Trump and the mob: the documented dealings, and the honest limits.
For half a century, Donald Trump did business with mob-controlled firms, mob-linked gamblers, and men who worked for crime bosses. That much is on the record. What the record does not say is that he was one of them.
This is a page built to survive its own subject. Trump's ties to organized crime are among the most heavily documented in American business — traced for decades by investigative reporters like Wayne Barrett and David Cay Johnston, and confirmed in court records, casino-regulator findings, and Trump's own testimony. We grade each dealing as the fact it is. But we also carry the two things that keep this honest: that New York construction and Atlantic City gambling were so thoroughly mob-infiltrated that every major developer touched them, and that Trump was never charged with a crime for any of it. Documented proximity is not the same as proven complicity, and we mark the line.
What this page argues
Donald Trump's business life ran straight through the organized-crime economy of its time and place. His lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, simultaneously represented the bosses of the Genovese and Gambino families. The concrete for Trump Tower and Trump Plaza came from a company those same bosses controlled. His Atlantic City casinos hosted a mob-linked high-roller so lavishly that regulators fined him, did business over land tied to a Philadelphia mob associate, and licensed his name to a reputed Colombo-family figure. Later, a Russian-mob-connected bootlegger bought a block of Trump Tower condos, and a twice-convicted felon with mafia stock-fraud ties helped run a Trump-branded tower from an office inside Trump Tower.
Every item above is documented. What we do not claim is that this makes Trump a made man or a proven co-conspirator: he was never charged, and the industry he worked in was so mobbed-up that contact was nearly unavoidable. So we grade the dealings as FACT and the harder charge — that he knowingly partnered with organized crime for gain — as SOME SMOKE, posed and unproven. The pattern is real and unusually deep; the criminal verdict is not ours to write.
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The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
Trump and the mob.
For half a century he did business with mob-controlled firms, mob-linked gamblers, and men who worked for crime bosses. That's on the record. What the record doesn't say is that he was one of them.
The record, claim by claim
His lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, represented the bosses of two crime families at the same time he represented Trump.
FACTRoy Cohn was Trump's attorney and fixer from the early 1970s into the 1980s — and simultaneously the lawyer for Genovese family boss Anthony 'Fat Tony' Salerno and Gambino family boss Paul Castellano. Cohn is the hinge of the whole story: the man who taught Trump how to operate was, at the same time, the mob's counsel. We cover Cohn in depth separately; here he is the documented conduit between Trump's world and the families'.
Trump Tower and Trump Plaza were built with concrete from a company the mob controlled.
FACTTrump Tower and the Trump Plaza apartment building were erected using S&A Concrete, a firm controlled — through front men — by Salerno (Genovese) and Castellano (Gambino). Trump chose to build in concrete, buying it, as Johnston documented, at ostensibly inflated prices from the mob-owned supplier, rather than the steel that would have been an alternative. Court records from the era's construction-industry prosecutions and decades of reporting establish the S&A tie.
The Teamsters boss who controlled concrete deliveries to his tower was a Gambino associate — and got a friend of his a triplex below Trump's own penthouse.
FACTJohn Cody ran Teamsters Local 282 from 1976 to 1984 — the union that controlled concrete deliveries to New York construction sites. A 1989 report to New York's governor found Local 282 had been 'closely associated with or controlled by' La Cosa Nostra for decades; Cody was a close associate of the Gambino family and was later convicted of racketeering and tax charges. During a citywide Teamsters action, Trump Tower was reported to be among the few major sites that kept operating. And Cody's friend Verina Hixon ended up with two triplex apartments directly below Trump's penthouse — with Trump making structural changes to accommodate a swimming pool she wanted. The limit: Trump Tower staying open during labor trouble is documented; the inference that it required a corrupt favor is not something we stamp — we report the relationship, not a secret deal.
His Atlantic City casino hosted a Gambino-linked high-roller so lavishly that regulators fined it — for discrimination.
FACTRobert LiButti, a high-stakes gambler with documented ties to Gambino boss John Gotti, was one of Trump Plaza's biggest customers, and Trump knew him personally. In June 1991 the New Jersey Casino Control Commission fined Trump Plaza $200,000 for catering to LiButti by removing Black and female dealers from his table at his demand; the casino lost its appeal in 1992. The episode is doubly documented — a mob-linked whale, and a regulator-proven act of racial and gender discrimination to keep him happy.
His entry into Atlantic City ran through a labor fixer and a Philadelphia mob associate.
FACTTrump's early Atlantic City casino development involved Daniel Sullivan, a labor consultant and FBI informant who brokered deals, and Kenneth Shapiro, an associate of Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo 'Little Nicky' Scarfo. Sullivan and Shapiro controlled land Trump needed for the site, which Trump leased before buying. The arrangement — a mob-connected middleman on the ground Trump built his casino empire on — is documented in reporting and testimony.
He licensed his name to a car dealer later identified as a Colombo-family figure, and a Russian-mob bootlegger bought a block of Trump Tower condos.
FACTTwo more documented intersections. Trump entered a name-licensing arrangement with John Staluppi, a car dealer whom law enforcement later identified as a member of the Colombo crime family. And in 1984, David Bogatin — a gasoline-bootlegging Russian-emigre mob associate — bought five condominiums in Trump Tower; the government later moved to seize them as proceeds of crime. We note the difference: the Staluppi deal was Trump's; a mobster buying condos in a building open to buyers was not necessarily of Trump's doing, and we say so.
A twice-convicted felon with mafia stock-fraud ties helped run a Trump-branded tower — from an office inside Trump Tower.
FACTFelix Sater (frequently misspelled 'Seder') was a managing director of the Bayrock Group, which partnered with the Trump Organization on Trump SoHo and other projects. Sater had a 1991 assault conviction (he stabbed a man in the face with the stem of a broken glass) and, in 1998, pleaded guilty to racketeering for his role in a roughly $40 million mafia-linked stock-fraud scheme, after which he became a long-term government cooperator. He worked from an office in Trump Tower and carried a Trump Organization business card. In a 2013 deposition Trump said he would not recognize Sater if he were sitting in the room — a striking claim given their business proximity.
He personally vouched, in writing, for the convicted cocaine trafficker who ran his helicopter service — whose case was then moved to a court where Trump's sister sat as a judge.
FACTJoseph Weichselbaum managed the helicopter service that shuttled high-rollers to Trump's Atlantic City casinos. In 1985 he was indicted as a cocaine and marijuana trafficker. He pleaded guilty, and before his 1987 sentencing Trump wrote a letter describing him as 'conscientious, forthright, and diligent' and 'a credit to the community.' After the guilty plea, the case — originally brought in Ohio — was transferred to New Jersey and assigned to Trump's sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, who recused herself. Weichselbaum served about 18 months, and after his release lived in a Trump Tower apartment. A casino and real-estate magnate personally vouched for a drug felon he did business with — striking given Trump's later calls to execute drug traffickers.
His Atlantic City casino admitted to years of money-laundering-law violations and paid a record federal penalty.
FACTIn March 2015 the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) fined the Trump Taj Mahal $10 million — a record for a casino at the time — for 'willful and repeated' violations of the Bank Secrecy Act's anti-money-laundering rules, which the casino admitted. Examiners had cited the Taj for such violations repeatedly since 2003, and back in 1998 FinCEN had already assessed a $477,700 penalty for currency-transaction-reporting failures. This is a federal finding, on a Trump-owned property, that its systems for spotting and reporting suspicious and large cash transactions were deficient for years. The limit we carry: an anti-money-laundering compliance failure is not itself proof that anyone laundered money there — it is a documented, admitted failure to guard against exactly that, on the property of a man whose business already ran through the mob economy.
The mitigation, stated fairly: his whole industry was mob-controlled, and he was never charged.
FACTHonesty requires the other half. In the 1970s–80s, organized crime dominated New York's construction trades — especially concrete and the unions — and held deep influence in Atlantic City gambling. Any developer building at scale in that era dealt with mob-controlled firms and labor; contact was close to unavoidable, and Trump's defenders make exactly this point. Trump has consistently denied any meaningful or intentional mob ties, and — crucially — he was never charged with an organized-crime offense. These are facts too, and the page carries them rather than burying them.
The pattern is real and unusually deep; the criminal verdict is not ours to write.
SOME SMOKEWhere does it land? The individual dealings are FACT, and taken together they are an unusually extensive record of a major businessman operating in and around organized crime for decades. What the record does NOT establish — and we will not stamp — is that Trump knowingly conspired with the mob for gain, or that he is criminally culpable: he was never charged, some ties were third parties' doing, and the industry context cuts against the strongest reading. So we grade the pattern SOME SMOKE on the question of complicity: a real, documented, decades-long proximity that legitimately invites scrutiny, without a proven crime at the end of it.
- Synthesis of the documented dealings above with the industry context and the absence of any charge; no finding of criminal complicity is claimed
Where the evidence is strong, and where it stops
- The dealings are documented. Cohn, S&A Concrete, John Cody's Teamsters, LiButti, Sullivan/Shapiro, Staluppi, Bogatin, Weichselbaum, Sater, and the Taj Mahal money-laundering fine — each rests on court records, casino- and Treasury-regulator findings, mainstream reporting, or Trump's own testimony and letters.
- Contact is not conspiracy. The mob's grip on NY concrete and AC casinos meant nearly every developer dealt with it. That is genuine mitigation, and we grade complicity, not contact.
- He was never charged. No organized-crime indictment of Trump exists. We do not treat decades of proximity as a substitute for a charge that was never brought.
- Not every tie was his. A mobster buying condos in an open building, or a whale gambling at a casino, is not the same as Trump seeking out crime. We distinguish the deals he made from the company that found him.
The same school, the same lesson: proximity without consequence
The through-line isn't a secret handshake; it's a method. Trump learned how to do business from Roy Cohn — deny everything, attack, never settle on the record — while Cohn was literally the mob's lawyer. What followed was fifty years of documented dealing with organized-crime figures that never produced a charge, which is exactly why it belongs in Too Big to Jail. The point is not that a mafia verdict is hiding in the files; it is that a man could build an empire in continuous contact with organized crime, be documented doing it for decades, and pay no legal price — the accountability gap this whole hub is about. The fuller profile lives on our Donald Trump page.
Questions worth taking seriously
Are you saying Trump is a mobster?
No. We grade the dealings as fact and stop there. Trump did business with mob-controlled firms and mob-linked people for decades — that's documented — but he was never charged with an organized-crime offense, and his industry was so mob-controlled that contact was nearly unavoidable. “Documented proximity” is what the record supports; “made man” or “proven co-conspirator” is not, and we don't claim it.
If every developer dealt with the mob, why single out Trump?
Two reasons. First, the depth and duration: Cohn as mentor, mob concrete in his flagship tower, a regulator fine over a mob whale, mob-linked land, a name-license to a Colombo figure, and later Sater — that's an unusually long list even for the era. Second, he now holds the highest office in the country, which makes his lifelong business relationships a matter of legitimate public record, not ancient gossip. We carry the “everyone did it” context precisely so readers can weigh it.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Politico Magazine — David Cay Johnston, “Just What Were Donald Trump’s Ties to the Mob?” (2016)
- City & State NY — “Trump’s mob connections” (2019)
- UPI — “Trump Plaza fined $200,000 for discrimination” (1991; appeal lost 1992) — the LiButti matter
- Yahoo News (Michael Isikoff) — Trump Plaza records on Robert LiButti
- The Wall Street Journal — “Donald Trump dealt with members of organized crime”
- Vox — Craig Unger on Bogatin, Bayrock, and Felix Sater (from House of Trump, House of Putin)
- Mother Jones — Trump’s mafia-adjacent history in context
- Wikipedia — John Cody (union leader): Teamsters Local 282, the Gambino tie, and the 1989 governor’s report & The Daily Beast — Cody, Verina Hixon, and the Trump Tower triplexes
- Slate — Trump and drug trafficker Joseph Weichselbaum & The Smoking Gun — Trump’s letter vouching for Weichselbaum
- FinCEN.gov — Trump Taj Mahal fined $10 million for anti-money-laundering violations (2015; notes the 1998 $477,700 penalty)
- The Guardian — review of a 2025 book on Trump and the mob (includes Trump’s denials)
- Foundational reporting: Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and the Downfall; David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump
- Black Book Audit — The Roy Cohn Method