No. of Recommendations: 23
So many folks doing deep dives on the TrumpCo... I can't remember if it was someone on this board that turned me on to Rachel Hurley. Not even going to try and fact check this. It just seems so 'on brand' for Trump.
Wanna hear another CRAZY story about Donald Trump?
My Australian readers are gonna love this one! What a bunch of losers!
Back in 1987, while Trump was busy collecting headlines as New York’s golden-haired real estate prince, something interesting happened on the other side of the world. Australia took one look at his casino application and said “absolutely not.”
I came across a story about the declassified documents from New South Wales - which are brutal in their directness. No diplomatic hedging or bureaucratic soft-pedaling - just a flat declaration that Trump’s “mafia connections” made him too dangerous for their casino industry. The police board didn’t mince words: “Atlantic City would be a dubious model for Sydney and in our judgment, the Trump Mafia connections should exclude the Kern/Trump consortium.”
This was 1987, mind you. Trump was just 41 years old, barely a decade into his casino ambitions. Yet Australian investigators had already identified patterns serious enough to warrant a complete ban from their gaming industry. The man who would later boast about making “the most magnificent, one of the most beautiful hotels anywhere in the world” got shut down before he could break ground.
Meanwhile, back in the good old USA, regulators were apparently taking a very different approach. Trump’s Atlantic City operations racked up money laundering violations that would make a mob accountant blush. The Trump Taj Mahal alone violated anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half - earning a record $477,700 fine in 1998, the largest penalty ever slapped on a casino for breaking the Bank Secrecy Act.
But wait, there’s more.
In 2015, federal regulators hit the Taj Mahal with another $10 million penalty for “willful and repeated violations” of money laundering laws between 2010 and 2012. That’s not exactly a learning curve - that’s a pattern stretching across decades.
The contrast is hilarious. While Australian officials flagged organized crime connections as disqualifying, American regulators seemed content to issue fines and move on. The Taj Mahal became what federal investigators called the “preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn.”
That quote got me thinking - should I do a deep dive on Trump’s mob connections? Let me know in the comments.
Anyway, Trump Plaza got busted for accommodating known Gambino crime family associate Robert LiButti, who wagered millions using fake identities and shell accounts - textbook money laundering tactics. Can you believe it? I can!
Australian authorities weren’t wrong to be suspicious. The warning signs were all there if anyone cared to look. Construction of Trump’s Atlantic City casinos involved subcontractors later exposed as having mafia ties. Federal law enforcement files from the 1980s and 1990s repeatedly flagged the properties for their exposure to money laundering and proximity to organized crime.
Yet somehow, Trump kept operating casinos in America while being deemed too risky for Australia’s nascent gaming industry. It’s almost as if one country’s regulators were doing their job while the other’s were told to look the other way.
The timing makes this even more damning. This international recognition of criminal ties came decades before Trump’s documented violations reached their peak. If foreign investigators could spot the red flags in 1987, what were American regulators doing all those years?
The Australia rejection reveals something uncomfortable about how regulatory capture actually works in practice. It’s not always dramatic backroom deals or briefcases full of cash - sometimes it’s just institutional blindness to evidence that other countries find completely disqualifying.
Trump eventually assembled a casino empire that went through four bankruptcies, left contractors unpaid, and accumulated violations that any reasonable oversight body would find alarming. But he did it all with the blessing of American regulators who somehow missed what Australian investigators spotted immediately.
Oh, and while Trump’s casinos were hemorrhaging money and violating federal laws, he personally made millions through management fees and bonuses. The house always wins, but in this case, the house was Trump himself - not the actual casinos bearing his name.
Anyway - Australia was smart enough to figured all this out in 1987 with a simple background check. Turns out all it took was regulators who weren’t on the payroll - or at least weren’t pretending organized crime connections were just a quirky personality trait. And who knows how many scams Trump may have run on Australians if he had gotten a foothold in their country? Luckily, they saw the writing on the wall and said, “Um, yeah, so it’s gonna be a no from us!”
#ratcclips✍️
