Trump wants to kill drug dealers --- unless he's doing business with them
by digby
Trump wants to be Duterte. But maybe someone will have to ask him about this:
President Trump now chats with the leaders of China and Singapore about executing drug dealers.
But back in the 1980s, Trump helped a multi-kilo cocaine dealer escape with a minimal sentence.
And a little over a decade ago, Trump worked with a convicted pill pusher to develop Trump Tower Philadelphia, a real estate deal that also involved Don Jr. and Ivanka.
The dealer turned developer was Raoul Goldberger, aka Raoul Goldberg. He had previously been caught with a loaded gun that had been fired. He had also done time for smuggling and distributing considerable quantities of ecstasy. He would follow the Trump Tower Philadelphia dealings by being convicted of selling opioids. He remained number 46245-054 in federal prison when Trump was elected.
The cocaine dealer was Joseph Weichselbaum. He was indicted for heading a Colombia-Miami-Middle America cocaine ring in 1985, even the helicopter service owned by him and his brother Franklin was getting more than $2 million a year from Trump to ferry high rollers to and from his casinos in Atlantic City.
The charges against Joseph Weichselbaum were brought in Cincinnati, but after he pled guilty there, the case was mysteriously transferred to New Jersey for sentencing and assigned to Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. She recused herself two weeks later, reportedly in part because she and her husband had taken rides in Weichselbaum choppers.
The case was given to fellow New Jersey federal Judge Harold Ackerman, along with the implicit message that she had some connection to the defendant. Ackerman then received a September 1986 letter from the Donald himself, regarding Weichselbaum and written with full knowledge of his big-time drug dealing.
“A credit to the community… conscientious, forthright and diligent,” Trump wrote in a missive first reported by the late, great Wayne Barrett.
More minor participants in the drug ring were hit with as much as 20 years. But the kingpin Weichselbaum got just three years. He served only 18 months and then was released to a halfway house.
At the time of his sentencing, Weichselbaum was living in Trump Plaza in Manhattan in an apartment owned by Trump. The rent was a cut-rate $7,000 a month.
I'm fairly sure that he just wants to kill Latino and black drug dealers. In fact, that's really the point. Killing white men with money is almost certainly not what he has in mind.
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