A newly uncovered video appears to contradict Donald Trumps claim that he never knew a high-stakes gambler who was banned from New Jersey casinos for alleged ties to organized crime.
The reputed mob figure, Robert LiButti, can be seen standing alongside Trump in the front row of a 1988 WrestleMania match in Atlantic City, N.J. LiButti wasnt there by accident, according to his daughter, Edith Creamer, who also attended the event. We were his guests, she told Yahoo News in a text message this week.
The video was given to Yahoo News by a confidential source who discovered it in the online archives of World Wrestling Entertainment, the sponsor of WrestleMania.
The video appears to lend new support to assertions Trump once had close relations with LiButti, who was banned from the states casinos in 1991 because of his ties to Mafia boss John Gotti, then the chief of the Gambino crime syndicate. Separately, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that same year levied $650,000 in fines against the Trump Plaza hotel over its dealings with LiButti, who gambled huge sums at the hotels casino. LiButti died in 2014.