Former ABC News White House correspondent Sam Donaldson has compared the FBI search of Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to the case that brought down gangster Al Capone in 1931.
Al Capone, who ruled over an empire of gambling, prostitution, bribery, drug trafficking and robbery in Chicago during the 1920s and early 1930s, was considered for years an “untouchable” by the FBI, as cases brought against him failed amid the gangster’s ability to cover his tracks and bribe people into silence.
But in 1931, the FBI finally managed to prosecute Al Capone for tax evasion, as the gangster’s lavish lifestyle proved to be his ultimate weakness. In the end, it was not the several murders he had ordered or the brutal crimes he had committed that sent the gangster to jail: but found guilty on 23 cases of tax evasion, Al Capone received an 11-year prison sentence, together with fines totaling $250,000 and $30,000.
James Devaney/GC Images and Paras Griffin/Getty Images
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Donaldson compared the case against Al Capone in 1930-31 to that against Trump now, saying he believes that the former president will be held accountable for breaching the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and unlawfully removing documents related to his time in office —including classified ones.
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