How the Mob Moved To Washington
Donald Trump's recent actions show he has brought the politics of the Mob into the very heart of the White House, argues Stephen Colegrave
The Mob has been part of America since the nineteenth century when the earliest recorded accounts of Sicilian Mafia activity emerged in New Orleans, the city where the Matranga crime family began their racketeering and extortion, branching out into drugs, gambling and prostitution in the 1860s.
Meanwhile in New York, the Italian ghetto gave rise to similar criminal gangs which spread throughout the city. The Mob grew after the advent of Prohibition in 1919, during which Al Capone took over the Chicago Outfit in 1925 and ran it violently until being banged up in prison in 1931after the butchery of Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre when he murdered seven rival gangs in 1929.
By the time America entered the Second World War, the Mob had become so entrenched, that the US Office Of Naval intelligence (ONI) set up a special security unit with Mob boss, Joseph Lanza to stop any sabotage and disruption on the New York docks. He managed to get the help of Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who mobilised the Italian mob from his prison cell. There has been much written about the Mob helping with the invasion of Italy, especially after Mussolini cracked down on the Sicilian mafia, but there is little hard evidence of this.
As the Mob spread its tentacles across America, ironically the city where it was probably weakest was Washington. Although there had originally been some Greek mobsters, and it was an increasingly violent city with a growing drug trade, shootings and plenty of criminal activity, Washington did not have a strong Mafia organisation.
This doesn’t mean that the Mob has not had influence or dealings with the White House, but it hasn’t been endemic in the city itself. The same cannot be said of Chicago and New York, where the Mob still holds sway, albeit now in competition with organised criminal families from Russia and beyond.
The Mob in Chicago Politics
The Mob and corruption in Chicago has dogged the city’s politics for a century. When Al Capone took over the largest local mafia organisation, the Chicago Outfit, in 1925, Chicago was already a heavy industrialised city and growing so fast that the infrastructure and police force could not keep pace with the rapid increase in new working-class districts. When the depression hit, high unemployment and depressed wages drove many to get involved with the Mob. Al Capone used his muscle to directly influence politics in a local town, Cicero, where the Mob had created a huge network of brothels and speakeasys all under the auspices of corrupt Republican Mayor, Joseph Z Klenha. In 1924, the opposition looked likely to unseat Klenha, but not if Al Capone could help it. He placed his men at polling stations ensuring that people voted the right way and broke into the local Democrat’s headquarters, holding key staff and canvassers at gunpoint. This ensured that Klenha hung onto his job and the Mob their protection, but for Al Capone it came at high price because his brother, Frank, was killed by the Chicago police as they tried to re-establish public order.
Chicago was never run directly by the Mob, but corruption was endemic at all levels of the police and city government. More than 30 Chicago City Council members have been tied to corruption cases since 1970, and the father and son mayors, Richard J Daley and Richard M Daley turned a blind eye to corruption. This created an attack line for the Republicans against President Barack Obama as he’d built his early political career in Chicago even though there is absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing. The strength of the Chicago Mob could be seen in their interstate operations that extended across California and Nevada.
The White House and the Mob
So how successful has the Mob been at penetrating the White House? President Truman’s political career owed everything to Tom Pendergast, the controversial boss of the corrupt Kansas City, Missouri Democratic political machine that was heavily influenced by organised crime. It is well known that the Mafia boss Johnny Lazia carried out serious crimes, including murder, to keep the Kansas political machine in power. Whilst there is no evidence that Truman ever benefited financially from the Mob, he would never have been President without them, and he remained loyal to Pendergast even after he was jailed for tax fraud.
The Mob has featured in many of the wild assassination theories around the shooting of President Kennedy. Often these cite his father, Joseph Kennedy, making his money from bootlegging and therefore having many Mob connections. Joseph’s bootlegging past is generally believed, however this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny by contemporary historians.
Joseph’s upbringing wasn’t that of a typical bootlegger. His father was a successful businessman, and he went to Harvard. He did own a liquor importing company, Somerset Importers, but it was completely legitimate and didn’t start importing liquor into the US until after prohibition. Whilst there has been testimony from various Mob bosses that they dealt with him during prohibition, this appears to be a confusion with a prohibition bootlegger Daniel Joseph Kennedy who produced ‘Kennedy’s Silk Hat Cocktails’ in Canada and smuggled them into America.
In fact, Joseph made most of his money in Hollywood, nearly $100 million at today’s values as well as enjoying an affair with Gloria Swanson. It is true that many of the Mob controlled unions did vote for President Kennedy and many of them did expect a Kennedy presidency to be an easy touch. Supposedly Frank Sinatra, with his Mob connections, was meant to have negotiated a deal with the unions, but whatever the truth of this, Bobby Kennedy, as Attorney General, focused on bringing the Mob down, shattering any agreement if there had been one.
Other Presidents have had Mob links, like President Reagan who although tough on organised crime, apparently dropped investigations into Sidney Korshak a lawyer he knew well who had Mob links, and Hollywood agent, Lew Wasserman, who had helped his career who had similar connections. It is fair to say that many Presidents like politicians in general, knew about the strength of the Mob, especially with unions, and had to navigate their way around them.
Trump and the Mob
Donald Trump has possibly had more dealings with the Mob than any of his predecessors. As a New York property developer, it would be virtually impossible not to.
There are pictures of him with prominent members of the Mob. In 2023, within days of each other photographs emerged of him with Joseph ‘Skinny Joey’ Merlino, a Philadelphian Mobster and John Alite who was a hitman for the New York Gambino Family.
In 2013, he appeared on the David Letterman show and was asked, “Have you ever knowingly done business with organised crime?’ Trump replied he had “tried to stay away from them as much as possible”, but “growing up in New York, I would say that there might have been one of these characters along the way”. Characteristically later in the interview he added: “I have met on occasion a few of these people. They happen to be very nice people”. Indeed, Esquire on 20 July 2020 reported his biographer, Wayne Barrett as saying: “He went out of his way, not to avoid” contacts with the mafia, “but to increase them”.
It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that at the time when most tall buildings in New York were constructed in steel, Trump chose to build Trump Tower with ready mix concrete. Steel was controlled nationally and indeed internationally, while ready mix concrete was only available locally and in New York at the time, there were only two potential suppliers. Both were owned by the Mob – the Genovese, Gambino and Colombo families. There’s no doubt Trump got a very good deal, but with ready mix concrete your supplier has huge leverage over you as the concrete has to keep coming very regularly or the construction is seriously compromised. In Atlanta City, investigation of Trump’s mob links found that he had paid a Philadelphia Mobster Phil Testa’s family $1.1million for a small property worth just $195,000 through a secretary which was suspicious and possibly for a ‘pay off’. Trump brushed this off as just a normal deal.
Whatever the extent of Trump’s mob links, there is no doubt he has much in common with the New York Mob. He uses the same racketeering approach to politics, be that holding weaker countries to ransom, or menacing anyone who tries to stand up to him. Whether he learnt this from the Mob he came into contact with, or whether he is a natural Don, he has brought Mob politics to the White House.