Trump’s own dealings in the casino business in
Atlantic City almost ruined him, as all three of his properties, the Taj Mahal, Trump’s Castle and the Trump Plaza, had to file for bankruptcy between July 1991 and March 1992.
Trump’s alleged mob connections have been the
subject of media scrutinythroughout his presidential bid. While no one has ever labeled him a mob associate, the term the FBI uses todenote those who collude with organized crime, Trump’s network of relationships encompassed dubious figures.
His lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn’s other clients included notorious mobsters such as the bosses of the Genovese and Gambino crime families, respectively Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Paul "Big Paul" Castellano, who controlled the concrete company S&A that Trump used to build his Manhattan Trump Plaza condos, likely paying an inflated price, as a
Politico investigation into Trump’s alleged mob ties reported in 2016.
Throughout his career, Trump made questionable connections of his own. One of them was Joseph Weichselbaum, a drug trafficker whom Trump vouched for before his November 1987 sentencing by a U.S. District Court judge, as “conscientious, forthright, and diligent" and "a credit to the community,” as reported in the investigative publication
The Smoking Gun in 2016. Trump later told
Politico he “hardly knew” Weichselbaum.
Trump also has links to
Russian-born businessman Felix Sater, who pleaded guilty to participating in a Mafia-linked stock scheme in 1998 and then became an informant. Sater worked for Bayrock Group, a partner in the construction of the Trump SoHo hotel. When Sater’s mob connections became public after a 2007
New York Times report, Trump distanced himself from him, saying: “I didn’t really know him very well.”
But as the
Associated Press reported in in 2015, Trump offered Sater office space and a chance to work again for the Trump Organization in 2010. Trump's lawyer Alan Garten said Sater “never had an employment agreement or formal contract with the Trump Organization and did not close any deals for him." Interviewed for the article, Trump told AP: “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” adding: “I’m not that familiar with him.”
