In a new article from Daily Beast, Wayne Barrett, author of the 1992 exposé, Trump, on Trump and his ties to organized crime, sheds light, once again, on some of The Apprentice boss' company's dealings and people.
Shady associates, partners and even Ivanka?
- One associate who was an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a massive 2000 stock swindleâand escaped prison only by helping to convict 19 others, including six members of New York crime families
- Two associates who served prison time on cocaine charges
- Another partner prosecuted for trafficking underage girls after a dramatic helicopter raid on a yacht off the Turkish coast
- A pending lawsuit against Trump Soho that alleges daughter Ivanka, among others, made fraudulent misrepresentationsâI had no idea I would get hammered in the way Iâve been hammered,â Donald Trump declared in New Hampshire on May 11, five days before he dropped out of a presidential race he never formally entered.
Trump had to decide between running for President or renewing Celebrity Apprentice with NBC for $120-million (they were apparently pressing him for a decision). Running for President would shine a brighter light on his associates less than honest dealings and his family. In the end, the path of least resistance proved far more attractive, and his fantasy ambition of a Tea-Party candidacy had to end.
Trump quit at least in part because he finally realized what a harsh light this ego explosion was shining on every corner of his business empire, potentially exposing not only him and his many partners, but also his children Donald Jr. and Ivanka to intense scrutiny. An ongoing media investigation of Trumpâs financial dealsâbeset by charges of fraudulent misrepresentationâwould also have made it harder for NBC to continue touting him as a model American businessman.
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In the days before Trump dropped out, he could certainly not have been too happy to hear from me again. We met in the late '70s for hours of taped interviews, and The Village Voice stories I wrote then resulted in a federal grand jury probe of his early deals, though, in the end, no indictment. When I published the first biography of the Donald in 1992, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, which oversees casino licensing in Atlantic City, put Trump under oath and issued a 34-page report, confirming some of the ties to organized crime I described in the book and stating that they could not verify others. I was later visited repeatedly by gaming officials from Missouri when Trump applied for a riverboat casino license there; he wound up withdrawing the application.
While I was reporting that book in 1990, I was muscled out of Trump Castle and handcuffed overnight to a wall at the Atlantic City jail. I havenât done much reporting about him since the book, but when his numbers shot to the top in recent presidential polls, I took another look and asked his office for an interview. His response was a letter threatening a libel suit.
Trump did sue Tim OâBrien, who was a research assistant on my Trump book, when Tim wrote a sequel in 2005. Now the national editor of the Huffington Post, OâBrien finally prevailed after years of litigation. I obtainedâand not from OâBrienâa copy of the two-day deposition Trump gave in that lawsuit. The December 2007 transcript is a road map of the dark paths Trumpâs business career has taken in recent years.
In addition to being a television personality, Trump makes a lot of his money these days licensing his name for various hotel and condo projects, not to mention mattress and vodka brands. His most frequent partner in the condo/hotel dealsâsome of which have become actual projects and some of which havenâtâhas been a small development firm called the Bayrock Group, which was headquartered in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in 2005 when the partnership began. Trump and Bayrock joined forces on Trump Soho in New York and Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, announced and then canceled another Florida project called Trump Las Olas, and together pushed unsuccessful ventures in Colorado and Arizona. Two days before Trumpâs 2007 deposition in the OâBrien case, however, The New York Times broke a story about a top Bayrock executive, Felix Sater (aka Satter). Sater had gone to prison for plunging the stem of a wine glass into a commodity brokerâs face in a bar fight. Heâd also narrowly averted jail a second time, when he was named an âunindicted co-conspiratorâ in a massive federal fraud case in 2000. Sater cooperated in this probe of a $40 million stock swindle, which resulted in 19 guilty pleas and the conviction of six mobstersâincluding the nephew of Carmine âthe Snakeâ Persico and the brother-in-law of Sammy âthe Bullâ Gravano. The wise guys were part of a âpump and dumpâ stock scam at the Wall Street firm, White Rock Partners, that Sater ran with Sal Lauria.
Read Wayne Barrett's whole article
Source: The Daily Beast, Inside Donald Trump's Empire: Why He Won't Run for President
Note: This synopsis/article does not represent the views and opinions of AdvisorAnalyst.com. It is the work product of Wayne Barrett.
Wayne Barrett is an American journalist. He was[1] an investigative reporter and senior editor for the Village Voice for over 20 years.
He is the author of many articles and books about politicians, especially New York City figures such as Ed Koch, Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani. He is a major interviewee in Kevin Keating's 2006 documentary Giuliani Time. He is also on the adjunct faculty of the Columbia Journalism School.[2]
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