Trump joins a long Line of Thuggish Racketeers who took a Defiant Mug Shot that did them no Good, including Al Capone

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The tactic of staring sternly into the camera in defiance when having a mug shot taken after being charged and arrested as a criminal is hardly new with Donald John Trump, who surrendered to authorities in Fulton County, Georgia, Thursday.

Alphonse “Scarface” Capone (d. 1947) was a liquor smuggler in Chicago and head of an organized crime conspiracy in that city. When bars declined to take their covert supplies under the table from Capone, he had them blown up. Some 100 persons died in this massive terror campaign, and they were only a small number of his victims. This is how he tried to present himself in one of his mug shots — sober, unworried, defiant. In fact, he was an impetuous, vain, violent man. Like Trump, Inc., he did not pay his taxes, and ultimately went down for it.

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1920s Prison Mug Shot Of Gangster Scarface Al Capone Looking At Camera Chicago Illinois US. (Photo by Charles Phelps Cushing/Classicstock/Getty Images)

Or here’s a young John Gotti, looking distinctly unreformed and unreformable. He became an enforcer for the Gambino family in New York, specializing in narcotics trafficking and loansharking, not to mention murder. In fact, he took over the Gambino crime family after having his competition removed. In 1985, he had his rival for the top post, Aniello Dellacroce, gunned down in front of a restaurant, in the same way that Trump tried to erase Joe Biden’s presidential victory by violence on the part of his shock troops. In 1990, FBI agents and NYPD detectives, having carefully built a case against him with authorized electronic surveillance and using his close associate “Sammy the Bull” Gravano as an informant, arrested Gotti on “multiple counts of racketeering, extortion, jury tampering, and other crimes.” Here is another similarity to Trump, who was also charged with racketeering. Like Gotti, Trump was viewed as likely to threaten and tamper with the jury. In Gotti’s case the jurors remained anonymous.

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In this handout, Italian-American gangster John Gotti (1940 – 2002) in a mug shot, US, 30th March 1965. (Photo by Kypros/Getty Images)

Finally, let us consider another populist politician, this time a Democrat, James Traficant of Ohio. A sitting congressman, he was convicted in 2002 of 10 counts of racketeering, bribery and fraud. Traficant defended John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker who was accused of having been a Nazi prison camp guard and who was extradited to Germany. He stood against foreclosure on some of his constituents’ homes. But he was thought to be in the back pocket of organized crime in northern Ohio. In a different era, he hit some of the same notes of popular discontent as Trump later would. But like Trump, he was corrupt to the core and his methods were often criminal. Like Trump, no one knew what to make of his hair. He does not look so much angry in his mug shot as smug and confident, unbowed, and in a way defiant. He insisted on defending himself at his trial. There is an old saw that a man who defends himself has a fool for a client. He lost badly, and became the first representative to be expelled from Congress since the Civil War era. There may be another parallel here, in that Trump may end up being ineligible for office because of his various crimes, according to the 14th amendment.

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UNDATED PHOTO: Former U.S. Rep. James Traficant (D-OH) is seen in this undated photo. Traficant was sentenced July 30, 2002 to eight years in prison for bribery, tax evasion and racketeering. The House of Representatives voted 420-1 to expel him last week, making Traficant only the second member of Congress kicked out since the Civil War. (Photo by Summit County Jail/Getty Images)