Trump's Crimes
Trump's Crimes is a short essay by Karl Jones speculating why it is proving so difficult for anyone to get Donald Trump's tax returns.
The essay began as a Facebook comment, and has since been revised a number of times. The current version reads:
The problem is not that Trump has so much crime to hide (although surely he does).
The problem is all the other criminals whose crimes will be exposed when Trump's crimes are exposed, and the lengths they will go to prevent this from happening.
Some of these other criminals will be wealthy powerful men; some of them will be public figures such as Senators, Congressmen, governors, mayors and attorneys general; others will be captains of finance and industry; yet others will be Mafiosi.
One of these allied criminals might even be William Barr [Steve Mnuchin, Mitch McConnell, etc.].
The name of the individual in the last sentence (William Barr, Steve Mnuchin) is in response the parent article.
In his Facebook comments, Jones uses asterisks to indicate italics: *all the other criminals*.
Allegations and evidence
Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob?
Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob?
I've spent years investigating, and here's what's known.
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON May 22, 2016
Trump hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano. That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering. Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan.
Why did Trump get his casino license anyway? Why didn’t investigators look any harder? And how deep did his connections to criminals really go?
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910
Trump’s résumé is rife with mob connections
Trump’s résumé is rife with mob connections
By David Von Drehle @ Washington Post
August 10, 2018
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.”
Vice Guide: A Brief History of Donald Trump and the Mafia
The VICE Guide To The 2016 Election
A Brief History of Donald Trump and the Mafia
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppx7b9/a-brief-history-of-donald-trump-and-the-mafia
Felix Sater
FORMER TRUMP ASSOCIATE FELIX SATER ACCUSED OF LAUNDERING MILLIONS THROUGH REAL ESTATE PROJECTS LINKED TO PRESIDENT BY CRISTINA MAZA ON 3/26/19 AT 3:25 PM EDT
[A] new lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York by a bank from the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan alleges that Sater helped launder millions of dollars stolen from the bank and funnel them into real estate projects, some of which may have been linked to President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit centers on BTA Bank's decade-long battle to recuperate billions of dollars allegedly stolen by its former chairman, the fugitive Mukhtar Ablyazov. The Kazakh bank claims that Ablyazov stole over $4 billion dollars before fleeing to Russia and later Europe, and it has pursued numerous lawsuits against him in a wide range of jurisdictions.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-felix-sater-tower-1375485
Felix Sater
Felix Henry Sater /ˈseɪtər/ (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky; March 2, 1966) is a Russian-American mobster, convicted felon, real estate developer and former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate conglomerate based out of New York City. Sater left Bayrock Group LLC in 2008 and has not been involved with the company for over a decade. He has subsequently been an advisor to many corporations, including The Trump Organization,[8] Rixos Hotels and Resorts, Sembol Construction, Potok (formerly the Mirax Group), and TxOil.
In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to his involvement in a $40 million stock fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian Mafia, and became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and federal prosecutors, assisting with organized crime investigations. In 2017, Sater agreed to cooperate with investigators into international money laundering schemes.
During the 2015-16 American presidential campaign, Sater worked with Michael Cohen, former attorney for The Trump Organization, to broker a deal to build a Trump Tower Moscow, asserting to Cohen that he could boost Trump's election prospects through his Russian contacts. On June 21, 2019, Sater was issued a subpoena by the House Intelligence Committee after he refused a request to testify voluntarily. On July 9, 2019, Sater appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, but repeatedly withheld testimony and documents concerning the details of a false joint defense agreement and thus remains under subpoena.
Judge I. Leo Glasser confirmed that Sater helped the U.S. government track down Osama bin Laden as he provided the telephone number of Osama bin Laden.
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
External links
- Comment @ Facebook