Donald Trump was born into organized crime. His family had deep connections to the Genovese crime family in New York City. The Genovese family focused its activities on Queens, Trump’s home borough. In plain language, Trump has been associated with organized crime his entire adult life.
At first, Trump’s associations were with the Italian-American Mob that dominated New York City’s concrete business. Later, as the Feds broke up the old crime families, the Russians moved in. Trump proved all too ready to do business with them as well.
First, an overview:
As Trump was learning his father's business, he acquired a mentor: the notorious Roy Cohn, who had made his reputation working for Wisconsin's infamous Republican senator Joseph McCarthy during McCarthy's "anti-Communist" witch hunt in the 1950s. Trump met Cohn in 1973. A writer who has watched Trump for decades did a long profile of Trump's relationship with Cohn:
Cohn was best known as a ruthless prosecutor. During the Red Scare of the 1950s, he and Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, the fabulist and virulent nationalist crusader, had hauled dozens of alleged “Communist sympathizers” before a Senate panel. Earlier, the House Un-American Activities Committee had skewered artists and entertainers on similar charges, resulting in a trail of fear, prison sentences, and ruined careers for hundreds, many of whom had found common cause in fighting Fascism. But in the decades since, Cohn had become the premier practitioner of hardball deal-making in New York, having mastered the arcane rules of the city’s Favor Bank (the local cabal of interconnected influence peddlers) and its magical ability to provide inside fixes for its machers and rogues.
“You knew when you were in Cohn’s presence you were in the presence of pure evil,” said lawyer Victor A. Kovner, who had known him for years. Cohn’s power derived largely from his ability to scare potential adversaries with hollow threats and spurious lawsuits. And the fee he demanded for his services? Ironclad loyalty.
It was Cohn who introduced Donald Trump to the real underworld of New York business. Cohn had contacts with the Genovese crime family in particular. Cohn taught Trump how to use the law courts as a weapon, blasting opponents with lawsuits and threats of lawsuits. He taught Trump the power of publicity, the power of the brazen lie, the power of gossip, and above all, the power of celebrity. Cohn connected Trump with celebrities and political big shots.
Trump's real estate enterprises led him into many contacts with organized crime. David Cay Johnston, who has investigated Trump for many years, had this to say in 2016:
From the public record and published accounts like that one, it’s possible to assemble a clear picture of what we do know. The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.
Trump had contacts and business dealings not only with Anthony Salerno, but with Paul Castellano of the Gambino crime family, as well as a Teamsters official controlled by the Gambinos. When Trump began his first big project in 1979, Mob assistance proved invaluable:
... when Trump hired a demolition contractor to take down the Bonwit Teller department store to make way for Trump Tower, he hired as many as 200 non-union men to work alongside about 15 members of the House Wreckers Union Local 95. The non-union workers were mostly illegal Polish immigrants paid $4 to $6 per hour with no benefits, [emphasis added] far below the union contract. At least some of them did not use power tools but sledgehammers, working 12 hours a day or more and often seven days a week. Known as the “Polish brigade,” many didn’t wear hard hats. Many slept on the construction site.
Normally the use of nonunion workers at a union job site would have guaranteed a picket line. Not at this site, however. Work proceeded because the Genovese family principally controlled the union; this was demonstrated by extensive testimony, documents and convictions in federal trials, as well as a later report by the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.
From the public record and published accounts like that one, it’s possible to assemble a clear picture of what we do know. The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.
A standard rejoinder to all this from Trump’s defenders generally runs along the lines of saying, “Well, if you wanted to build anything in New York in the 1970s, 80s, or 90s, you had to work with the Mob.” But Trump’s services went well beyond that. Trump moved into Atlantic City, and continued to interact with organized crime. In 2017, CNN reported the following about Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, where the Russians were beginning to make their presence known:
The Trump Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half of operation in the early 1990s, according to the IRS in a 1998 settlement agreement.
It's a bit of forgotten history that's buried in federal records held by an investigative unit of the Treasury Department, records that congressional committees investigating Trump's ties to Russia have obtained access to,
CNN has learned.
The casino repeatedly failed to properly report gamblers who cashed out $10,000 or more in a single day, the government said.
And, naturally, Trump destroyed the casino (but not before skimming a lot of money from it):
Trump’s Taj Mahal opened in April 1990 in Atlantic City, but six months later, “defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin,” The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow found. In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt.
The BBC looked into the connections Trump had with the Mob:
Once Trump had moved the focus of his business into Manhattan, he became involved with the Gambino crime family, as we saw. The underboss of the Gambino crime family was Salvatore “Sammy The Bull” Gravano. Gravano was well-acquainted with Trump. Let’s take a listen first to this:
This clip is revealing as well:
The Wall Street Journal even got into the act of investigating Trump:
In the next part, it really gets interesting, as Trump hooks up with BRATVA—the Brotherhood, also known as the most dangerous, most ruthless, and most powerful branch of the Russian Mob.
