Journalist Wayne Barrett: Trump tried to bribe, then threaten him. WB speaks out with dying breath.

[pnwmom]

The author of a 1992 bio on Trump, Barrett worked for decades at the Village Voice, as a reporter and Senior Editor. He’s contributed to Newsweek and is on the adjunct faculty of the Columbia Journalism School.

Now suffering with lung cancer, he still talks to reporters and shares his research.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wayne-barrett-donald-trump-bribe_us_560eaabae4b0dd85030bb2d5


“Even at this early stage of his career, he both threatened me and tried to bribe me,” Barrett said. “He offered me an apartment. I don’t know how he knew that I lived in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn, in Brownsville. He said, ‘I understand you live in Brownsville. Wayne, you don’t have to live in Brownsville. I can get you an apartment.’”

Intimidation of the media was nothing new for Trump at that point, Barrett said.

“At the same time, in the course of the same interviews — and this was all on tape — he advertised that he had already sued and broken one journalist,” Barrett said.

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http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/16/media/wayne-barrett-donald-trump/


These days, Barrett, 70, is largely confined to his Brooklyn townhouse, the result of his battle with both lung cancer and interstitial lung disease. He lives there with his wife, Fran Barrett, who works under New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as an interagency coordinator for not-for-profit services.

SNIP

In a nearly two-hour conversation last week on his porch in his backyard, Barrett talked to CNNMoney about what he considers the biggest failures of the media in covering Trump. He wore one of Trump's signature "Make America Great Again" baseball caps.

A quote machine with an irascibility that is famous in New York media circles, Barrett spoke with expert-level conviction on the media's performance in 2016. He was animated and profane in his critiques, and probably could have gone for another two hours if his lung capacity had permitted.

Barrett reserved his harshest criticism for televised news.

"All of my life, I have believed and said, we're in the truth-telling business. Our job is to tell truth," he said. "I can't say that anymore about broadcast journalism."

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Here’s a video of an interview with Democracy Now:

Here’s a transcript of the interview with Democracy Now:

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/5/how_donald_trump_threatened_an_investigative

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In a related story that described Trump's threats to a lawyer, here’s one of Trump's henchman, a retired cop, bragging about how he used to threaten people for Donald.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/12/11-private-security-firms-guarding-donald-trump.html

According to Dietl, Trump would use him to “deter” his opponents—particularly in the lawless arena of casinos.
“I’ve handled stuff—personal issues as far as investigations and certain things,” Dietl told me, “where if he would ask me a question about somebody, say that was going after him, and then we would do our investigation and we would deter—say if someone was targeting Donald on something, and going after him, I would do some confidential investigation for him as far as to deter anybody going after Donald.”

Dietl declined to get into specifics, but used as an example “shareholders” in Atlantic City “doing something” and sending an attorney after Trump. So Trump, in Dietl’s telling, sent Dietl after the attorney.

“We kind of deterred that attorney because what we did was we investigated the fact that [the] attorney wasn’t exactly cleaner than the Board of Health, you know what I mean?” he said.

Dietl clarified that Trump had seemingly hired someone else who “must’ve followed him, put him under surveillance” to uncover “the nasty dirt—really nasty shit” that Dietl then approached the attorney with. Dietl remembered telling him, “‘Hey, if you don’t back off me, I got this on you.’ So, it was like a showdown… He hired me to get to the guy. So I went to visit the guy who was trying to fuck Trump, and I says, you know, I think you better think about this. He’s got this, this and the other thing—it was enough to be very bad for that person.”

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Barrett

Wayne Barrett c. 1946 (age 69–70) is an American journalist. He was[2] an investigative reporter and senior editor for the Village Voice for over 20 years. He is currently a Fellow with the Nation Institute and contributor to Newsweek.

He is the author of many articles and books about politicians, especially New York City figures such as Ed Koch, Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani. He is a major interviewee in Kevin Keating's 2006 documentary Giuliani Time. He is also on the adjunct faculty of the Columbia Journalism School.

[HipChick]

1. I'd bet he's very involved in the Hacking of DNC too..

[BSdetect]

2. Applauling treatment of people in general.

Threats and bribes in the same breath.

What a turd.

[Hekate]

3. Mafia Don, as it were. Empire of criminals and thugs. Bookmarking.

Thanks, pnwmom

[elehhhhna]

5. Goes by Donny the Douche on the street, aka Il Douche'

[sakabatou]

4. Isn't blackmailing a lawyer illegal?

Because it sounds just like that.

[elehhhhna]

6. Bribes ain't kosher either.

[Hortensis]

7. So what? Kochs have flaunted the law for decades, even

causing deaths through illegal acts and remaining untouched.

I'm hoping the visibility running for president means will turn out to be a fatal mistake for The Donald. It's not as if he's part of an old-boys club, either. No one who isn't forced to would try to protect him.

I was recently reading a journalist, who's been very critical of her industry for a long time, who strongly suspects Trump has probably been blackmailing other journalists for years. She's been threatened with lawsuits herself. Dysfunctional buffoon or no, his money has made him very powerful for decades, and he has been planning to run for president for that long. I won't post her name because she doesn't seem to have the hard data that would allow her to safely back up the vague allegations she posts. But given his known behaviors it would be almost surprising if there wasn't at least some truth there.

[pnwmom]

9. That's what I suspect, too. That's how I discovered Barrett after reading what Dietl said.

But most are probably too cowed to come forward.

[Hortensis]

10. IF... Blackmail info would likely be career- and

lifestyle-destroying for people who'd risen high enough to steer coverage and be good targets, like editors, or for us to hear about them. Cowed might be an understatement for people who decided long ago to just take care of themselves. And let's face it, the major media all helped create Trump-the-candidate, so that a whole crowd of cowed servants could almost hide in plain sight. And even the kind of relentlessly anti-Hillary people we can identify, like Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd, Chris Cillizza and Amy Chozik, just run with and blend into an elite inner circle who've promoted the same bias for decades.

Thanks for posting Barrett. His old stuff is very interesting. People say Trump hasn't changed in 30 years, even Trump.

[pnwmom]

8. Blackmailing anyone is. The fact that Dietl can brag about it with no consequences is very telling.