Donald Trump with magazine editor Edward Kosner, center, and Roy Cohn, a Trump mentor and lawyer whose clients included bosses of two major New York crime families. SONIA MOSKOWITZ/GETTY IMAGES
Annons
Actually, there's an old FBI memo that puts a different spin on Trump's attitude about the mob. It is a classic example of a young but already shrewd Trump hard at work. It was written in 1981 by a veteran FBI agent, reflecting meetings that he and a fellow FBI official were having with the 35-year-old developer from Queens, then a rising star in New York's business firmament. The topic of the meetings was Trump's pending plunge into the Atlantic City casino industry. And while the memo was written in the stilted language of FBI-bureaucratese, Trump's wide-eyed comments were recorded with what seems like barely suppressed amusement. "Trump advised agents that he had read in the press and media and had heard from various acquaintances that Organized Crime elements were known to operate in Atlantic City," the memo states.…Trump had chosen a notorious demolition company secretly owned in part, according to the FBI, by a top Philadelphia mobster who doubled as crime lord of Atlantic City.
Annons
Annons
Annons
I met the burly ex-Teamster in the late 1980s when I was working on a story for the New York Daily News about Trump's use of yet another dubious contractor to demolish the old Bonwit Teller building to make way for the edifice that would serve as emblem of his empire. That was Trump Tower, the brassy condominium high rise on Fifth Avenue where he resides and from whose lobby he announced his presidential bid in June.On paper, the demolition contractor was a union company, as were all of Trump's vendors at the time. But Local 95 of the demolition workers was essentially a subsidiary of the Genovese crime family, and few union rules were enforced. Most of the workers were undocumented immigrants from Poland, and they were paid so little and so sporadically that many were forced to sleep on the job site. A rank and file union dissident later sued Trump for failing to pay pension and medical benefits required under the union contract. Trump denied knowing about conditions at the work site. Sullivan, who by now had his own gripes with Trump, said otherwise. He testified in the civil suit that he had repeatedly warned the developer about the problems. Trump, in a rush to clear the site, had dismissed his concerns, he said.In Trump's defense, as a developer of major projects in New York, it was hard back then to avoid the mob.
Annons
Annons