Page 201 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

"The mob connections of Donald are extraordinarily extensive," New York investigative journalist
Wayne Barrett told CNN in an interview.

Barrett, the author of the 1992 unauthorized biography "Trump: The Deals and the Downfall,"
wrote that Trump's life "intertwines with the underworld..."

To be sure, organized crime had ties to the New York and New Jersey construction industry in the
1980's and early 1990's, making contact between developers and mafia-controlled companies almost
unavoidable at times.

"There was a certain amount of mob association during which the father and he were building,
which was very difficult to avoid in the New York construction world," Barrett said, adding, "He
went out of his way not to avoid them, but to increase them."

In a recent Federalist article, David Marcus writes that Trump bought the property that his Atlantic
City casino Trump Plaza would one day occupy -- for twice market price -- from Salvatore Testa,
a Philly mobster and son of one-time Philly mob boss Philip "Chicken Man" Testa. (Springsteen fans
might recognize the elder Testa from the opening lines of the song, Atlantic City.)

In his book, Barrett writes that Testa and a partner, who together headed a Philly mafia hit-squad
called the Young Executioners, bought the property for "a scant $195,000" in 1977. In 1982, Trump
paid $1.1 million for it.

"The $220 per square foot that Trump paid for the Testa property was the second most expensive
purchase he made on the block, even though it was one of the first parcels he bought," Barrett wrote.

The casino was built with the help of two construction companies controlled by Philly mobsters
Nicademo "Little Nicky" Scarfo and his nephew Phillip "Crazy Phil" Leonetti, according to, as
Marcus notes, a New Jersey state commission's 1986 report on organized crime.

Trump also had a decade-long relationship with Scarfo's investment banker, according to Barrett's
book.

In Manhattan, Trump used the mob-controlled concrete company S&A to build Trump Plaza condos.
Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and Paul Castellano, the don of
New York's Gambino family, controlled S&A, according to federal court records Barrett cited in his
book.

Barrett noted that he built the Trump Tower out of concrete, instead of steel, at a time when the
mafia controlled much the concrete industry.

"While dealing with the concrete cartel was inevitable for any developer in the period when Trump
Tower was built, Donald took the relationship several steps further than he had to," Barrett wrote.

In a Philadelphia Inquirer article from the time the book was published, reporter David Cay
Johnston summed up Barrrett's unauthorized biography, writing that it "asserts that throughout his