Free The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston Page A

be transferred to either Manhattan or Miami for “the convenience of human beings such as the defendant and witnesses.” Instead, the Weichselbaum case was moved to New Jersey. There it was assigned to Judge Maryanne Trump Barry—Donald Trump’s older sister.
    Judge Barry recused herself three weeks later, as judicial ethics required, but the mere act of removing herself from the case came with a powerful message: a sitting federal judge, as well as her husband (lawyer John Barry) and family, repeatedly flew in helicopters connected to a major drug trafficker. Any new judge assigned to the case, including the district’spresiding judge, was on notice that this case had the potential to embarrass the bench.
    When Judge Harold A. Ackerman replaced Trump’s sister, Trump wrote him a letter seeking leniency for Weichselbaum on the drug trafficking charge.Trump characterized the defendant as “a credit to the community” and described Weichselbaum as “conscientious, forthright and diligent” in his dealings with the Trump Plaza and Trump’s Castle casinos. When asked about the letter under oath in a private 1990 meeting with New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement lawyers, Trump testified that he could not recall whether “he had written any letters of reference to the federal judge who sentenced Weichselbaum.” Subsequently, the division obtained such a letter, and Trump acknowledged that it bore his signature.
    Two years later, the DGE had to explain itself publicly after journalist Wayne Barrett’s unauthorized 1992 biography of Trump revealed the letter. The DGE, citing my reporting on the issue, published a report on fourteen issues raised by Barrett. Its report said nothing about what would prompt Trump to write such a letter, whether he actually believed what he wrote, and what his purpose was in writing it. The DGE lawyers merely recorded Trump’s denial, then later his admission that he had in fact signed the letter. That was typical of the DGE lawyers, who declined again and again to ask probing questions that might raise deeper issues about Trump’s fitness to hold a license.
    Likewise, the DGE’s response to Barrett’s book did not request an explanation of the unusual terms under which Trump rented an apartment he personally owned to the Weichselbaum brothers. As with other matters—like the accusations made by high roller Bob Libutti—the DGE tookTrump at his word and avoided asking questions that might require more investigation.
    Judge Ackerman gave Weichselbaum a sentence that stood in stark contrast to the sentences levied on the others named in the Cincinnati indictment. The small fish got sentences of up to twenty years; Weichselbaum, the ringleader, got three. He served only eighteen months. Whenhe was up for early release, Weichselbaum told his parole officer that he already had work lined up. He was Donald Trump’s new helicopter consultant. He also said he would be moving into Trump Tower. While he was behind bars, Weichselbaum’s girlfriend bought two adjoining thirty-ninth-story Trump Tower apartments (numbered 49-A and 49-B because Trump skipped tenth-floor numbers to inflate the apparent height of his signature building erected a few years earlier). The price was $2.4 million. Trump confirmed to the DGE that he believed Weichselbaum moved into Trump Tower and lived with a girlfriend after he was released from prison, but said he had no contact with him except for seeing him in the building.
    Weichselbaum also told his probation officer that he had known about Marla Maples, Trump’s mistress, long before that relationship became public knowledge. He said he tried to talk Trump into ending the affair. He said Trump asked him to let Marla stay at the Trump Plaza high-rise apartment the Weichselbaum brothers rented from him, just a few blocks from Trump Tower. The DGE dismissed this, saying simply that it was “not in possession of any credible information which would suggest that