“There have been multiple media reports about Donald’s business dealings with the mob, with the mafia. Maybe his tax returns show that those business dealings are a lot more extensive than reported. We don’t know.”

–> Trump says he will “hire the best minds” as president but according to the news items below, apparently did not vet his own business partners.

[ Yeah, but they were the very best mobsters. ]

Trump and Felix Sater:

Though he touts his outstanding memory, when Donald Trump was asked under oath about his dealings with a twice-convicted Russian émigré who served prison time and had documented mafia connections, the real estate mogul was at a loss.

Even though the man, Felix Sater, had played a role in a number of high-profile Trump-branded projects across the country.

[…]

… Donald Trump has also been seeking to minimize his past business ties with Sater, the Russian émigré who appeared in photos with Trump, and carried a Trump Organization business card with the title “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.”

More:

After Sater’s criminal history and past ties to organized crime came to light in 2007, Trump distanced himself from Sater.

Less than three years later, however, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role that came with the title of senior adviser to Donald Trump. Sater received Trump Organization business cards and was given an office within the Trump Organization’s headquarters, on the same floor as Trump’s own.

**Interestingly, Sater has a connection to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Lynch aided Sater:

Lynch’s office appeared to have let self-professed criminals walk free in exchange for their cooperation, watched impassively as they committed further crimes, and intentionally kept the victims of those crimes in the dark — denying them their legal right to seek restitution.

In 2013, former federal judge Paul Cassell testified before the House Judiciary Committee, and encouraged them to look at how Lynch’s office had handled a stock fraud case. That case involved Felix Sater, a convicted fraudster with ties to the mafia. Utah senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Lynch to respond to Cassell’s testimony. He also asked whether Lynch had complied with federal laws that ensure restitution is provided to crime victims.

Washington Examiner on the Lynch-Sater arrangement.

More on Trump’s deals from Wayne Barrett:

One associate who was an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a massive 2000 stock swindle—and 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 misrepresentations

Barrett’s experience with writing about Trump?

“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 haven’t 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 O’Brien, who was a research assistant on my Trump book, when Tim wrote a sequel in 2005. Now the national editor of the Huffington Post, O’Brien finally prevailed after years of litigation. I obtained—and not from O’Brien—a copy of the two-day deposition Trump gave in that lawsuit. The December 2007 transcript is a road map of the dark paths Trump’s business career has taken in recent years.”

MORE:

Trump Soho, Trump Fort Lauderdale, Trump Las Olas, summary: Trump’s business partner on these projects is Bayrock Group, which is headquartered in Trump Tower. The partnership dates back to 2005. Felix Sater, whose father is a reputed Russian mob boss, is a top Bayrock executive. As the Daily Beast reported, in 2000 Felix was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a massive stock swindle “which resulted in19 guilty pleas and the conviction of six mobsters – including the nephew of Carmine “the Snake” Persico and the brother-in-law of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano.” The founding chairman of Bayrock is Tevfik Arif, who has reputed Russian organized crime ties. In 2010 he was charged in Turkey for smuggling underage girls into the country for prostitution. Another principal in the deal is Russian émigré Tamir Sapir, who also lives in Trump Tower. Sapir’s executive vice president and top aide, Fred Contini, pled guilty in 2004 to “participating in a racketeering conspiracy with the Gambino crime family for 13 years.”

As for the charges against Arif:

At an April hearing, a judge dismissed the charges against Arif, though four lesser-known businessmen directly implicated in bringing the girls aboard were convicted. A final report on the reasons for the dismissal has yet to be issued, though the fact that the women refused to testify, denied they were prostitutes, and immediately left Turkey did weaken the prosecution.

Additionally:

The Trump family has also gone into business with two convicted cocaine traffickers, one in Turkey and another in Philadelphia. Engin Yesil, whose development company was said to “ own the Turkey rights” for a $500 million project called Trump Towers Istanbul, was sentenced to a six-year prison term on cocaine charges in the U.S. 20 years ago. He says now that he “delegated” his Trump “royalties” to Dogan Holdings, a giant Turkish developer and media company that was just fined an extraordinary $2.5 billion for dodging corporate taxes in Turkey for years. When asked in the O’Brien deposition about the Istanbul project, Donald deferred to his son, who he said was handling the deal. In 2009, Ivanka did a huge press event in Istanbul, announcing that 45 percent of the units were already committed.

Trump Tower Philadelphia also involves a former cocaine dealer, Raoul Goldberg, aka Goldberger. Sentenced to 46 months in prison in 2000 on the coke conviction, he was technically on probation when he brought the site for the 45-story tower to Trump in 2005. And even though it’s only a license and management deal for Trump, Ivanka and Donald Jr. were so involved that they worked on spa and restaurant deals for the complex. Goldberg, who has suddenly “disappeared” from the project just as Felix Sater did, told Philadelphia Magazine in 2006 that he talked to Ivanka or Donald Jr. “every day.”

Read Barrett’s entire piece.

Info on Goldberg here (bold my emphasis):

What he would not say was how he knows Donald Trump, who his investors are, or who his family—whom he credits for getting him into the real estate business—is. This is probably because his family was named “Goldberger,” not Goldberg. Until 2003, when he still went by the name Raoul Goldberger, he was primarily known as an up-and-coming drug trafficker who had been busted after a yearlong federal investigation for attempting to ship tens of thousands of ecstasy pills from Belgium.

NY Post has an additional write-up.

Trump Tower Toronto, summary: Trump partner is Alex Shnaider, who heads up the Midland Group. Shnaider, a well-connected Russian with deep ties in Ukraine, is the son-in-law of Boris Birshtein, a business partner with Sergei Mikhailov, reputed leader of the notorious Solnsteva gang, a Russia-based crime syndicate.

More:

Sergei Mikhailov, widely believed to be a leader of the powerful Solntsevo organized crime group, boasts on his website that Putin awarded him the prestigious timepiece on May 14.

As evidence of the accolade, Mikhailov has posted photographs of the watch, which is embossed with Russia’s double-headed eagle and Putin’s signature, with an accompanying certificate purportedly signed by the Russian president.

The Federalist has more on Trump’s mob connections here:

Trump’s association and business dealings with known mafia figures was not limited to his Atlantic City projects. In New York City, several of his buildings were built by S&A Concrete Co., a concern partly owned by Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family. In addition to this business relationship, Trump and Salerno were both represented by high-power attorney Roy Cohn. In his book, Barrett cites an anonymous source who confirms that on at least one occasion Trump and Salerno had a sit-down in Cohn’s apartment. Trump has denied this claim in the past.

Is it reasonable to assume that Trump had no idea that S&A was run by Salerno’s Genovese borgata when Trump’s own attorney was so closely linked to that organization? After all, if Trump (who likes to point out that he has “one of the highest IQs”) is as smart as he would have everyone believe, how could he have been so naive?