New Article: Nicky Santoro and Donald Trump: The Beginning of a Very Gruesome End
David Shasha
Nicky Santoro and Donald Trump: The Beginning of a Very Gruesome End
In Martin Scorsese’s underrated 1995 Gangster classic “Casino,” Sam “Ace” Rothstein (played by the iconic Robert De Niro), a brilliant prognosticator and inveterate gambling macher, is sent by the East Coast mafia to take over a Las Vegas casino, with some extremely tragic results:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_(1995_film)
There are various vexing complications with the local authorities and their intrinsic corruption, but the one thing Rothstein cannot truly overcome is the arrival of his pal Nicky Santoro (played by the equally iconic Joe Pesci), who brings his own private gang of thugs out to the desert oasis in order to bleed the town dry – literally and figuratively!
Santoro is a brutish type used by the crime bosses as an enforcer.
But he gets greedy in more ways than one, and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for Rothstein to do his business while remaining under the proverbial legal radar.
Scorsese presents the Santoro gang crime spree in a brilliant quick-cut montage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Pku1zXM5g
After learning that Pesci has sought to lord it over De Niro by sleeping with his wife, the bosses have had enough.
They order that Pesci and his brother be taken out to the desert, stripped to their underwear, forced to dig their grave, and then brutally beaten with those same shovels.
In a piece of grotesque gruesomeness that has certainly taken its place in Hollywood Gangster movie lore, the two men are then buried alive in the sandy pit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3LH0L4Q70s
And so, we come back to the scumbag Gangster Donald Trump, the Nicky Santoro of our time.
Robert Mueller has progressively begun to show his hand, and on the sacred anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, we could see the various pieces coming together:
We should recall that the FBI, and the Law Enforcement community more generally, like the “Casino” mob bosses as related to Santoro, were quite enthusiastic about Trump and helped to get him elected:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/comey-mccabe-fbi-clinton/558200/
Former FBI director James Comey, who currently acts as if he is the nation’s conscience, proudly got out in front of the TV cameras in order to torpedo the Hillary Clinton campaign, helping to hasten her defeat:
http://time.com/4550453/hillary-clinton-james-comey-fbi-emails/
The FBI and Justice Department were well aware by then that the Russians were working to undermine the election, but made no public statement about possible Trumpworld malfeasance:
Indeed, we have since learned that even the august New York Times helped out!
But we are now seeing the wheels of our legal system taking the proverbial shovel and beating Trump with it.
There is currently litigation in the DC courts on the Trump Hotel and its probable violations of the Emoluments clause of the Constitution:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25/politics/emoluments-case-donald-trump-washington-dc/index.html
New reporting on the very ka-ching hotel has shown us why Trump is the Saudi “bitch”:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/06/saudi-lobbyists-reportedly-booked-500-rooms-at-trumps-dc-hotel.html
We owe that wonderfully vulgar nomenclature to Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard:
And we have had revelations that Paul Manafort – Mr. Ukraine – lied and has never stopped lying to Mueller:
We are sure to eventually learn how it was that Manafort managed to weasel his way into the Trump campaign, along with those other veteran KGB meisters Mike Flynn, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials
That very brief list can of course be expanded exponentially given how we are now seeing the centrality of the Trump Tower Moscow project in the Michael Cohen court filing:
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/11/29/18117910/michael-cohen-trump-tower-moscow-mueller
We now know officially that the project was discussed in the midst of the presidential campaign from September 2015 and continued until June 2016.
Critical to the project was the lifting of US sanctions against Russian state bank VTB:
There is even reporting that Putin himself was offered the penthouse of the building, which would possibly have been a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act:
Two sets of Trumpies were working on Trump Tower Moscow: Cohen and convicted felon Felix Sater, and another group led by Trump children – get those Orange Jumpsuits ready! – Don Jr. and Ivanka:
https://people.com/politics/mueller-investigating-ivanka-don-jr-trump-tower-moscow/
For those who do not follow the Russia business closely, we are now seeing that money and sanctions are at the very core of the criminal conspiracy.
We already know that Trump’s many business failures left him without proper sources of legitimate financing, so he went out into wild and wacky world of Russian Money-Laundering:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/nsoMsgyga3Y
I included Adam Davidson’s excellent New Yorker report in a special newsletter devoted to that magazine’s investigations into Trumpworld shenanigans. The epic article is a brilliantly detailed exposé of Trump business malfeasance which is now being confirmed and filled out in these new Mueller court filings.
Indeed, it is worth noting that Cohen’s problems with the Southern District of New York’s (SDNY) scathing court filing from the same haunted Friday afternoon as the Mueller documents, lays out an anatomy of Trump Tower criminality that is certainly a foreshadowing of what is to come for Trump and his children.
The SDNY court filing confirmed that Trump and Cohen conspired together in the matter of the hush money payments to Trump’s Porn Star paramours, violating Campaign Finance laws:
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/7/18131259/michael-cohen-trump-illegal-hush-money
Trumpworld is nothing if not corruption at the most elementary, and debased, level.
The New York Times recently reported on the Trump family tax scams which go back to the trusts set up by Fred “the Nazis are my kind of people” Trump:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/trump-family-wealth.html
It is not just that Trump is a liar, it is that his whole life is one big fraud – and his life is now in the hands of the FBI and SDNY.
And it is certain that the IRS will be hounding him for the rest of his life now that the proverbial cat has been let out of the bag:
It is now very easy to understand why he has obstinately refused to release his tax returns:
Law enforcement must be able to make use of those tax returns to be able to uncover the links between Trump and the Russians, and how these schemes worked.
Trump’s lust for money and power led him straight to Russia and generated the collusion ties; the links are too strong to be coincidental.
The new court filings on Manafort and Cohen mark the beginning of his end.
The endless coordinated lying shows just how aware Trump and his criminal cabal were of their continued malfeasance.
Indeed, Cohen’s lying about the Trump Tower Moscow project was meant to telegraph to other witnesses how they should testify:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/politics/read-michael-cohen-statement/index.html
Manafort has also been working hard at witness tampering:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/15/manafort-jailed-after-alleged-witness-tampering-648988
We now learn that even from jail he has been in communication with the White House:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/paul-manafort-robert-mueller-donald-trump/index.html
His lying to Mueller was a bold attempt to seek a Trumpardon, but went even further as it allowed his lawyers to provide valuable information to the White House on what the Special Counsel has been up to:
We already know that Trump fired AG Beauregard Sessions to get Matt Whitaker to act in a similar role as a Mueller mole:
To this point we have not seen any actual White House interference into the Mueller Probe, but it is certain that Trump is now getting access to classified information from the investigation that he likely was not getting from Rod Rosenstein.
So, let us return to the Las Vegas nightmare of “Casino” and ponder how criminal enterprises fall apart and turn into massive liabilities for those who perpetrate them.
The Trump businesses and the Trump family are now completely exposed in these investigations, and it seems highly implausible that anyone in that radioactive orbit is going to escape justice forever.
It is just a matter of time.
It must be admitted that in the short term we do not know if there will be a Republican Come-to-Jesus moment, similar to what happened with the valiant Howard Baker in Watergate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Baker#Watergate_investigation
The Republicans are not only without a spine, they are without a moral compass as they consistently cave in to the Orange Pig and his crooked shenanigans:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/14/trump-owns-a-shrinking-republican-party/
The Senate remains under Republican control and it is not reasonable to think that they will remove him from office if the House impeaches him.
And we should not forget in the current putrid wave of Bush 41 rose-colored-glasses nostalgia, that Trump has just selected William Barr to replace Sessions:
http://nymag.com/article/2018/12/conservative-bush-ag-william-barr-likely-to-succeed-sessions.html
Barr has come out against Hillary Clinton and the Russia Probe, and for untrammeled Executive Power:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/7/18129513/william-barr-trump-attorney-general
He is a veritable copy of Brett Kavanaugh, without the Rape.
George H.W. Bush – Willie Horton, Clarence Thomas, Bill Barr – what a magnificent legacy!
We should be kvelling!
So, as I have said before, all we have left before the 2020 election is Mueller and the courts.
It should thus be stated that December 7th was a pretty good day for America, as we saw the Rule of Law stepping out from the toxic haze under which the vile Trump and his criminal cabal have put it.
David Shasha