Newly unearthed video seemingly contradicts Donald Trump’s claim that he has never known a gambler with alleged ties to organized crime, according to a new report.
The footage shows Trump standing beside Robert LiButti, a man with purported links to mafia boss John Gotti, Yahoo News reported Wednesday.
{mosads}Yahoo said the pair’s appearance together occurred on March 27, 1988, during the “Wrestlemania IV” professional wrestling event in Atlantic City, N.J.
LiButti was banned from New Jersey’s casinos in 1991 due to his connection with Gotti, who was then chief of the Gambino crime syndicate, Yahoo reported.
The New Jersey Casino Control Commission that same year also levied $650,000 in fines against the Trump Plaza hotel, the news outlet added. The penalty stemmed from LiButti gambling huge sums at the hotel’s casino before his death in 2014.
“That’s definitely Bob LiButti standing right next to Donald Trump,” said David Cay Johnston, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who extensively interviewed LiButti in the 1990s. “It’s an event that Bob described to me a quarter century ago in his Saddle River home.
“The ‘Wrestlemania’ event is just one of many times that Trump was close to Bob, who was the biggest loser at Trump casinos and therefore Trump’s most important customer.”
Trump’s presidential campaign dismissed footage of the billionaire and LiButti together.
“This was obviously a massive event, which took place decades ago,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email to Yahoo. “Mr. Trump attended many similar events with thousands of people during this time period.”
Trump, who is now the Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly denied knowing LiButti in the past.
“If he was standing here in front of me, I wouldn’t know what he looked like,” he told the Inquirer in 1991 when first asked about the gambler.
“During the years, I very successfully ran the casino business, I knew many high rollers,” he wrote in an email to Yahoo earlier this year. “I assume Mr. LiButti was one of them, but I don’t recognize the name.”
Yahoo said a confidential source provided it with the video, which was discovered in the online archives of “Wrestlemania” sponsor World Wrestling Entertainment.
LiButti sits alongside Trump and his then-wife Ivana in the clip, which was filmed at the Atlantic City Convention Hall.
Trump greets ring announcer Bob Uecker in the footage before later kissing special guest Vanna White on the cheek.
Yahoo said New Jersey regulators decided to permanently “exclude” LiButti from state casinos in 1991. The ban occurred after undercover New Jersey police footage emerged of LiButti repeatedly calling Gotti “my boss.”
Yahoo added Trump has never been charged with a crime or lost a casino license over accusations of ties with mob figures.