Since our country’s founding, politics has always been a contact sport. Partisans routinely vilify opposition party leaders by applying outrageous labels to caricature figures and ideologies they loathe (George W. Bush was called a “fascist, Nazi, war criminal” and Barack Obama a “socialist, closeted Muslim”). And witnessing the Left’s freak-out over the election of Donald Trump has provided us some sterling examples of this condition.
But one in particular once made me giggle at its absurdity.
As I recall, former FBI Director James Comey first made the assertion in his vainglorious tome of self-righteous sanctimony, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.
Comey described Trump, the man who fired him, as a “mob boss.” In outlining just how Trump met the definition of the most senior crime lord position within the Mafia, Comey reflected that:
Shedding any pretense of impartiality after his firing, Comey has boldly entered the partisan public square in an effort to engage a man he reviles, as is his right. But are his assertions about Trump simply eye-catching, hyperbolic outbursts or, more shrewdly, astute political satire? And while political satire, like humor, requires caricature and allusion as component parts, it also requires a shred of truth.
And the truth was boldly revealed on Thursday in a cozy taped interview with the president conducted by Fox & Friends anchor Ainsley Earhardt, regarding the Michael Cohen plea allocution and the Paul Manafort felony convictions.
Trump actually fancies himself a mob boss.
Yes, I’ll stipulate that a number of smart journalists have came to this conclusion over the past few days and have penned pieces acknowledging this comparison in New York Magazine (Jonathan Chait), the Washington Post (Eugene Robinson), and the Atlantic (Jeffrey Goldberg).
But as accomplished and acclaimed as these scribes are, none of them to my knowledge have ever investigated mobsters, or actually cohabited with a La Cosa Nostra underboss like I have.
As a newly minted FBI special agent in early 1991, I was assigned to my first field division in New York City and arrived wide-eyed and eager to the Brooklyn-Queens Resident Agency, assigned to the prolific Gambino Squad, C-16. Infamous Mafia chieftain John Gotti — along with his underboss, Sammy “the bull” Gravano, and consigliere, Frank Locasio — had been swept up in a vast Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, case that included five murders, conspiracies to commit murder, racketeering, gambling, obstruction of justice, extortion, and tax evasion.
During the course of trial preparations in late 1991 and early 1992, that ultimately led to convictions for the trio in April 1992, I ended up being assigned to an FBI “safe house” where Gravano was housed after he elected to cooperate with the United States government and testify against his fellow mobsters. I describe in detail the surreal experience of cohabitation over the course of some three months in the capacity of interviewer and de facto jailer with the enigmatic underboss here.
During the original “trial of the century” (some three years prior to O.J. Simpson wresting the title away) I witnessed firsthand, up close and personal, exactly how the Gotti defense team, along with a gullible, complicit, and fervently loyal gaggle of Gotti loyalists, supplicants, and sycophants attempted to make a martyr out of the ruthless, cold-blooded murderer and psychopath that was John Gotti.
And step one in that process, which had worked spectacularly in several previous shocking acquittals, was to demonize or “dirty up” government witnesses. Gravano was certainly no paragon of virtue. He had committed a number of crimes, the most heinous being the participation in 19 murders.
But Gotti’s coterie of lawyers, including the flamboyant Bruce Cutler, made it their mission to discredit the government’s cases where cooperators like Gravano testified, by maligning their cooperation. Yes, that is the operative term: cooperators. It is not custom for folks on the side of the pursuit of truth and justice to refer to those who voluntarily, and at great peril to themselves and their families, enter into cooperation agreements with the government as “snitches,” “rats,” or in the current president’s parlance, “flippers.”
And so, while ingesting Trump’s comfy interview, my stomach turned over. What I watched took me back, way back, to the early 1990s and the height of the FBI’s “war on the Mafia.” And here was the current president earnestly spinning several cases where he was at least a peripheral figure in a manner that would make Bruce Cutler smile.
It was sickening to witness.
Most shocking was Trump’s assessment that the business of cooperation between the government and trial witnesses “almost ought to be illegal.” The reason for his determination is rooted in his disdain for his former personal attorney and “fixer” Cohen, who in a plea allocution in open court on Tuesday admitted to campaign finance crimes and implicated the president, testifying that the illegal actions were at Trump’s direction.
A self-proclaimed “cautious skeptic” of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation since its inception, I also believe that many in the media have lost their souls, becoming what they loathe in their bridge-too-far condemnations of this president. But please don’t conflate that for tacit approval of Trump’s conduct.
And yet his base, as Salena Zito so expertly pointed out in the New York Post, steadfastly refuses to desert him.
And so, with all of that “baggage” that would have assuredly sunk any politician not named Donald Trump, Zito makes the point that his fans won’t be bothered by Trump acting like John Gotti (minus the murders).
Then again, Trump did famously claim during the campaign that, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Political satire? Methinks not.
They once referred to John Gotti as the “Teflon Don,” because criminal charges never seemed to stick to him. Well the current “Teflon President” appears to share a little bit more than just a moniker with Gotti. They both share a disdain for truth-tellers who testify against them in court.
The Gambino boss died of cancer after languishing 10 years in a federal penitentiary in Springfield, Mo., at the age of 61.
The final chapter on Trump has yet to be written. But his body of work now contains legitimate comparisons to legendary Mafia figures and continues to diminish the office after the no-one-saw-it-coming “rubout” of a supposedly unbeatable Democratic candidate.
I once lived with a mob boss. I know mob bosses.
President Trump is acting just like a mob boss. And it should frighten each and every one of us.
James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.
