Trump and the Mob
It's commonplace to say that if someone is involved with construction in New York City he or she will come in contact with organized crime. According to Pulitzer Prize winning author David Cay Johnson, Trump falls into that category, having hired "mobbed up" firms to build Trump Tower and the Trump Plaza apartment building. A federal investigation concluded that construction of the Trump Plaza building likely involved racketeering.
According to investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump probably met with Genovese family underboss Tony Salerno at the home of Trump's then lawyer, Roy Cohn. Trump had met Cohn in 1973 when Cohn was defending Trump and his father against Department of Justice charges that they were discriminating against blacks in their real estate rentals. By then Cohn, who played a role in the sentencing of the Rosenbergs to death, and was counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Second Red Scare, was consigliere to Salerno as well as Paul Castellano of the Gambino family.
In building Trump Tower, the apartment building where he still lives when in NYC, Trump declined to use the steel girder or pre-cast concrete construction methods most commonly used in high-rise construction since the 1980s, opting instead to use ready-mixed concrete. Ready mixed concrete is convenient when space is constrained at the construction site, as there's no need for an onsite mixer or storage of component materials. The main disadvantage is that it must be used quickly after delivery or it will set in the cement-mixer truck. In New York City, as Johnson pointed out, this puts the developer using ready-mixed concrete at the mercy of the unions who control the construction site gate. At the time Trump Tower was being built, as anyone involved in construction in the city knew as well as government organized-crime investigators, the ready-mix concrete business was controlled by Salerno, Castellano, and other organized crime figures. The $8 million contract for ready-mixed concrete at the Trump Tower site was listed in the subsequent federal indictment of Salerno as evidence of racketeering, along with extortion, drug dealing, rigged union elections, and murder.
During the trial, Trump Tower general contractor Irving Fischer testified that enforcers from the mob-controlled union once held a knife to the throat of his switchboard operator as a way of demonstrating the seriousness of their demands, which included no-show jobs on the Trump Tower project.
In 1982, John Cody, a Teamsters union official who law enforcement believed to be an associate of the Gambino crime family, called a city-wide construction strike. Work continued on Trump Tower, however. Johnson reported that FBI agents interviewed Trump on the suspicion that Cody had obtained a free apartment in Trump Tower — a perk he had arranged on projects with other developers. Trump denied it, but an apparently unemployed woman friend of Cody's bought three apartments directly below where Trump and his wife at the time, Ivana, lived. After Cody was indicted Trump sued the woman for $250,000 in a dispute over alterations, but quickly settled when the woman countersued and asserted in court papers that Trump took kickbacks from contractors.
As Johnson reported, while Trump was greasing mob palms in New York City, he was protesting to the FBI that he wanted nothing to do with organized crime in Atlantic City, NJ as he made plans to build a casino there. Trump reportedly went so far as to feign concern that his and his family's reputation would be tarnished by association with criminal elements in Atlantic City. Trump successfully lobbied to limit the usual year-long New Jersey gaming license investigation to six months, and failed to disclose a previous investigation into how he obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards in Manhattan. When potentially disqualifying evidence began to emerge after Trump had obtained the license in 1982, the gaming commission grew defensive, claiming the testimony of mobsters was unreliable.
Trump's helicopter service was operated by Joseph Weichselbaum, who had been convicted of two felonies related to embezzlement in 1979. Weichselbaum's helicopters ferried big spenders to and from the Trump casinos in Atlantic City. In 1985 Weichselbaum was indicted for trafficking drugs from Miami to Ohio, Kentucky, and North Carolina. Trump continued to employ Weichselbaum, ignoring New Jersey's requirement that casino operators have no association with crime figures. Weichselbaum eventually reached a plea deal with the Drug Enforcement Administration. His lawyers sought a transfer of venue from Ohio to the Southern District of New York or Southern Florida, arguing that many potential character witnesses lived there. Ultimately the case was inexplicably moved to federal court in Newark, NJ, where the presiding judge would have been Trump's sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, had she not recused herself.
Trump vouched for Weichselbaum at his sentencing hearing, claiming he would provide Weichselbaum with a job once he left prison. Trump also arranged for an apartment for Weichselbaum's girlfriend in Trump Tower, nominally worth $2.4 million, although there is no evidence that funds actually changed hands.
In 1988, well after Trump had received his NJ gaming license, he contracted with Dillinger Coach Works to style and detail Cadillacs to be marketed as Trump Golden Series and Trump Executive Series limousines. Dillinger Coach Works was owned by convicted extortionist Jack Schwartz and convicted thief John Staluppi. Staluppi, who was chummy enough with mob figures that he was invited to a capo's daughter's wedding, was denied a liquor license by New York liquor regulators, a fact that prompted Johnson to quip that New York regulators were tougher than those in New Jersey.
Johnson asked Barrett why he thought Trump risked mob associations when, with his resources and connections there were presumably ample and safer alternatives. "Because he saw these mob guys as pathways to money," Barrett said, "and Donald is all about money."