Trump likened to mob boss John Gotti in new book
NEW YORK >> Donald Trump grew his business, fortune and fame “through a pattern of criminal activity,” according to a new book by a veteran prosecutor, who reveals that the Manhattan district attorney's office once considered charging the former president with racketeering, a law often used against the Mafia.
The prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned in protest early last year after the newly elected district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to seek an indictment of Trump at that time. By then, the inquiry was more narrowly focused on whether the former president had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans.
But for months beforehand, Pomerantz had mapped out a wideranging possible case against the former president under the state racketeering law, according to the soonto-be published book, “People vs. Donald Trump.” That broader approach was based on the theory that Trump had presided over a corrupt business empire for years, a previously unreported aspect of the longrunning inquiry.
Pomerantz and his colleagues cast a wide net, examining a host of Trump enterprises — including Trump University, his for-profit real estate education venture, and his family charitable foundation.
“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.”
A lawyer for Trump recently sent Pomerantz a letter threatening that “if you publish such a book and continue making defamatory statements against my clients, my office will aggressively pursue all legal remedies.” The lawyer, Joe Tacopina, said Friday that “injecting the name John Gotti into this seems like just another desperate attempt by Pomerantz to sell books.”
The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, is a chronicle of the complicated and circuitous investigation, which produced charges against Trump's longtime chief financial officer and his family business but has yet to yield formal accusations against the former president himself.
Pomerantz's book arrives as the investigation is ramping up once again, with prosecutors impaneling a new grand jury to hear evidence about Trump's role in paying hush money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 presidential campaign. Bragg's administration, which has raised ethical and legal concerns about Pomerantz's revealing details of the inquiry, is also applying additional pressure on the former chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, seeking to secure his cooperation against the former president.
The developments represent a significant escalation of the investigation and suggest that Bragg is again nearing a decision about whether to charge Trump.