“The story behind the story: DeLay’s involvement with Florida gangland mobsters probed by prosecutors [was] stymied by withheld FBI interview forms and obstruction from George W. and Jeb Bush.”
— Wayne Madsen Report

Earlier I suggested that disgraced Republican Rep. Tom DeLay’s resignation yesterday may have been triggered by the guilty plea to corruption charges last week by his former staffer, Tony Rudy. Conventional wisdom indicates that Rudy could have ratted out DeLay on bribery and corruption charges in order to receive a lesser sentence.

Now comes word of a development that, if true, could implicate DeLay in the gangland murder of Gus Boulis, the former owner of SunCruz casino cruise ship line in Florida.

The news comes via an April 4, 2006, story in the Wayne Madsen Report, starting with a generally overlooked but possibly stunning development in the Boulis murder trial in Miami last week. Prosecutors say they belatedly learned that one of the accused murderers, Gambino family associate, Anthony “Big Tony” Moscatiello, was an FBI informant for 15 years:

At the same time New York mob associate Anthony Moscatiello was allegedly plotting the slaying of a Fort Lauderdale business tycoon, he was also spying on fellow gangsters and snitching to the FBI, The Miami Herald has learned…

Sensitivity over Moscatiello’s 15-year career as an FBI informant prompted the Broward State Attorney’s Office to hold a closed-door meeting with defense attorneys in Circuit Judge Michael Kaplan’s chambers on Friday. Some of the lawyers asked the judge to keep Moscatiello’s statements given to the FBI after Boulis’ murder under wraps.

The purchase of SunCruz in 2000 by now-disgraced Republican uber-operative Jack Abramoff and his partner Adam Kidan eventually led to their undoing, beginning with accusations by Gus Boulis that the pair had defrauded their lenders out of tens of millions of dollars — charges that both Abramoff and Kidan would later admit were true.

After they purchased SunCruz — at the time when Boulis’ charges were becoming inconvenient, to say the least — Kidan placed Moscatiello and his associate, Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari, on SunCruz’s payroll as “caterers.” Moscatiello has told prosecutors that Ferrari told him that the hit on Boulis was orderded by Kidan.

Coincidentally, Moscatiello stopped snitching for the Feds shortly after the slaying, according to the Miami Herald.

Last week, Abramoff and Kidan were sentenced to almost six years in prison for lying to lenders when they bought SunCruz Casinos from Boulis for $147 million.

The Madsen Report says Broward County officials are deeply suspicious of the government’s motives in not revealing to them that Moscatiello was an FBI informant:

Broward County prosecutors are livid about the failure of the FBI to inform them that Moscatiello was an FBI informant at the time of the Boulis murder. They are convinced that the George W. and Jeb Bush administrations in Washington and Tallahassee, respectively, deliberately blocked the prosecution from linking Moscatiello to the criminal cases against Abramoff and Kidan…

However, the Sun Cruz case goes far beyond Abramoff and involves DeLay, according to informed sources. The Broward County prosecutors believe that the FBI’s written summaries (FD-302s) of their interviews with Moscatiello were withheld from [them] by the FBI in order to protect senior GOP officials. Had the prosecution known Moscatiello was an FBI informer, he could have been offered a plea bargain in return for his cooperation against Republican politicians in Florida and Washington, DC.

According to Madsen,”prosecutors and investigative reporters in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are focusing on the timeline involving Sun Cruz, Boulis, Abramoff, and DeLay.”

The timeline traces Abramoff’s involvement in the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign as well as his meetings with key members of DeLay’s staff in the months before and after Bush’s inauguration in January 2000.

Madsen concludes:

Florida prosecutors have uncovered preliminary evidence that SunCruz was wrested from Boulis to enable hundreds of millions of dollars in cash could be laundered into GOP campaigns, including the DeLay and Bush-Cheney 2004 campaigns, from the casino boats.

Hat Tip to JR

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