Pol lives high on the cow
Buzz on ‘$100M stash’
He’s raising the steaks on political donations.
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has dropped just over $298,000 at Morton’s Steakhouse since 2003, averaging more than $16,000 a year on bovine indulgences, a review of FEC records by The Post shows.
The Democrat charged the bills to donors of his Senate campaign committee and his New Millennium Leadership PAC. The largest single check — a $12,957.69 whopper — came in February 2020.
The Chicago steak chain was founded in 1978 and currently has 72 locations around the country.
Almost all of Menendez’s charges for Morton’s came from its Washington, DC, location, where his fondness for the spot is wellknown around town. A 2019 profile of Menendez in the Star-Ledger called the eatery one of a “few indulgences” which also included after-dinner cigars. Those smokes cost the senator’s various committees more than $3,200 at Jamie’s Cigar Bar & Restaurant in Clifton, NJ.
“He spent enough money on steak and cigars to buy a new house in New Jersey,” said Garden State political consultant Bob Cortese.
Al Capone’s 80-year-old great-niece says she believes the legend that $100 million of the Chicago mobster’s money may be stashed somewhere but said knowledge of the location died with him.
“If it’s anywhere it would be Chicago,” Deirdre Capone told The Sun. “I also believe they have a lot of dealings in Cuba. I believe a lot of money was in safety deposit boxes in Cuba. But I have to let that be now.”
She told The Sun from her home in Florida that she’s “probably the last person on this Earth” to have really known the gangster.
She spoke of a new movie about her beloved “Uncle Al” being released on Netflix this week. British actor Tom Hardy, complete with prosthetics, stars in the biopic “Capone.”
Deirdre, who was 7 when Capone died following a stroke in January 1947, says the gangster had a sweet side and liked to teach her how to make spaghetti.
Al Capone was her grandfather Ralph’s younger brother. Ralph was nicknamed “Bottles” for his role in the Capone bootleg empire, the Chicago Outfit, which made its fortune during Prohibition. Deirdre said Ralph was in charge but Al was the frontman.
“Al loved the limelight, loved to be out with a beautiful woman on his arm,” she said. “My grandfather hated it.”
She insisted her relatives had nothing to do with the 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which seven rival mobsters were killed, giving Al Capone the title of “Public Enemy No 1.”
Capone wound up in Alcatraz and Deirdre says he loathed his stint in the island prison. “He couldn’t talk about it, it was so horrific,” she says.
Hardy portrays Capone in the period after his release from the prison — the last years of his life. The mobster died January 25, 1947, at the age of 48.
According to the movie, Capone is beset with dementia, with the mental age of a 12-year-old.
Deirdre agrees that by the time he was released his mental state had deteriorated shockingly, but insists this was due to mercury injections that she claims were administered to him to treat syphilis.