|
|
March 15, 2024 -- Trump nominated a mobbed-up judge, Aileen Cannon; she's now slow-walking secrets theft case
publication date: Mar 15, 2024
March 15, 2024 -- Trump nominated mobbed-up judge, Aileen Cannon; she's now slow-walking secrets theft case
 U.S. Judge Aileen Cannon, the right-wing Federalist Society member who Donald Trump nominated for the federal bench for the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Florida after he lost the 2020 election, is married to Josh Lorence, a former executive employee of the upscale burger restaurant BurgerFi. BurgerFi is owned by reputed Colombo crime family boss John Rosatti.
Relatively little is known about Aileen Mercedes Cannon's early years. She was born on February 6, 1981 in Cali, Colombia to Mercedes Cannon, a Cuban expatriate mother, and an American father from Indiana. Cannon's grandfather was Jose Manuel Cubas, who was exiled from Cuba after the Fidel Castro revolution in 1960. After his exile from Cuba, Cubas, along with his brother Gustavo Cubas, established an influential Latin American  advertising agency, Publicidad Siboney Corporation, in Puerto Rico. An office of the company was later established in Coral Gables, Florida at 1401 Brickell Avenue in Miami and One Alhambra Plaza. A 2017 corporate filing shows that Siboney's principals included Judge Cannon's mother, Mercedes Cannon, and her mother, the judge's grandmother, Edith Cubas, with a condominium address of 1408 Brickell Bay Drive in Miami. [left] The firm, with offices in Miami, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and El Salvador and a number of Fortune 500 clients, had an annual revenue of $54 million in 1984, which coincided with the height of Iran-Contra operations. The company is now listed in Florida business records as inactive.
Jose Manuel Cubas lived in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico and Miami, first as a permanent resident and later as a naturalized citizen. Cubas died in 2015, leaving a $1 million estate to his wife Edith Cubas. [right, Jose Manuel and Edith Cubas] A Florida business records search yielded another firm registered by Cubas in 1978, International Marketing & Advertising Services Corporation, which had as its business address the Chicago headquarters of FCB International, a major advertising agency founded in 1873. Cubas's address was listed as FCB, 101 Park Avenue, New York City. Another principal of Cubas's firm was registered under FCB in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Oddly, the Florida business registration website states that no document images are available on-line for International Marketing & Advertising Services Corporation.
Jose Manuel Cubas provided financial support to various anti-Castro groups operating out of Venezuela and Puerto Rico. During the 1970s, Venezuela became a focal point for anti-Castro terrorist activities. These operations were principally led by Cuban expats Luis Posada Carriles, who operated a detective agency front in Caracas, and Orlando Bosch. Bosch had been implicated in several terrorist attacks, including the 1976 bombing of Cubana de Aviación flight 455 after it had just taken off from Bridgetown, Barbados en route to Cuba. Bosch had also been under suspicion by the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations for an alleged meeting he had in 1963 with Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps not coincidentally, Jose Manuel Cubas is reported to have had a visceral hatred of President John F. Kennedy over the CIA's 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco.
In 1981, Cali was a central cog in the massive Colombian narcotics ring led by Medellin Cartel boss Pablo Escobar. In 1981, the year Judge Cannon was born, Cali was part of a drug smuggling route established by CIA director William Casey. That year, the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN), a member of the anti-Sandinista Contras, began shipping cocaine to Miami in order to finance weapons purchases to fund their military activities against the Sandinista government. The first "dry run" cocaine flight from Cali occurred in July 1981. Cali, Cannon's birthplace, became a central hub in the Iran-Contra drugs-for-cash-for-arms-for-hostages scandal that almost brought down the Ronald Reagan administration.
 In her Senate confirmation hearing, Cannon was vague on her family roots. She told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that her paternal grandfather was William P. Cannon, a reserve Navy Lieutenant. William Cannon, the owner of Cannon Products, Inc. and a Georgetown University graduate, was shot to death by his son-in-law, former cop Robert Goodknight, during a "domestic dispute" in Elwood, Indiana in 1984. At the age of seven, Judge Cannon entered Miami with her parents. Mercedes ("Mercy") Cubas Cannon and Michael F. Cannon later lived in San Turce, Puerto Rico. What little is known about Michael Cannon is that Cubas recruited him from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, Arizona to become an employee of Siboney. One other notable graduate of Thunderbird is Luis Alberto Moreno, former president of the Inter-American Development Bank and the Colombian ambassador to the United States. In 1998, Moreno was appointed ambassador by Colombian far-right President Andrés Pastrana. Pastrana is a member of Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Cannon reportedly met Mercedes Cubas while she was working as a journalist in Caracas, Venezuela. They married in 1978. Upon the Cannons' divorce in 1997, Michael Cannon got the heave-ho from Siboney by his father-in-law, Apparently, Michael Cannon eventually became a traveling biker.
Trump and the real-life "Sopranos"
Among Trump's failed enterprises from his casino days in Atlantic City were Trump Golden Series and Trump Executive Series limousines. Twenty Trump luxury Cadillac limousines were provided from Dillinger Coach Works by Long Island Atlantic Auto Group dealer John Staluppi, an associate of Colombo crime boss Carmine "The Snake" Persico and a close friend of John Rosatti. Dillinger Coach Works was named for 1930s gangster John Dillinger. The limos, which interestingly had paper shredders installed in them, serviced Trump's casinos in Atlantic City. The limos' hood ornaments bore the name "Body by Colombo," a reference to the crime family.
Besides owning BurgerFi, Rosatti, [right] who is worth an estimated $400 million, also owns Plaza Auto Mall in Brooklyn, New York, which has been accused of laundering contributions to a number of New York politicians. Rosatti and Staluppi own waterfront mansions in Palm Beach Gardens. It is not known whether Rosatti is a member of Trump's club in nearby Palm Beach, however Staluppi and his wife have been photographed together at the club.
According to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, Rosatti had been identified as an associate of the Colombo syndicate in 1980. Rosatti had pledged allegiance to the Colombo faction led by Victor “Little Vic” Orena. In 1993, Rosatti declined to provide Orena with cars from his Brooklyn car dealership to carry out mob hits. Later, Rosatti and Staluppi switched their allegiance from Oreno to Persico.
Rosatti and Staluppi, both convicted felons, became closely associated with Trump's casino operations in Atlantic City. Trump's casinos were under constant investigation by the FBI, New Jersey Gaming Enforcement Division, and Internal Revenue Service for money laundering. Staluppi owned a helicopter service company that ferried guests to Trump's Atlantic City casinos. In 1992, an FBI wiretap picked up a conversation between three Colombo family mobsters. One, referring to Staluppi and Rosatti, said, "They got helicopters.” Another said, "You could kill everybody with that." The third responded, "Fucking shots coming out of the sky."
On October 10, 1989, while Trump was being investigated for his mob ties to the already-operational Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, three Trump Organization officials were killed in a suspicious helicopter crash in the New Jersey pinelands, just off the Garden State Parkway. Killed were Trump's Atlantic City operations chief Stephen Hyde, 43; Mark Grossinger Etess, 38, the head of the yet-unfinished Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City; and Jonathan Benanav, 30, the vice president of Trump Plaza Hotel Casino. The pilot and co-pilot were also killed. Hyde, Etess, and Benanav were persons of interest to the FBI, Secret Service, and state law enforcement in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York in money laundering and counterfeiting probes.
The helicopter was rented by the Trump Organization from Paramount Aviation, but the actual owner of the aircraft was FSQ Air Charter Corporation, one of many murky aviation-related firms incorporated in Delaware. Eyewitnesses claim they heard a loud “bang” before the chopper broke up in mid-air and plummeted to the ground. The rear rotor section was found almost a mile from the crash site near Forked River, New Jersey. The pilot, Robert Kent, had been in radio contact with the tower at nearby McGuire Air Force Base, but never indicated any problem with the aircraft. To paraphrase the Colombo gangster, the "fucking" chopper " just "came out of the sky."
Staluppi also had $250,000 credit lines each at Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza, and Trump Castle in Atlantic City. Rosatti has been a top contributor to Trump, Senators Lindsey Graham and Steve Daines, and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH). Staluppi has contributed campaign cash to Trump, Senators Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell, as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
With her family connections to Cuban expat terrorist groups, Mafia chieftains, mob hits, and possibly, Iran-Contra drug smuggling operations, Aileen Cannon is definitely not suited to be presiding over a trial in which Trump stands accused of violating the Espionage Act by stealing and then tossing around Mar-a-Lago some of America's top secrets on nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines, CIA sources, and U.S. intelligence's sophisticated methods for gathering intelligence.
Not only should "Loose" Cannon be recused from the Trump case by the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta but this dirty judge should also be impeached and removed from the bench.
NOTE: Because of the urgency attached to this article it is being made available to the general public. Widest dissemination urged.
-30-
|
Generally, readers are solely responsible for the content of the comments they post on this web site. Comments are subject to the site's terms and conditions of use and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or approval of Wayne Madsen Report.com. Readers whose comments violate the terms of use may have their comments removed without notification. Please do not post hate messages as this is a violation of British laws against racist and xenophobic messages. WMR's web service is based in Wales, UK and is subject to UK law.
|
Calendar
« »
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | |
|
.gif){kind=small}
