Organized Crime Connections: Concrete, Casinos, and the Five Families

Overview

Building in New York in the 1980s meant dealing with organized crime. The concrete industry was a cartel. The labor unions had mob connections. The industry was not optional — it was the environment.

What distinguishes Trump's relationships from an unavoidable reality is their consistency, their personal character through Roy Cohn, and their continuation long after the industry had been cleaned up by federal prosecution.

S&A Concrete

Trump Tower was built with concrete supplied by S&A, a company whose ownership traced through intermediaries to Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno and Paul Castellano — the bosses of the Genovese and Gambino crime families. The cartel they operated fixed concrete prices and allocated contracts across New York's major construction projects.

When Trump chose S&A, he was doing business with mob-controlled concrete. This was standard practice for major Manhattan construction in the era. Trump did not deviate from standard practice.

Roy Cohn

The relationship with Roy Cohn was the organizing fact. Cohn was simultaneously Trump's lawyer and a lawyer for organized crime. He was the connection through which Trump moved in a world that included mob figures as normal business relationships. Cohn introduced Trump to people. Cohn brokered relationships. Cohn taught Trump how to handle the press, the prosecutors, and the politicians.

When Cohn was dying of AIDS, disbarred, Trump stopped returning his calls.

Felix Sater

Sater worked from Trump Tower and held business cards identifying him as a senior Trump adviser. He had pleaded guilty to stabbing a man and had been involved in a stock fraud scheme with documented mob connections. He later became the key intermediary in the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations.

In a 2013 deposition, Trump said he would not recognize Sater if he walked in the room. This was at minimum implausible for someone who had worked in Trump's building for years and held cards with his name on them.

The Environment vs. The Choices

Academic defenders of Trump's mob connections argue that New York construction in the 1980s left no choice — anyone building anything used these contractors, these unions, these suppliers. The argument has truth. What it explains is context, not character.

The question was never whether Trump was the only developer in New York using mob-connected concrete. The question was whether Trump's particular relationships — Cohn, Sater, the Atlantic City casino unions — reflected active cultivation of organized crime-connected networks beyond the industry minimum, and whether those relationships shaped his business career in ways that benefited criminal enterprises.

The investigative reporting said yes.