Mafioso describing using Trump as a front man for the mob

Reading the comments to this tweet, I learned something else interesting...

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, has a now familiar and well-rehearsed South Jersey narrative.

Abandoned as a child by her father, John Fitzpatrick, she has often spoken of being raised in tiny Atco, a section of Waterford Township, Camden County. She has repeatedly told of a rearing by the strong Italian-American women in her life: her mother, Diane Fitzpatrick, a single-mom who worked at the Claridge as a casino gaming supervisor, plus two never-married aunts, Rita and Marie DiNatale, and her grandmother, Antoinette DiNatale.

[...]

But in Conway’s polished telling and retelling of her story, there is never mention of her late maternal grandfather, James DiNatale, perhaps because he was better known as Jimmy “The Brute” DiNatale, an alleged mob associate. (His gray granite headstone in Hammonton’s Oak Grove Cemetery even includes his nickname – THE BRUTE – in all caps.)

[...]

A 1992 New Jersey Organized Crime Commission report on the hidden influence of organized crime in bars named Conway’s grandfather 26 times and he is repeatedly identified as a mob associate, though there does not appear to be any record of DiNatale being charged, let alone convicted, of any crimes.

[...]

A member of Conway’s family, her uncle, Jimmy DiNatale, is still an active businessman and developer in Atlantic County.

Before the presidential election, Jimmy DiNatale paid for billboards promoting the candidacy of Donald Trump. Later, they were updated to congratulate Trump on his win, adding “Now let’s make Atlantic County great again.

Both billboards were signed “From The DiNatale Family.”

  Philly voice

Perhaps explains a lot. I'm guessing she's a bottled blond, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Scarfo and Leonetti liked dealing with DiNatale because he knew their background and was willing to accept cash without asking any questions.

[...]

Authorities have alleged in detail that Conway’s grandfather and his close friend, one-time Hammonton bar-owner Sam Siligato, also alleged to be a mob associate, each lied about the whereabouts of Scarfo and his confederates during their 1979 murder of Margate cement contractor Vincent Falcone.

The false alibis by DiNatale and Siligato were presented first to an unwitting investigator for Scarfo’s defense team at Siligato’s Hammonton bar, Silly Gator, according to the 1992 report, and are part of what led to acquittals for Scarfo, Leonetti and Merlino in Falcone's murder.

Scarfo died in January, still in federal prison on subsequent convictions. Merlino, who became a federal witness, died of natural causes in 2001. Leonetti, who also became a federal witness and remains in hiding, appears to be the source for much of the 1992 crime report concerning DiNatale. A fourth man who witnessed the slaying of Falcone, Joe “The Plumber” Salerno, appears to still be in hiding after having become a protected witness just a week after the shooting.

I wonder if his wife's family connections to such people is why George Conway didn't get that job he was expected to take in the Trump administration as head of the civil division of the DOJ. 

Also, Rolling Stone published an article on the 6th of this month about Donald Trump's connections to the mob figures in Martin Scorcese's new film The Irishman.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Trump’s buildings and his casinos attracted underworld figures like “Fat Tony” Salerno, the Fedora-wearing, cigar-chomping boss of the Genovese crime family. Salerno, who’s portrayed in the film by Domenick Lombardozzi, supplied the fast-drying concrete that built Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Salerno also controlled the local concrete workers union, and when a strike shut down construction in Manhattan in 1982, the one of the few buildings that wasn’t affected was Trump Tower.

The Irishman is based on the 2003 book I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, by Charles Brandt. (The title is a reference to the special kind of painting Sheeran did that left his victims’ brains on the wall.) The book is full of characters who didn’t make it into the movie, but they did surface in Trump’s world. One is Philadelphia mob boss Philip Testa, the “chicken man” whose 1981 murder by nail bomb Bruce Springsteen sings about in the song “Atlantic City.” Testa’s son sold Trump premium land that became a casino parking lot. Another figure in the book is Testa’s successor, Nicodemus “Little Nicky” Scarfo, whose associates tried to lease Trump land for his casino in Atlantic City — until New Jersey casino regulators quashed the deal.

  Rolling Stone

And, hey, while we're at it...

Trump wasn’t the only one who knew the people in the world of The Irishman. In addition to being a hit man, Sheeran was president of a local Teamsters union in Delaware. In 1972, shortly before Election Day, a prominent lawyer who was very big in the Democratic Party came to see him. There were some political ads that would run in the local newspaper every day in the last week before election, and the lawyer didn’t want them to run. So Sheeran set up a picket line outside the newspaper, and he knew the Teamsters union drivers who delivered the paper wouldn’t cross it. So the ads were never delivered, and on Election Day, Delaware had a new senator: a young man named Joe Biden. After that, Sheeran said Biden’s door was always open. “You could reach out for him, and he would listen,” he wrote.

What can I tell you?