ONCE AGAIN, DONALD TRUMP’S IMAGE IS MORE “MOB BOSS” THAN SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS MAN

… President Donald Trump holds a jersey given to him by Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, right, alongside members of the team during a White House ceremony honoring New England as the Super Bowl champion in April, 2017.

 

Trump offers an illegal bribe.  Why does that not surprise anyone?

 

It is amazing just how corrupt the former president, Donald Trump has been for many years.  We are finding that out today, with the many lawsuits against him, and with the many investigation by the New York’s District Attorney.

But now we hear that Mr. Trump, back in 2008, actually tried to bribe the late Republican Senator, Arlen Specter, then the ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  His son, Shanin Specter, has claimed that, on behalf of the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, he met with Specter in 2008 to offer him “a lot of money in Palm Beach” if the then-Republican senator from Pennsylvania dropped his investigation into the team.  Shanin has said to ESPN that Trump intervened in the probe, while Charles Robbins, the senator’s longtime communications aide, also told The Washington Post that he surmised Trump to be the person who offered Arlen Specter the bribe.

In an e-mail this week to The Post, Shanin Specter confirmed that his father, who died in 2012, explicitly indicated to him that Trump had attempted to bribe the senator.  This was offered in exchange for dropping the investigation of the Patriots illegally filming an opponent’s hand signals.

“He told me it was Trump,” said Specter’s son to The Post,  Shanin is today, a personal injury and medical malpractice attorney in Philadelphia.

Yes, it was Trump that tried to end the Spygate probe of New England Patriots by offering a bribe, the late senator’s son says

Of course, Trump spokesman, Jason Miller denied the allegations in an email to The Post.

“This is completely false,” Miller said in a statement. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

As expected, the representatives with the Patriots did not immediately return a request for comment.  A team spokesman told ESPN that Kraft, a longtime friend of Trump’s, “never asked Donald Trump to talk to Arlen Specter on his behalf.  Mr. Kraft is not aware of any involvement of Trump on this topic and he did not have any other engagement with Specter or his staff,” the spokesman said to the outlet.

Also as expected, the NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, declined to comment to The Post.

This news comes one day after Manhattan’s district attorney convened the Grand Jury that is expected to decide whether to indict Trump, or other executives at his company or the business itself, should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges.  As The Post has also reported, convening the grand jury shows that District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s investigation of the former president and his business has hit an advanced stage after more than two years.  The development also suggests that Vance thinks he has found evidence of a crime, if not by Trump himself, by someone potentially close to him or by his company.

The Patriots were found by NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, to have violated league rules when they videotaped the defensive coaches for the New York Jets from an unauthorized location in 2007. The franchise was stripped of its first-round draft pick and fined $250,000 by the league. Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, the largest amount ever handed down to an NFL coach.

The league’s relatively fast investigation raised concern from Specter, who wrote letters to Goodell to let him know he still had questions. Specter made headlines when he announced his intentions to investigate Spygate on his own.

“The NFL has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption,” Specter said to the New York Times in 2008. “The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game.”

Even though his intentions lacked subpoena power, Specter’s focus on the case shook the NFL, ESPN has reported.

Robbins, who co-authored Specter’s memoir “Life Among the Cannibals,” documented a dinner in early 2008 that the senator had with “a friend in Palm Beach at Trump’s palatial club,” according to ESPN. The topic of Spygate came up, as did Specter’s one-man investigation.

“On the signal stealing, a mutual friend had told me that ‘if I laid off the Patriots, there’d be a lot of money in Palm Beach,’” Specter wrote in the 2012 memoir. “And I replied, ‘I couldn’t care less.’”

Robbins said to The Post that he surmised the person in question to be Trump after recognizing that the senator only knew one or two people powerful enough in Florida to make such a statement.

“When the subject comes up of Florida, my moral obligation was to have a sense of who Specter would have known in Florida,” Robbins told The Post.

Shanin Specter said to The Post that he spoke to his father within days of the conversation with Trump, adding that the senator explicitly told him it was the real estate mogul and reality TV star.

“He was still pissed, and he wanted to talk about it,” Specter said.

To that point, Trump and Arlen Specter had a friendly relationship. Federal Election Commission records show that Trump contributed more than $11,000 to the campaign committees of a person he called a “close friend” in handwritten letters.  This is according to ESPN.  In 2004, Trump hosted a fundraising luncheon for Specter at Trump Tower, the Morning Call reported at the time.  Specter was being challenged in the Republican primary that year by conservative congressman Patrick Toomey.

“This guy is a great character,” Trump said of Specter. “Arlen is quite simply a friend of mine. He’s just someone I like.” The paper noted that Trump then glanced at Specter before adding, “I don’t know if that helps you or hurts you.”

But Shanin Specter said to ESPN the mood changed following the meeting in 2008.

“My father told me that Trump was acting as a messenger for Kraft,” he told the outlet. “But I’m equally sure the reference to money in Palm Beach was campaign contributions, not cash. The offer was Kraft assistance with campaign contributions. … My father said it was Kraft’s offer, not someone else’s.”

Around that same time, Trump reportedly co-hosted a party for the release of one of Specter’s books, “Never Give In.”  Not long afterward, Trump wrote in March 2008 what would be the last campaign check to Specter for $1,300, ESPN reported.

The senator would face criticism for taking on the Spygate probe at a time when the economy was in peril and the nation was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Critics also pointed to how he was fighting the league on behalf of Comcast at a time when the Philadelphia-based cable TV company was battling the NFL over the pricing for carrying the NFL Network.

In a speech on the Senate floor in June 2008, Specter offered his final word on the probe and defended himself against criticism. He also called for an “impartial investigation.”

“The publicity in exposing Belichick and the Patriots’ conduct has been a far greater punishment than dollars and draft choices,” he said. “History will impose the final judgment on the penalty for Belichick and the Patriots.”

Trump’s relationship with the NFL took a turn when he became president.  Trump often criticized Colin Kaepernick and other players who knelt during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism.  Trump was, however, welcoming of the Patriots to the White House in 2017 and regularly tweeted his support for Kraft, Belichick and legendary quarterback Tom Brady.

This is just one more time that shows for how many years that Donald Trump has been more of a “Mob Boss”, type, instead of “The Apprentice” business expert that the TV show tried to sell him as being.

Copyright G. Ater 2021