Frequently spotted at Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casinos, Robert LiButti is an alleged associate of the crime boss John Gotti. While rumors have swirled that the Republican presidential nominee had a close relationship with LiButti, Trump has consistently denied those claims.
"If he was standing here in front of me, I wouldn’t know what he looked like," he told the Inquirer in 1991, when the rumors first surfaced.
Except video obtained exclusively by Yahoo on Wednesday shows LiButti standing next to – not in front of – Trump at a Wrestlemania event in 1988.
“That’s definitely Bob LiButti standing right next to Donald Trump,” said David Cay Johnston, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, according to The Hill. “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," he added.
The Trump campaign has already dismissed the video.
"This was obviously a massive event, which took place decades ago," spokeswoman Hope Hicks wrote in an email to Yahoo. "Mr. Trump attended many similar events with thousands of people during this time period."
Trump has consistently denied having any knowledge of LiButti, as recently as this year.
"During the years, I very successfully ran the casino business, I knew many high rollers," Trump wrote in an email to Yahoo earlier this year. "I assume Mr. LiButti was one of them, but I don’t recognize the name."
In the big book of Trump scandals, this one is unlikely to make much of an impact on the election.With less than one week before Election Day, this is just one more controversy to toss on the pile. LiButti isn’t even the only mob-related individual to have an alleged relationship with Trump.
Felix Sater, a partner in the Trump SoHo tower, was convicted of racketeering in 1998 over what the Associated Press described as "a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the prominent Genovese and Bonanno crime families."
