now a hard right senator from Alabama himself, and one of the most extreme racists in Congress. It came as no surprise to anyone yesterday when he announced he had finally formally endorsed Herr Trumpf for president, just as David Duke and several other Klan and white supremacist leaders had. (Herr, whose father was once arrested at a KKK rally in Queens and who had an anti-racist song written about him by Woody Guthrie, refused to disavow his KKK support and was delighted that he landed a senator, even a senator as out-of-the-mainstream as Sessions, before Ted Cruz did. On the far right fringe, there was ecstasy over the endorsement.

2016 GOP presidential frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump will pick up the most significant endorsement any presidential candidate in the GOP can get here on Sunday: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Sessions, the intellectual leader of the future of the conservative movement, has provided the brainpower behind the populist nationalist revolt against political elites that’s been emerging since at least 2013... Sessions' backing Trump is a significant blow to both Rubio and Cruz, as now the powerful Alabamian will be putting his entire operation all in behind Trump.

...[All Trumpf's other] endorsements pale in comparison to Sessions’ backing of Trump, as the Alabamian senator is universally respected-- and feared-- inside the beltway in Washington. Sessions is known for his tough views on immigration and trade and has repeatedly aimed to push the Republican Party in a more populist, nationalist direction. Sessions has helped frame the movement’s views on both issues-- and more, like courts and judicial nominations, law and order and police matters, and on budgetary issues and the fiscal well-being of America-- while maintaining a formidable political and policy operation that his allies view as invaluable and his enemies dread.

Even apart from the screaming match he had with Chris Wallace on Fox News (see the hilarious video up top), it hasn't been a good weekend for Cruz... although Democrats must have been kvelling when he went on TV to accuse Herr Trumpf of being in business with the Mafia-- not, he reminded his fans, that that would keep him from supporting Herr when he wins the nomination... of course. He told Jake Tapper, on CNN's State of the Union that if Trumpf wins the nomination Hillary will "probably" beat him, in part because of Herr's $100,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation. Cruz: "Listen, if Donald becomes president, who the heck knows what he would do? Even Donald doesn't know what he would do. And I think the challenges facing this country are too grave to roll the dice and risk losing the Supreme Court for a generation, risk yet more economic stagnation and risk on foreign policy allowing radical Islamic terrorism to continue to rise and threaten America."

On This Week, Cruz rolled out the Mafia stories about Trumpf's long associations with Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and Paul Castellano, head of New York's Gambino family, both of whom were also intimately tied to Staten Island Republican Congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, currently in prison on a number of fraud convictions.


Cruz sent out a really unflattering 1990 portrait of Trumpf in Vanity Fair by Marie Brenner. Cruz focused on repulsive statements by Trumpf like, talking about his divorce settlement with Ivana and the sympathy she was getting in the tabloids, "When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass-- a good one!-- there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left." What he ignored were things that Democrats wouldn't, like sleazy McCarthyite Roy Cohn having been Trumpf's lawyer, ally and political mentor. Trump once told a reporter that "If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent, you get Roy. People will drop a suit just by getting a letter with Roy’s name at the bottom." He represented Trumpf in his countersuit against the government when they caught him systematically discriminating against blacks in his residential buildings. Cohn was the man who brought Trumpf into the Mafia circles Cruz was hissing about on TV yesterday. Before he was disbarred for unethical practices, Cohn was the attorney for Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, an eventual Trumpf business associate.

Meanwhile, on another end of the GOP, poor Miss McConnell, sensing he'll be going back to minority leader in January, is telling vulnerable Republican senators to take out TV ads against Trumpf during the general election.

While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton... McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.

John McCain didn't need any advise from McConnell about going after Trumpf. Sources close to his campaign say he is relishing the idea of attacking Trumpf and rendering him unelectable in Arizona, although a powerful ad from Ann Kirkpatrick, the extremely flawed conservative Democrat running against McCain, would have you believe that McCain is just another McCain lap dog now. Do remember though, that Trumpf is not without heavy duty allies in Arizona Republican politics and he could certainly do some rendering of his own if he chose to. And he is known to be a vindictive fellow. Other Senate Republicans most in jeopardy of losing their seats with Trumpf on top of the ticket are Ron Johnson (WI), Mark Kirk (IL), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Rob Portman (OH), Pat Toomey (PA), Richard Burr (NC) plus GOP candidates Joe Heck (NV) and whomever the Republicans wind up with in Florida and Colorado. If things go really bad for them, Chuck Grassley (IA), Roy Blunt (MO) and John Boozman (AR) could also be looking at trouble. If all of those races go badly for the GOP, it means the 2018 midterms are unlikely to win the Senate back for the Republicans. Luckily for the Republican, Chuck Schumer-- in other words, Wall Street-- has taken effective control of the DSCC and is working to insert candidates who cannot win in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, while ceding North Carolina, Iowa and Arkansas to the Republicans. The NRSC is going to soon understand how lucky the NRCC was all these years with Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen and Steve Israel at the helm of the DCCC. By the way, you can help elect a more progressive U.S. Senate here and thwart both McConnell and Schumer: