Comparisons of former President Donald Trump to a mob boss bubble up often: Trump runs his life and businesses like a mobster, per former Trump fixer and personal counsel Michael Cohen, who is on record saying that Trump “used mafia-type tactics to battle foes and advance his personal agenda.” Former Manhattan D.A.’s Office prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz wrote in his recent book when referring to 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.”
The mobster comparisons are befitting not just in Trump’s life and business modus operandi, but also now in the way Trump is finally being held accountable, following news of his indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Trump runs his life and businesses like a mobster, per former Trump fixer and personal counsel Michael Cohen, who is on record saying that Trump “used mafia-type tactics to battle foes and advance his personal agenda.”
Mob boss Al Capone built a multimillion-dollar empire on bootlegging, racketeering, cold-blooded murder, gambling and corruption. Despite several failed attempts by the authorities to lock him up for good (in large part due to Capone’s bribery of law enforcement and paying off powerful officials) he successfully evaded conviction for years.
In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Sullivan that “[g]ains from illicit traffic in liquor are subject to the income tax” and therefore would be taxable by the federal government. By that time, Capone was taking home $60 million a year (more than $900 million in today’s dollars). In a display of massive chutzpah, Capone never filed a federal income tax return, as he claimed that he had no taxable income. But in 1931, Capone’s luck finally ran out: the U.S. government indicted him on 22 counts of income-tax evasion. He gambled on a jury trial and lost; he was found guilty on five…
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