Donald Trump's Connection To The Mob | Sit Down with Michael Franzese

the six million dollar question that i've been trying to avoid but i can't avoid anymore was donald trump tied up with the mob listen in [Music] hey everyone welcome to another sit down with michael francis hope everybody is doing well and before we get into today's subject i just want to mention a couple of things a little bit of house cleaning my book blood covenant we've been out of a production on that since christmas you know thanks to all of you the book was out of stock for my publisher my understanding is that i'll be back in stock next week so any of you that want to buy the products the merchandise you know that you get it signed for me i have a couple of books out there uh there's a link below that you can get to our store and do that so i just wanted to make that announcement so again hope everybody is doing well and today i'm going to deal with a subject that quite honestly i've been trying to avoid i didn't want to get into this i told you the political side of things is something i try to stay away from people say you shouldn't michael you have a platform your views are meaningful but everything is so volatile right now i mean people are just so uptight and you know uh you know the election post-election uh atmosphere the post-election feelings and emotions they haven't subsided as of yet but i have to deal with something and it's a name it's probably the most volatile name in the country and it has been for a long time and obviously that's the name of donald trump and you know the people that are for donald trump very emotional the people that are against donald trump very emotional and uh he's not the president anymore so we don't have to deal with that you know that's that's out so it's not a question that he has influence in that regard anymore he's not sitting in the oval office but i get asked all the time michael what do you know about donald trump's connections to the mob you were a new yorker you were heavily involved during his time he's a bit older than me but yes that was my time when donald was building quite heavily in the new york area so um i'm going to comment about that today and i'm going to tell you what i know to be a fact and i'm going to try to explain some things to you now i want to be clear on this i'm not going to talk about donald trump's you know business dealings and people have accused him of shady dealings and you know doing all of that i'm not going to comment on that because quite honestly i don't really know about that i don't know what he did in his business dealings i have some experience um you know with some things that he was involved in i'm going to talk about that as it relates to the mob my former life the colombo family other families i'm going to talk about it i'm going to tell you what i know and hopefully i'm going to explain some things to you and clarify what actually being involved with the mob means and dealing with the mob it's two separate things and i'm going to explain that so donald trump obviously a a big developer in manhattan trump towers and other buildings that he's put together we know that he was also in atlantic city uh he had the trump tower there the casino which was a lot of problems for him but let me tell you my personal involvement with trump and it came actually in two ways roy cohen i don't know if you know who that is very famous attorney he was the counsel for senator mccarthy during the mccarthy hearings when they were going after all the communists in this country and roy cohn made a name for himself during that time and he became known as somewhat of a fixer you know fixer attorney very high profile had his connections obviously with mccarthy and other people in congress so people used him allegedly to be a fixer let me tell you my personal experience with roy cohn now he did represent mob figures he was uh counsel at times to fat tony soleno boss of the genovese family i mentioned his names many times many of you know who he is paul castellano he did some work with him uh at times i don't know if they actually if he actually represented them in any legal proceeding but you know he did things for them let's put it that way so i get a call one time from roy cohn and this was just um right after i was indicted by rudy giuliani on a big racketeering case in the southern district of new york manhattan and roy calls me up i had met him once or twice before at different gatherings hello goodbye that kind of a thing and i had met him once at a private club in manhattan with donald trump because he did represent donald trump in a number of things exactly what i don't know but in donald's business roy cohn did represent him now the fact that roy cohen represented donald trump and fat tony salerno and paul castellano that doesn't immediately make the connection that donald trump is associated with the mob he was associated with attorneys you know attorneys represent different people so anyway you know i'll get back to that but roy calls me up michael i want to see i understand you got a problem okay i go meet him in his office in new york and he says to me mike look you know my associations with fat tony and you know blah blah blah he met your names i said yes roy i do he said you got a problem in the southern district i said yes i do he said you've indicted on a major racketeering case the underlying act is uh extortion it's uh shylocking and uh you're the principal in the case i have 15 co-defendants it was me and one other guy we were the principals in the case and i said i know all of that roy he says well i can help you out i can get it fixed i should really he said yes i said how are you going to do that is i can get the indictment squashed i said okay now i already know let me tell you something the fact that a lawyer represents the mob doesn't always mean that he's going to be the fine upstanding honorable perfect guy okay um i already know where this is going he says i can fix the case i can get the indictment dropped i said okay speak to me what do you need roy i can't remember the figure it was either 250 000 or a half a million dollars i don't remember so you know my it's a little cloudy on that he said you put x amount of dollars you give me 250 or half a million whatever it was at the time and uh i'll get the indictment dropped i said okay now people let me tell you something i have never heard of a federal indictment being dropped once somebody was indicted can the charges go away can you beat the case of course but the indictment just being dropped i've never heard of that not in the mob case i'm not saying it's never happened i don't know i haven't done the research but i can tell you in a mob case never happened a high profile case like mine where i'm the lead defendant big publicity case not going to happen i should worry i'll tell you what i'm going to do i said if i had to go to trial on this case with all these defendants the year that i'm going to have to spend you know in investigations working with an attorney defending myself the amount of time i'm going to have to spend on trial between what i'm going to spend to defend myself what i'm going to lose by being caught in a courtroom all the time it's going to cost me a million and a half 2 million bucks he said that's right michael i want to save you all of that i but i'll tell you what i'm going to do so it's worth it for me to pay more than what you want i'm going to put a million dollars in an escrow account a million that's a lot more than you asked for at least double uh you get the indictment dropped keep it all it's worth the money for me his response was exactly what i knew it would be well michael i got to take care of some people and it's not going to happen i said but you just told me definitely you can get it done you're not you know you're not a poor guy spend the money take care of who you got to take care you got a million dollars in escrow what are you worried about it's a guaranteed deal isn't it roy bottom line is he wouldn't accept that because there was no way he was going to get the indictment dropped he would have told me this and that and that but don't worry mike i'll put it towards your your representation i'm going to take care of you we'll beat the case the whole thing look i i wasn't a new kid on the block i've been through this from time and time and time again and i even discussed this at one point with uh with my associates and i said mike you know you're too smart for that forget about it anyway that's my association with with roy cohn so now getting back to the donald trump thing yes okay he did represent donald trump and yes he did represent certain mob figures but i'm going to challenge you all to do this there's been a lot of theories out there because of roy cohn you know donald trump is involved with the mob i can tell you this did donald trump have to deal with the mob yes he did just like leona helmsley had to deal with the mob just like every major contractor in new york had to deal with the mob because we controlled the unions you do not get a major contracting job done in new york during that time without dealing with the unions and if you dealt with the unions you dealt with us because we controlled them the whole mob commission case was about the union the cement club the contractors it was all about the union involvement with all of these major developers who was getting paid off who was being extorted that's what the case was about donald trump's didn't name did not come up in that commission case as somebody involved in any way okay so here's the deal did donald trump use roy cohen to maybe get some favorable treatment you know so that he can get his buildings built yes he did and so did many others you had to so donald maybe used his connections you know with roy cohn or anybody else you know so he can get his jobs done and we wouldn't believe him to death like we might have done with some other people yes does that make him an associate of the mob no was he doing us favors was he was he you know part of sitting in the social clubs with us you know no i'm telling you he wasn't i've never seen it i've never heard it if there's government surveillance reports that say something different i challenge you bring it forward let's see it let's hear it you don't think they would have went after him you don't think as president all of this would have come out they were trying in every which way to dirty him up you don't think what it came out hey we got tape recordings with donald trump sitting down with fat tony or joe or john gotti or whoever you want to mention i didn't see it you don't think it would have happened during the mueller investigation i'll tell you more of my involvement with donald trump you know i was in the gasoline business i had russian partners one particular guy his name was david i'll leave it at that one of my russian friends okay he and i bought some condos at trump towers we paid cash millions of dollars for them my associate in the gas business david he had an associate in russia i think it was a family member that was part of the kgb as a result of that we bought these these condos back in the early 80s as a result of that i got questioned i'm not going to tell you by who during the mueller investigation because it came out that my friend david was the front guy buying them at that time and they came to me and they tried to establish a mob connection with russia i mean a trump connection with russia okay as a result of him buying those con him selling those condos to me and david that was his name i just said it david bogatan and i said to them you people are really reaching well trump i understand he took the cash i said wait a second we didn't hand him the cash we went through the process there at the time well why did he take cash well why not we gave him cash i don't know if he i don't know what he did with it after that did he claim it on his time i don't know what he did with it cash is good money isn't it isn't it it's printed by the united states government you know it's it's it's good money what's wrong with it so yeah we paid in cash at the time they tried to establish a mob connection during the mueller investigation as a result of that or a russian connection because my partner was russian and allegedly had ties to the kgb had nothing to do with us behind that uh apartments at that point in time was condos okay so i am here to tell you this i have seen no evidence i heard nothing on the street i've never had any conversations with anybody that said to me donald trump is with us we got him in our pocket he's working with us don't worry about it i'll get you a special deal through donald in atlantic city or here anything else i've never heard that now if somebody has evidence to the contrary well then bring it forward okay now am i trying to clean donald up no i'm answering a question that i get asked all the time michael was donald trump really involved with the mob so again the fact that he might have used his connection to get favorable treatment so he can get his buildings done like just about any other contractor would do does not make him you know mob connected it just doesn't that's different than being involved with the mob where you're you know you're part of the crew so to speak so i hope to straighten that out um listen again this is not pro donald against donald i just wanted to straighten it out because i get asked this so many times if you have a question if you have something that you want to refute let me know you know let's talk about it so that's it i want to do i want to tell you a couple of things we got some exciting things coming up i've been in touch with the mike tyson camp and as soon as we get slices open in newport beach you know one of my restaurants we're hopefully going to be opening up in the next two weeks tyson is ready to come in to do an interview you know i've been holding off on the zoom thing i didn't want to do that with him i have another great interview um with a a drug dealer's son if i mention his name you'll know who he is uh that's coming up in the next week and a half i'm not gonna say anything right now but uh keep watching for it been in touch with uh joe perstone donnie brasco he's gonna be up pretty soon so we got a lot of good things coming up and uh my podcast stay tuned i am going to tell my father's story uh like it's not been told before so we got that coming up uh i want to thank you you know we're we're closing in on um uh 400 000 subscribers and uh thank that's thanks to all of you you know we've calmed down a little bit he used to be posting three a week now we're only doing two because i got so much going on uh but thank you for your loyalty please subscribe uh when we hit 500 000 a very special giveaway i promise first prize you're gonna love it you're gonna be on a plane i'll tell you that much if you're not afraid to fly right now but we're gonna do something very special we got a lot of gifts that we're gonna give away so uh you know stay tuned for that the sami gravano sit down is it gonna happen um stay tuned that's all i can tell you stay tuned it's a complicated thing but stay tuned that's all i can tell you um what else michael francis.com our community we have 12 000 people in the community i had a big zoom call you know with with so many of them in our inner circle they're loving it people encouragement information content people are just i i can't tell you i wish i had some of the testimonials and i'm enjoying it so much because we put a community together of people that are getting so much out of it and i really mean that we don't do this just to do it we're getting so much out of it a lot of good stuff coming up um you know i'll give you some updates on mafia democracy stay tuned man i'm telling you you're going to love that book uh we're almost done with it we're going to be releasing it in may or june stay tuned watch out for it i guarantee it's going to be eye-opening you're going to see our government from a mob perspective you're going to see what it's really looking like and how we're going to get it under control and of course the tv series coming along man you know i'm very excited the pilot is looking great the information is going to be a brilliant series i waited 20 years to do this the right way i've been so blessed and fortunate to have the right team around me now that's going to do a a a1 class act uh job on this so that's it for today thank you as always for your uh tuning in we really appreciate it how do i always leave you be safe be healthy god bless and i will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Michael Franzese

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Id: GTv_LZJeJ84

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021