Trump’s shady career shows his true colors

Overlooking terrorism that killed Americans, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Donald Trump sought investment partnerships with Muammar al-Qaddafi and the Libyan regime. He rented his Westchester estate to the dictator, tried to set up a face-to-face meeting, and took the Libyan ambassador golfing.

Six months before he entered the presidential race, Donald Trump announced a new real estate project in Baku, Azerbaijan. His partner was the son of a government minister suspected by U.S. diplomats of laundering money for Iran’s military and described as ‘notoriously corrupt.’

Top Trump aide Paul Manafort and his lobbying firm have represented “dictators, guerilla groups, and despots with no regard for human rights—including one man responsible for mass amputations, and another who oversaw state-sanctioned rape.” According to the Daily Beast, “Manafort and the partners at his firm made a fortune repping some of the most despicable dictators of the 20th century.

Trump was especially eager for the presence of another honored guest: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump tweeted Putin a personal invitation to attend the pageant, and a one-on-one meeting between the New York businessman and the Russian leader was scheduled for the day before the show. Putin canceled at the last minute, but he sent a decorative lacquered box, a traditional Russian gift, and a warm note, according to Aras Agalarov, a Moscow billionaire who served as a liaison between Trump and the Russian leader. […] Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.

At least twice, Trump has been involved in development deals with convicted criminals. In 2001, Trump announced he was partnering with developer Leib Waldman to build a massive condo and hotel tower in Toronto. Two months later, Canadian newspapers revealed that Waldman had fled the United States after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud in the mid-1990s. His extradition sent the project into a tailspin. […] In the early years of the last decade, Trump also struck an alliance with Bayrock Group LLC, an upstart property development firm that had recently moved into the Trump Tower. As a partner, Bayrock didn’t have much of a track record. The firm was created in July 2001. Its two top officials were Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet hospitality minister whose previous development experience had been in Turkey, and Felix Satter. Digging into the background of Satter wouldn’t have turned up much because Satter did not actually exist. But a man with a similarly spelled name, Felix Sater, had been sentenced to prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass and barred for life from selling securities.

New York lawyer Roy Cohn had “a long, formidable list [of clients] that included the executives of media empires, the Archbishop of New York and mafia kingpin Fat Tony Salerno, and there, too, near the top, was budding, grasping Donald John Trump. ‘He considered Cohn a mentor,’ Mike Gentile, the lead prosecutor who got Cohn disbarred for fraud and deceit not long before he died, said in a recent interview.

Trump’s casinos retained [Joseph] Weichselbaum’s firm to fly high rollers to Atlantic City. Weichselbaum was indicted in Ohio on charges of trafficking in marijuana and cocaine. The head of one of Trump’s casinos was notified of the indictment in October 1985, but Trump continued using Weichselbaum—conduct that again could have cost Trump his casino license had state regulators pressed the matter, because casino owners were required to distance themselves from any hint of crime.

Donald Trump tapped a man to be a senior business adviser to his real-estate empire even after the man’s past involvement in a major mafia-linked stock fraud scheme had become publicly known, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.

Six months before he entered the presidential race, Donald Trump announced a new real estate project in Baku, Azerbaijan. His partner was the son of a government minister suspected by U.S. diplomats of laundering money for Iran’s military and described as ‘notoriously corrupt.’

Top Trump aide Paul Manafort and his lobbying firm have represented “dictators, guerilla groups, and despots with no regard for human rights—including one man responsible for mass amputations, and another who oversaw state-sanctioned rape.” According to the Daily Beast, “Manafort and the partners at his firm made a fortune repping some of the most despicable dictators of the 20th century.

Trump was especially eager for the presence of another honored guest: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump tweeted Putin a personal invitation to attend the pageant, and a one-on-one meeting between the New York businessman and the Russian leader was scheduled for the day before the show. Putin canceled at the last minute, but he sent a decorative lacquered box, a traditional Russian gift, and a warm note, according to Aras Agalarov, a Moscow billionaire who served as a liaison between Trump and the Russian leader. […] Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.

At least twice, Trump has been involved in development deals with convicted criminals. In 2001, Trump announced he was partnering with developer Leib Waldman to build a massive condo and hotel tower in Toronto. Two months later, Canadian newspapers revealed that Waldman had fled the United States after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud in the mid-1990s. His extradition sent the project into a tailspin. […] In the early years of the last decade, Trump also struck an alliance with Bayrock Group LLC, an upstart property development firm that had recently moved into the Trump Tower. As a partner, Bayrock didn’t have much of a track record. The firm was created in July 2001. Its two top officials were Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet hospitality minister whose previous development experience had been in Turkey, and Felix Satter. Digging into the background of Satter wouldn’t have turned up much because Satter did not actually exist. But a man with a similarly spelled name, Felix Sater, had been sentenced to prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass and barred for life from selling securities.

New York lawyer Roy Cohn had “a long, formidable list [of clients] that included the executives of media empires, the Archbishop of New York and mafia kingpin Fat Tony Salerno, and there, too, near the top, was budding, grasping Donald John Trump. ‘He considered Cohn a mentor,’ Mike Gentile, the lead prosecutor who got Cohn disbarred for fraud and deceit not long before he died, said in a recent interview.

Trump’s casinos retained [Joseph] Weichselbaum’s firm to fly high rollers to Atlantic City. Weichselbaum was indicted in Ohio on charges of trafficking in marijuana and cocaine. The head of one of Trump’s casinos was notified of the indictment in October 1985, but Trump continued using Weichselbaum—conduct that again could have cost Trump his casino license had state regulators pressed the matter, because casino owners were required to distance themselves from any hint of crime.

Donald Trump tapped a man to be a senior business adviser to his real-estate empire even after the man’s past involvement in a major mafia-linked stock fraud scheme had become publicly known, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.