You can read about the May 4, 1985 murder of Russian-American mob boss Evsei Agron here. He was gunned down as he waited for the elevator in his own apartment building by “a man wearing a jogging suit and sunglasses [who] stepped from behind a corner in the hallway and shot him at point-blank range, hitting him twice in the right temple.” His chauffeur and bodyguard had been waiting for him in the car downstairs. What came next may interest you.
A few days after (Evsei] Agron was found in a pool of his own blood, his driver, Boris Nayfeld, strolled into what had been Agron’s modest office at the El Caribe Country Club in Brighton Beach. He was there to begin his new job as the driver and bodyguard of the man who benefited the most from the execution of Evsei Agron: Marat Balagula, the new godfather of the Russian mob.
That’s a brief and concise paragraph, but it contains a lot of information. Please note that Evsei Agron had maintained a “modest office” in the El Caribe Country Club in Brighton Beach. Also note that his successor as the godfather of the Russian Mob, Marat Balagula, took that office for himself.
I’ve written about the significance of this twice before. I’m writing about it now for a third time because the Washington Post just published a lengthly profile on Michael Cohen that does not adequately explain this history.
To be sure, the profile hints at the significance, but it falls far short of where it should go. Before I get to that, though, I will tell you what the profile does say. It notes that as a teenager, Michael Cohen worked as a lifeguard at the El Caribe Country Club, a south Brooklyn establishment owned by his uncle, Morty Levine. Mr. Levine is now 84 years old, but he had a long career serving the Brighton Beach community as a physician.
Here’s how Levin described that work in an interview with the Post in late January.
“I was ‘il dottore de tutti de capos,’ ” Levine said. “I was in a neighborhood with a lot of Italian families. You treat the mother, the father. They recommend you.”
One patient, he said, was Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, a Lucchese crime-family underboss whose bomb-resistant waterfront mansion the doctor briefly owned in the early 1990s. And mob boss John Gotti, Levine said, hosted a huge Christmas bash in 1988 at the El Caribe. “Gotti was a great guy,” Levine said. “So was ‘Gaspipe.’ ”
By his own admission, several of his patients were prominent and powerful members of the Sicilian mafia. By his own admission, he still thinks La Cosa Nostra‘s former top boss John Gotti was “a great guy,” and he brags that he hosted a party for him while Gotti was at the peak of his powers.
As for what he thinks about his nephew today, he acknowledges that the president screwed him over, but that doesn’t mean approves of Michael becoming a rat.
The doctor recalled sitting at the same table as Trump at the bar mitzvah of Michael’s son, Jake. Trump posed for photographs and signed autographs. At one point, he picked up Levine’s granddaughter and danced with her.
It’s part of the reason Levine felt good about voting for Trump in 2016.
“He’s a fantastic individual; he’s very warmhearted,” Levine said. “I should hate him because he screwed my nephew. Of course he did. But that’s part of life. I’d still vote for him.”
His nephew, he said, “should have said, ‘I know nothing.’ ”
There are a few other important pieces of information in the Post profile. It notes that even today Michael considers Morty Levine as more of a brother than an uncle. It reports on how Michael used to emulate the gangsters in Good Fellas, even going so far as to wear a pinkie ring.
What the profile doesn’t mention is the Russian Mafia had an office in the El Caribe and that Cohen maintained an ownership stake in the club until shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Balagula maintained an office at the El Caribe Country Club, a Brooklyn catering hall and event space owned by the uncle of President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
The uncle, Dr. Morton Levine, said that all his nieces and nephews have an ownership in the company, but that Cohen “gave up his stake,” after Trump was elected.
If you’re wondering why Michael Cohen was willing to cooperate with Robert Muller but not with the prosecutors at the Southern District of New York, it’s because of these mob connections and the requirement the SDNY puts on cooperating witnesses that they report all the crimes they’ve ever witnessed. Michael Cohen is willing to rat out the president of the United States, but he’s not willing to rat out the Lucchese Crime Family or Russian gangsters like Boris Nayfeld.
The president’s threats are still intimidating. He scared Cohen off of giving scheduled public testimony last week to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. You can see how precarious Cohen’s position is from the fact that his own Uncle Morty thinks Trump is acting within his rights. As far as he is concerned, Michael should keep his mouth shut.
I’m only touching the tip of the iceberg here. If you want a fuller picture of how Cohen and Trump intersect with the Russian Mafia, read my pieces The Odd Chabad Connection Between Putin and Trump and Michael Cohen Gets a Special Visit. And, of course, make sure not to miss My Movie Script on Felix Sater.
The Post’s profile on Cohen isn’t necessarily bad, but it lacks the cojones of its convictions.
