The piece below from PROPUBLICA reveals that the ex-Real Estate Businessman has always had a thing for getting the ‘goods’ on people….
And?
Where else could u be in the ultimate position to do that then being the President of the United States of America?….
Nobody ever told the Big Guy he had to give stuff back that wasn’t his…..
And nobody came and took the the stuff back….
Which could ruined his leverage , black mailing and even maybe money making abilities?
Gonna be a LOT of people smiling if/when the indictements come …..
Many people who have found themselves, for better or worse, in Trump’s orbit over the decades — people with far less power than Whitman — told me it was obvious that Trump collected information on people, delighted in it, even. And he was not shy about deploying it. “There was always someone watching,” one former high-level Trump Organization employee told me. “What Donald would do is he would let the person know he knows, in his around-the-corner way. He let the person know he was all-imposing and he knew what was going on.” Like most other former employees, this person did not want to speak on the record for fear that Trump would still come after him all these years later.
It was helpful for Trump that people knew he collected information on others’ less glowing moments as potential ammunition down the road. One top former New Jersey lawmaker told me that he’d been warned to be on his best behavior when he traveled to Atlantic City because Trump kept an eye on important people. Even as a rumor, it furnished Trump with power….
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In 1990, Neil Barsky, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, came upon a scoop. He was told by a banker that “Donald Trump is driving 100 miles per hour toward a brick wall, and he has no brakes” in Atlantic City. Four large banks had hundreds of millions of dollars of debt on the line. Trump was divorcing his first wife, Ivana, and trying desperately to keep his finances from her and out of the tabloids. Unfortunately for him, Barsky kept writing about Trump’s financial difficulties.
In early 1991, one of Trump’s senior executives offered Barsky comp tickets to a company-sponsored boxing match in Atlantic City. His editor encouraged him to accept a ticket for himself to cultivate Trump Organization sources. In what he later called “an act of bad judgment,” Barsky also accepted tickets for his father and brother. Writing about the episode in 2016, Barsky said he later learned that after the match, Trump called the New York Post, asking, “How would you like to destroy the career of a Wall Street Journal reporter?” The story that ensued conjured a picture of a malevolent Barsky, extorting the tickets in exchange for keeping bad stories out of his paper.
After it appeared, the editors moved Barsky off the beat and Trump no longer had to deal with his tough financial scrutiny….
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If people’s gambling and hotel habits can be valuable, top secret intelligence has the potential to be even more so. As it was back in his casino heyday, just the knowledge that Trump may have compromising secrets, and could use them, confers continued power….