On Trump's Stolen Mar-A-Lago Classified Files-- Please, Don't Turn This Into Yet Another Forensic Accounting Investigation. They Are Blackmail Files!
Donald Trump has been on my radar as an organized crime "front man" since the late 1970's, when I left Temple University to take up political organizing full time. He was hand picked by remnants of the old Meyer Lansky syndicate to front for Resorts International, which was spun out of the Mary Carter Paint company, a Lansky enterprise. Opening up Atlantic City as a "new Las Vegas East" in proximity of New York and Philadelphia was the new big thing for the mafia, which needed to have the means for laundering vast amounts of drug money from the burgeoning Columbian Cartel and Southeast Asian "Golden Crescent" heroin traffic.
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/07/30/from-paints-to-paradise-island/
https://apnews.com/article/3840196f984ea187c4814458ec342ba4
That's what big "high cash flow" industries like gambling are good for, hiding lots of dirty money. Sports team franchises, major sports events like boxing and horse racing, along with stadium food concessions and parking were another. And Trump became the casino "Maitre D" of the mob's shiny new toy, the Taj Mahal, a plastic bubble world of fake veneer, with a glittery, worse than bordello ambiance, a front for washing the funds of Pablo Escobar, as were the New York money center banks and investment houses like Merrill Lynch (see The Pizza Connection) which became addicted to drug money revenue.
So they dredged up this narcissistic tabloid creation, an undeservedly rich idiot with a feral street intelligence, showcasing his women and mansions to encourage people to gamble and try to hit it big. The poor working class schleps who went to his casinos could fantasize about living the life of the rich and famous, while they were donating their weekly paychecks to the Gambino and Angelo Bruno crime families.
So, with everything we know about this guy, I have known for 40 years that he is fundamentally a mobster. And not a very good one either, as he has a total real wealth of not much greater than the 500 million dollars he inherited from his father, even to this day. In the meantime his whole shtick was to defraud the IRS with a scheme of rolling bankruptcies to avoid a tax liability, and parking his actual money offshore. He has always been an "anti-government extremist" since his early days. And we know that going bankrupt is very easy, one only needs to just sign a contract for services through an offshore shell company, then to not pay, run up a big debt and stiff your vendors. And when try to go to court, good luck with that. Many judges, politicians and prosecutors were his friends, or had availed themselves of his hotel accommodations which likely had some very high end video equipment behind the bedroom mirrors.
If the Mar-a-Lago documents implicate him for financial crimes, that is a bonus, but I would not fixate on it. Understand that he is skilled and experienced enough after 50 years of shady dealings that he likely destroyed anything seriously incriminating through shredding, flushing, or burning. Committing financial crimes and then skating free is his skill set, this is what he is good at. This is a guy who famously praised Nixon in an interview, but lamented that his biggest mistake was not destroying the White House tapes.
No, I believe that based on his personal political history, and his literal training at the feet of mob lawyer Roy Cohn, that these files are of continuing use to him, which is why he took them and didn't destroy them. I believe that these are likely blackmail files, and those which are classified are the "mother lode." He is all about gathering dirt and getting "leverage" on everyone he wants to use, control, and manipulate, as we saw firsthand with his disgusting immoral Presidency. We also see this in the way his business accountant Weisselberg will go to jail for him, as Trump enriched his family illegally just to have leverage on him. The mafia principle involved is, "if I go down, you and yours go down with me, capish?"
We use nice sanitized language to describe his methods, like "The Art Of The Deal," or speak of his "transactional" relationships, but the truth is that blackmail leverage is how he survived and got away with decades of criminal financial dealings. Also, look at the GOP leadership, from McCarthy, to Graham, and others who despise him personally and have denounced him in the past. Now, they are foaming at the mouth attack dogs on his behalf, broken shells of humanity, terrified of crossing him on anything. How many times has the thought crossed our minds, "he's got something on them?" Of course he has, and we don't have to have CSI do a forensics analysis of Lindsey Graham's closet to form an informed opinion on the matter.
It is worth remembering that Gambino crime family lawyer Roy Cohn, Trump's political mentor, was a spectacular blackmailer who was very close to J. Edgar Hoover from the time of his heyday as Joe McCarthy's counsel and his prosecution of the Rosenbergs. Trump's father was also the beneficiary of his friendship with Hoover and his boys at DOJ, which was how he got away with racist housing discrimination in NYC throughout his career, the cases being settled or thrown out with no prosecution.
Hoover was known to have a huge cache of secret files on politicians and celebrities, from the Kennedys, to Martin Luther King, and the liberal movie stars who opposed him during the blacklist and Vietnam War era, and so forth. He used gossip columnists like Walter Winchell and Hedda Hopper to smear people publicly for having communist sympathies, or "worse" things, such as being gay. (Hoover and Cohn both were closeted) Where did Hoover keep his files? According to Author Anthony Summers he kept them in his house, just like Trump!
https://www.anthonysummers.com/official-confidential
So, the question is, how do we know this with certainty enough to assert it, not having access yet to the NARA documents Trump had removed and stored away? To me, the proof is in the mountain of human wreckage of people he has destroyed or broken with the threat of exposure. Look at how he took over the GOP and now has no serious opposition. Bribery and inducements are part of the package, but dirty tricks and blackmail have always been his playbook. In this light, it is worth reexamining his decades long association with Tabloid kingpin David Pecker, (of Stormy Daniels fame) whose scandal rags occasionally interrupted their alien abduction coverage to blow up celebrity marriages, or print dirt about politicians secret lifestyles, from NYC Mayor Ed Koch to Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
This is a guy who has immersed himself in the "Godfather" movies, whose projected revenge fantasies of wiping out his enemies and subjugating everyone else at the end is his raison d'etra. His personal heroes are Michael Corleone, Hoover, Nixon and his original "fixer" Cohn.
One anecdote about Cohn is that he rarely concerned himself with evidence in his court cases. "Don't talk to me about evidence, just tell me, who is the judge". He would have known, his father was a judge.
So, if I'm investigating this, and if I'm serious about finally nailing the guy, I'm not looking for yet another on the list 20,000 legal investigations into financial crimes which he has been beating since the 1970's. I would go after the extortion and blackmail angle, and the fact that he has classified files. Was he using US government agencies, or, even more explosive, foreign intelligence agencies to gather dirt on his enemies, or prospective allies? There are many in his orbit who know enough to send him to jail, but are terrified because he has leverage on them. Pull that thread and everything else unravels.
(Photo, credit- Washington Post, Trump, Ed Koch, Roy Cohn)
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A Retrospective, One Year Later
May 17, 2023
Trump's "Blackmail Files"--
Obviously a lot has emerged in the last year regarding the nature of Trump's crimes, and there has been an ongoing espionage investigation by Jack Smith. We are waiting to ascertain whether Trump or Kushner trafficked these stolen documents for profit, held onto them for "insurance" against future prosecutions, or both. And no small matter are the various schemes for hiding and withholding these documents once it was discovered that he had them, in overt actions which amount to obstruction of justice.
But, I am still sticking to my original assessment, which was based on observing and exposing this guy for a long time. Blackmail leverage. He uses it against everyone, including his own family. This is what powerful narcissists do.
Even before the revelations that he had stolen documents in his possesion, I strongly suspected he had files on top of files on both his friends and enemies. And when the dust settles, don't be surprised to hear that he used government agencies to spy on or harass people, then had the records on it classified so he could keep them himself and claim executive privilege over them. In other words, he not only culled information useful to him, but had a hand in creating the records which he in turn later stole.
The very same things which he accuses Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden of doing to him are the things which he himself has always done, especially while acting as POTUS. The documents that were no longer of use to him he flushed or shredded. Everything else he had packed and shipped, and stored in different locations. So of course, he has demanded that his flunkies in the House and Senate investigate "weaponization of the Justice Department." This is what he and his Attorney General William Barr did themselves, or tried to do for four years, and when he fired Barr it was only because he balked at using the DOJ to steal the election.
It cannot be emphasized enough, that Trump believes he can get away with most everything. The SCOTUS factor, combined with his Presidential pardon power were in his mind a "blank check" to break the law at will. However, because his crimes have caught up with him, he now more than ever desperately needs the White House back, and is capable of doing anything to get it.
Who here ever thought he had the remotest interest in being President for purposes of governing? Everything about him is a transaction, doling out favors to those who remain loyal, and punishment to those who don't. His form of governing was akin to the reckless joyriding of a teenage delinquent carjacker, not a President.
There has never been a more vile and disgusting individual in the history of US politics. He combines the worst of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon, and then some. Sadly, this speaks to the complete degeneration of the moral character of those millions of former human beings who are still his loyal supporters and defenders. I have no difficulty in stating it in this way, because all such people are presently out of my life. And I have little time or patience for the wishy-washy who are indifferent to the incalculable damage he has done, who won't lift a finger to speak out or work against him.
Those who still defend what he and his movement represent have traded what remained of their integrity (if they ever had any) in order to indulge their rage-hatred. Don't kid yourselves, most of these so-called sweet little demure prim and proper Christian MAGA family types have bottled up inside of them the same incoherent violent beast which we all saw set loose on January 6th. That is what lurks below the surface, until they choose to publicly unwrap that part of themselves, or it is provoked to come out.
These are the church-ey suburbanites who when a social justice march comes through their neighborhood come storming outside brandishing their AR-15's. They are the people stockpiling and training with weapons at the range with their families, prepping for End Times, which means killing people who look or act differently than them to defend their property, in the grand scheme of Prosperity Gospel's "final battle." Ultimately, that is the point of emotional cathexis through which Trump exerts his hold over people. "Take what's rightfully yours, and keep it away from them."
Don't be fooled by appearances. There is no hope for redeeming your MAGA friends, family, or acquaintances until he is fucking gone. And even then, their grip on reality will be very tenuous at best. The United States will need to go through a generation or more of something resembling post WWII's denazification programs in Germany. That's why I've emphasized that we need to prepare ourselves for a long battle to recover the soul of our nation, which only we can wage. Prosecutors and judges can only give us a beginning, a chance to take up that mission.
Once we come to terms with that reality, we can get around to doing some real work, instead of hoping someone, some new superhero or group of them like the "Avengers" will come along to save us with a quick fix. There never was a quick fix, because this adversary has been long in the making, and it's not just one guy being made to disappear that solves our problem. Nearly half of our voting age electorate have become in effect a gang, and they are trying to bait us into becoming a counter-gang in order to satisfy their lust for violence. If we are stupid and bent upon self-destruction, we will become what they want us to be, just like them. Let's not do that.
And if we are honest, we have to admit that Jack Smith is not going to put 60 million cult followers on trial for being brainwashed zombies who support seditious conspiracy. Once Trump is gone, the ball is in our court, and we cannot leave this monstrous pile of crap known as MAGA laying around for future generations to clean up. They will be far less able to do so than we ourselves if we don't stop it here, and now.
We have known this from the beginning. We just need to say it, and say it out loud until we remember what we've already known all along.
