I was just advising my brother-in-law who is visiting a distant cousin of his in Malta for New years to be mindful the place is a "Mafiocracy" so be mindful of conversations about his trading (he is just beginning). It was crossing my mind how much Bone Spurs' defence has the characteristics of Mafia and googleing Malta, Trump was high in the ranking..
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-impeachment-inquiry-mafia-comparisons-ukraine-russia-2019-10
Trump's approach to the impeachment inquiry bears a striking resemblance to how the mafia operates
- President Donald Trump's approach to an ongoing impeachment inquiry and the whistleblower complaint that launched it bear several striking parallels to how the mafia operates.
- Among other things, Trump accused the whistleblower of espionage, said the congressman investigating him should be tried for treason, accused lawmakers of attempting a coup, slammed witnesses who testify against him as rats, and said prosecutors probing him are corrupt.
- A former federal prosecutor who was part of the team that convicted the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti told Insider: Gotti's "lawyers accused the prosecutors and the FBI of wrongdoing. They attacked witnesses. They attacked us."
- "They got protesters to march in front of the courthouse. They went on TV and smeared us with ad hominem attacks," he added. "They planted stories in the press. They did everything Trump is doing, but he's doing it on a much larger scale."
- Federal prosecutors who investigated Trump's campaign for conspiring with Russia during the 2016 race also treated the case like they would an organized-crime syndicate.
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Trump takes a page out of the mafia's playbook but 'on a much larger scale'
In the Gotti case, Cotter added, the similarities are even more stark.
"His lawyers accused the prosecutors and the FBI of wrongdoing. They attacked witnesses. They attacked us," he said. "They got protesters to march in front of the courthouse. They went on TV and smeared us with ad hominem attacks. They planted stories in the press. They did everything Trump is doing, but he's doing it on a much larger scale."
More..
'You don't fight on the other guy's ground, you define what the debate is going to be about'
Roy Cohn (L) and Donald Trump attend the Trump Tower opening in October 1983 at The Trump Tower in New York City.
Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images
This isn't the first time Trump's actions have prompted comparisons to mob tactics. Indeed, one of his longtime confidants was none other than Roy Cohn, the notorious fixer that Sen. Joseph McCarthy hired as his chief congressional counsel while trying to root out communists in the 1950s.
'It's not about anything else except the boss'
Trump's mafia-style tactics haven't gone unnoticed by those around him.
Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime former lawyer,
testified to Congress in February that the president runs his operation "much like a mobster would do."
Former FBI director James Comey has frequently
compared the president to a mob boss and said that when he first met Trump, he couldn't shake the feeling that he felt he was dealing with the Cosa Nostra.
"It's not about anything else except the boss," Comey said while giving a talk at the 92Y in New York City last year. "It's a fear-based leadership."
FBI investigators who examined whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election also
treated the case like they would an organized-crime syndicate, particularly through the use of cooperating witnesses.
"The higher you go, the more insulated those people are," Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor from the Southern District of New York who successfully prosecuted more than 100 members and associates of the Sicilian Mafia,
told Insider last year. "So the best way to penetrate that closed inner circle is by flipping people, and flipping them up."