'All the guys pay': Cash-for-jobs alleged inside Trump Tower

[TexasTowelie]

Source: AP

NEW YORK (AP) — Six years after George Gjieli left federal prison, where he'd been sent for trying to break out a triple murderer, Donald Trump gave him a job running Trump Tower, where the billionaire businessman lived and worked.

For a decade, the Albanian immigrant, whom federal prosecutors had described as having "utter disdain for the laws of our country," was the live-in residential superintendent of Trump's most prized Manhattan high-rise. Meanwhile, he was accused in court papers of coordinating a cash-for-jobs racket inside the building, an Associated Press review has found.

Trump's decision to entrust responsibility of his namesake Fifth Avenue skyscraper to Gjieli adds to a growing public accounting of men with questionable backgrounds whom Trump has hired or partnered with. The AP and others have reported they include a Mafia-linked government informant whom Trump named as a senior adviser and a convicted cocaine dealer whom Trump supported in a letter to a federal judge.

Gjieli, who said Trump wrote him a recommendation letter when he left Trump Tower in 2001, denied taking kickbacks including cash in envelopes delivered to his 29th floor office. In an interview, he called the allegations "bulls--t," likely made by Romanian building workers harboring generations-old European ethnic rivalries.

Read more: http://www.newsadvance.com/news/national/wire/all-the-guys-pay-cash-for-jobs-alleged-inside-trump/article_8e6b6e16-cccd-547e-8512-21476075cb34.html

[cstanleytech]

1. To be honest I find it a bit difficult to find fault with Trump giving anyone a job

especially people who have already served their sentence as they to need to make a living once released and trying to heap additional punishment upon serves no good purpose IMO.
As for the cash for jobs? I have no real opinion on that at this time though if a criminal investigation is warranted it should be done.

[Bradical79]

16. It's not really about a single instance

He seems to have a pattern of working with, and hiring, felons for high level jobs. Also, there's the hypocracy of his attack on Mexicans being murderers and rapists while putting an imigrant felon in charge of his building.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

18. Exactly.

It's not about giving someone a second chance. Some people come out of prison better people, some do not.
It's about wanting criminals to work for him. People who will do questionable things when ordered or look the other way.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Often those who "protesteth too much"

are guilty of that which they protest. And as Drumpf jumps up and down demanding removal of illegal Mexicans, I expect much of his operations nationwide are peopled by illegal Eastern Europeans.

He apparently has some connection with/pipeline from Eastern Europe and the old Eastern bloc (notably his wives and as sources for fashion models). And that seems to correspond with his earlier high-flying buying era that took place from the time of the demise of the Berlin Wall and unification of of Germany, and the breakup of the Soviet Union - all in the late '80s through to the early '90s. He has maintained that connection (obviously).

[yardwork]

4. Russian mobsters are deeply involved in NYC real estate.

Trump is in the middle of it. His connections to mobsters go way back and are well known. No doubt it is one of the reasons that so many "journalists" treat him so carefully.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. There are many NY newspaper articles

about this from the '80s & '90s. And it wasn't just the mob but also the NYC politicos that he and his father had close ties with (e.g., Mayor Beame). I think what also happened was that "his people" were busy paying off some and filing a flurry of lawsuits against others, resulting in obfuscation and mass chaos trying to keep it all straight. That allowed him to keep going on business as usual.

He's like a rich Blago on steroids, but at such a grandiose level that it's hard to tease it all apart.

[yardwork]

6. A lot of money sloshing around in the 80s and 90s from Eastern Europe.

Trump managed to lose more than he made - he's actually a terrible business man and we can see why - but I believe that a lot of criminals use Trump as a front for their "business" activities. It was probably inevitable that they would make a run for the White House.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Agree

It's a win-win for both. He gets capital to go on his spending sprees while laundering their illegal money.

[yardwork]

8. Yes. He's being used and he's such a narcissist he doesn't even know it.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. I actually think he knows but doesn't care

There was an interesting Politico article with an interview of Sharpton (after he had been interviewed about Trump in the NY Daily News back in January), and he made an interesting comment (being a NYer himself) -

<...>

“Donald Trump was a Queens guy,” says Sharpton, who hails from Brooklyn’s Brownsville, the city’s toughest neighborhood, a collection of housing projects jammed hard between Queens and the Jamaica Bay swamps — and the scene of an all-out crack war in the 1980s and ’90s.

“His father was a successful real estate guy, but they were Queens guys. They were outer borough [and] had to break into the big Manhattan aristocracy. He was an outsider — rich, but an outsider. He was not part of the Manhattan elite. So, he always had this outsider feeling — us against them. So, in many ways, when I read people talk about, ‘Well, do you have a billionaire as a populist?’ He does feel like he’s one of the guys who was shut out.”

Then, in a hint of a kindred spirit, Sharpton says: “On the other side of the coin … I was shut out because of race. He was shut out because of geography and a number of other things. [It’s an] unforgiving environment, and a city that could easily swallow you up. Easily.”

<...>

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/sharpton-trump-is-the-white-don-king-219601

So this "outsider" bit, where Trump has bulldozed his way into Manhattan in garish fashion as a noveau riche, fits with his apparent never-ending quest to not only be accepted by old money NY, but to be "better than them". And so all the massive behind the scenes schemes to present his own manufactured "imagery of wealth" seems to point back to this.

It's literally like the film Citizen Kane - just substitute the Hearst-type/publisher figure with the Trump/real estate figure.

But what he never "got" (as in the reality) was that the true "blue bloods" are not conspicuous consumption types and he is everything conspicuous and more, to the point of tacky. Which reinforces the disdain for him by the very people he is trying to be a part of.

[Fast Walker 52]

3. at this point, Trump is so corrupt, I'm just waiting for the stories that he paid hitmen to knock

off his competitors and rivals.

[Frank Cannon]

9. He's Captain Sternn from the movie Heavy Metal.

How long until we find out about the preschooler prostitute ring or the time he sold dope disguised as a nun?

[Fast Walker 52]

10. Wow-- there's a reference!

haha!

[Frank Cannon]

14. Where's Hanover Fiste when you need him?

Guess I know what I'll be rewatching on Netflix this weekend.

[Nitram]

12. I imagine Dump used this guy to do dirty work for him.

Wonder how dirty it got...

[underpants]

13. Part of Trump's M. O. is to get people "over the barrel"

They are so closely allied with him that they are dependent on his survival. He did this with the banks. They realized that if they shut him down they couldn't possibly recoup much from his holdings. He used this in the deal where he got debt forgiven (but didn't have to report it as income), loans personally to him, and then he did an IPO - which cost everyone money but him. All this lead to the tax break.

This guy owed Trump as was reliant on him.

[Grins]

17. And that cocaine dealer and the federal judge....

"The AP and others have reported they include a Mafia-linked government informant whom Trump named as a senior adviser and a convicted cocaine dealer whom Trump supported in a letter to a federal judge."

And that convicted cocaine dealer was his pilot, and the Judge who went easy on him was Trump's sister!

[bleedinglib]

19. The Movie

I can't wait for the movie to come out about "The trump criminal enterprise"
We have yet to see the honor among thieves !!
Trump isn't stupid !! He said he loves stupid people & every day his followers entertain him with their ignorance !!
Ever since 1979 I have stood in awe of the power of the rite-wing pundits who have misled the about 35% of the American voters !!
The target of these pundits are the "angry white male" These awm's ranks have possibly risen to 40% or more ?
Whenever trump speaks he is talking to these awm's knowing they will believe anything they have been brainwashed to believe !!
My hope was that Bernie was on the road to reach young people before the brain scrubbers get to them ??