Read Online The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston - Free Book Online Page B

connections to Trump, a man whose case would soon come before a federal judge in New Jersey—a judge who just happened to be Trump’s older sister, who recused herself from the case three weeks later.

8
SHOWING MERCY
    A mong the assorted criminals with whom Trump did business over more than three decades, his most mysterious dealings involved a drug trafficker named Joseph Weichselbaum. Trump did unusual favors for the three-time felon, repeatedly putting his lucrative casino license at risk to help a major cocaine and marijuana trafficker for reasons that remain unfathomable.
    The Brooklyn-born Weichselbaum, four years older than Trump, was well-known in Miami cigarette-boat-racing circles, where narcotics traffickers and white-collar felons often mixed.He piloted boats named
Mighty Mouse
and
Nuts ’n Bolts
in races off the Florida coast. He came in third at a 1973 race behind Charles F. Keating, a Cincinnati lawyer who later went to prison in the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association swindle that cost taxpayers $2 billion.
    Trump met Joey Weichselbaum through Steve Hyde, the portly Mormon elder who ran Trump’s Atlantic City casinosin 1986.At the time, Weichselbaum was already a twice-convicted felon. His first offense was grand theft auto in 1965. His second was embezzlement in 1979. A judge ordered Weichselbaum to return $135,000 to S&S Corrugated Paper Machinery, a Brooklyn firm at which he had worked for a decade.
    Weichselbaum and his younger brother, Franklin (who has never been charged with a crime), launched a New Jersey–based helicopter service in 1982. Many more experienced firms offered helicopter services, but in 1984 the Weichselbaum brothers landed the primary contract to ferry high rollers to and from Trump casinos. Their fleet served other casinos as well, but their main client was Trump. The brothers’ company also maintained Trump’s personal helicopter, a black Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma he named
Ivana
—after his wife at the time—that Trump valued at $10 million.
    And Joey Weichselbaum was not the only felon Trump selected to provide helicopter flights for high rollers. He also retained Dillinger Charter Services, whose owners included John Staluppi, identified in law enforcement reports as a member of the Gambino crime family.
    The brothers Weichselbaum called their firm Damin Aviation. Joey’s title was general manager. Damin Aviation was part of a convoluted financial arrangement that included Alan Turtletaub, founder of a high-interest-rate second-mortgage firm called The Money Store. A Turtletaub company bought the helicopters and then resold them to an intermediary firm, who in turn leased them to Damin Aviation. The deal required little if any cash, thanks to a combination of tax shelter financing and tax-free bonds provided by the New Jersey Economic Development Administration.
    Damin soon filed for bankruptcy and reorganized as Nimad (
Damin
spelled backward). The new firm kept Trump’s business,which is not unusual in itself; when a debtor retains possession of a firm, as the Weichselbaums did, the debtor often retains contracts with customers. But the firm went bankrupt again, and again reorganized, this time as American Business Aviation.
    Why did Trump Plaza continue to pay $100,000 per month and Trump’s Castle $80,000 a month for helicopter services from a firm that was so financially unstable when Trump could have hired any its better-financed and more experienced competitors? One obvious question is whether Weichselbaum was perhaps providing some other valuable service sub rosa.
    Trump himself was no drug user. He didn’t even drink or smoke. But it was open knowledge in Atlantic City that high rollers could get anything they wanted as long as it was done discreetly. For those who brought lots of cash, signed big markers, or were assigned complimentary suites, certain butlers were known to provide, for a price, whatever the customer wanted—be it illicit sex, drugs, or