The FBI's Latest Disclosure on the Adelson Crime Family

The incredible mischief of this group

Miriam Adelson at the Venetian, 2023, via Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Last week the FBI disclosed the second tranche of files related to the late Sheldon Adelson, one of the dons of the Jewish mafia. His widow, pictured above, is the one who exchanged millions of dollars in support to President Trump for his backing of the annexation of the West Bank.

Also this week, we learned that Steve Wynn, former finance chair of the RNC, is making an effort to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan. His history of litigation against journalists is substantial, including the epic saga in which the great Lyle Stuart eventually beat him at the Nevada Supreme Court, but at the expense of his publishing business.

What stuck in Wynn’s craw was that Stuart had alleged in publicity copy that he had ties to organized crime. Now he wants to overturn the standard that allows publishers to say such things. Surprise, surprise.

The facts available already demonstrate that Jewish casino proprietors with connections to China have manipulated American foreign policy in what they see as Israel’s interest. That should not be a controversial assertion. They’re proud of it.

What might be controversial is to allege that they are criminals, but they are. During the events covered in these files Adelson was a big supporter of Newt Gingrich, and got behind Mitt Romney in the 2012 election year in part to make this go away. Mormons and Jewish casino proprietors working together is, of course, the story of Las Vegas.

The second tranche of the Adelson files mostly concerns the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation into him in 2011. There were several pieces of this, there was an SEC subpoena in January, which followed a civil lawsuit from a former executive, Steven Jacobs in 2010, and the DOJ was clearly involved. You can see from these files the FBI was tracking the SEC subpoena.

It’s clearly a counterintelligence matter. This is the memo that tells you what it’s really about:

One of the other memos, an interview transcription from September 16, 2011, clearly demonstrates that Adelson is in some sort of spat with Chinese organized crime over a ferry service he doesn’t like. It attests to the existence of a Chinese investigation into Las Vegas Sands as well, and suggests money moving around related to the Adelson Center in Beijing was misspent, and no invoices were created for it.

There’s also an allegation of evidence theft in early 2012:

It took many years before Las Vegas Sands settled with Jacobs, not until 2016, and the same year he did pay $9 million to settle with the SEC as well. But this is way too big of a matter, and implicates Chinese corruption on too deep of a level to be totally comfortable with the level of clout the Adelsons continue to have in the GOP. It’s very dangerous. And the reality is much of the money that goes to pro-Israel advocacy on the right comes from criminal sources like this.