WHO THE F*CK IS MATTHEW CALAMARI? A Squidsplainer Of Who The F*ck That Is

Because, you know, AYYY? AYYYY.

One of the moments from Michael Cohen's hearing in Congress that's getting quite a lot of play -- quite rightly -- was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's carefully planned questioning of Cohen about things like, oh hey, DID DONALD TRUMP DO BANK FRAUD? Clearly some of the other members of Congress -- on both sides -- could stand to learn a thing or two from the body's youngest member, the one whose every move drooling unfuckables like Ben Shapiro on the right obsess over.

A number of times during the hearing, members of Congress would ask about possible crimes committed by Trump and members of his family, and Cohen would say, "Oh yeah they did that," and then they'd ask, "Who should we talk to about that?" The answer was ALWAYS Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization, who has been there since the days of Fred Trump, Donald's crime-y daddy. Weisselberg, in short, knows where ALL the bodies are buried. (Wonkette is explaining who the fuck he is next!)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grills Cohen on Trump finances    www.youtube.com   

Ocasio-Cortez asked Cohen if Trump had ever inflated his assets and given that fake data to an insurance company. "Yes." She asked who else would know about that. But this time, on top of Allen Weisselberg and another Trump Organization exec named Ron Lieberman, Cohen mentioned Matthew Calamari. WAIT, WHO THE FUCK IS THAT? And why is he named after squids? Before you knew it, Twitter was abuzz with "find your Matthew Calamari name" games, where you combine your best friend's name with the last Italian food you ate. (Ours would obviously be "My Lord And Savior Jesus Christ Muffuletta-Style Hummus," which we guess is technically an Italian-New Orleans-Middle Eastern recipe we made up, and also doesn't roll off the tongue very easily.) (And we're kidding about the Jesus thing, but the name of our best friend is just not public information, sorry!)

But for real, though, WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?

We will tell you!

First of all, he is this guy right here, pictured with a poorly put together man who appears to have just learned to stand up straight for the first time ever:

 Embed from Getty Images 

Awwwww, Junior! What is wrong with your whole entire body? Oh well, that's a question for scientists, we are talking about Matthew Calamari.

Here's how the Washington Post begins its own Calamari-splainer:  

One summer night in the late '80s, Donald Trump, then a New York real estate mogul, was enjoying a limousine tour through Manhattan with a friend when he suddenly had a question for his bodyguard and occasional chauffeur, Matthew Calamari.

"You'd do anything for me, wouldn't you, Matty?" Trump asked from the back of the limo, according to Harry Hurt III's 1993 biography, "Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump."
 
"Yes, sir, Mr. Trump," Calamari replied.

Moments later, Trump upped the ante: "Would you kill for me, Matty?"

Calamari's answer came quickly. "Yes, sir," he said.

OK, so maybe Matthew Calamari is the guy who shoots everybody in the middle of Fifth Avenue so Trump doesn't have to get his little Cabbage Patch Kid paws dirty. IS THAT IT?

Um, we dunno, but he's definitely a high-ranking member of the Trump Crime Family, we mean Organization, the bodyguard who got promoted so many times he became the COO.

The Post reports that Trump found Calamari in the early 1980s when he got super-jazzed at his bodyguard-ing #skills at a pro tennis match, but came to find out that Calamari wasn't just a garden variety meathead with a big porn mustache, but rather a meathead with a big porn mustache and also a BRAIN NOODLE. If you want to see that brain noodle in action, look no further than the season two finale of "The Apprentice," where he explains why he likes one contestant more than he likes another contestant using vocabulary that is almost as good as what we hear from the president of the United States on a daily basis:

Matthew Calamari Apprentice Series 2 Final    www.youtube.com   

Calamari is the guy who ran surveillance ops for the Trump Organization -- remember all the weird stories BuzzFeed broke about how Trump's properties are wired to the hilt with secret cameras and switchboards? Yeah, Calamari was the boss of that as Trump's head of security. (ALLEGEDLY. Trump Org says those stories were fake news.)

(Oh and by the way, sorry to punch you in the face with a limp squid, but it's pronounced "ca-luh-MARY" like the ladies' name. "Matthew" is pronounced the usual way, we guess. Also, Wonkette has zero clue whether or not Calamari tastes delicious covered in marinara, and we're simply not committed enough to good journalism to get close enough to him to find out.)

When BuzzFeed broke all those stories in 2016, Calamari's title had already been elevated to "executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Trump Organization," but BuzzFeed's sources said yeah, he's still the security dude. Also, by that time, Calamari's Mini-Me, his son, Matt Calamari Jr., was working for the Trump Organization, also dealing with security and surveillance. Indeed BuzzFeed's sources said it was really the younger Calamari at that point who was the boss of surveillance and security for the Trump properties.

Here are screengrabs of the LinkedIn profiles for both father and son, as they are today:

It also sounds like maybe Daddy Calamari was perhaps involved in the part of the Trump Crime Syndicate We Mean Organization that handled threatening people, just like Michael Cohen was. BuzzFeed reported this story in 2017, which we hasten to note the Trump Organization also says is FAKE NEWS and LOL RIDICULOUS:

[In September 1995,] Daut Bajrushi, a superintendent at one of Trump's buildings, claimed he could prove "financial improprieties" and other misconduct by the Trump Organization. Bajrushi, then 46 years old, worked at Trump Palace, a skyscraper on Manhattan's Upper East Side. After four years on the job, Bajrushi believed he had evidence the Trump company had ripped off homeowners of about $300,000.

Days before he was to reveal this information to board members at Trump Palace, Bajrushi fell ill and sent his wife and 12-year-old son to retrieve items from his office. They were gathering paperwork, according to a suit Bajrushi later filed, when someone used a screwdriver to bust the lock. The door burst open and a team of Trump security officials poured in.

According to the lawsuit, four men prevented Hatixbe Bajrushi and her son from leaving. Matthew Calamari, the hulking head of security, shoved the boy. Trump's brother-in-law, James Grau, barked questions, demanding to know why they were there. Michael Nicoll, another guard, pushed them back when they tried to leave. Grau snatched her purse and passed it to Calamari, Nicoll, and Domenic Pezzo to rifle through.

The boy started to cry and his mother fainted, they claim. Daut Bajrushi, informed by his wife in a phone call of what was happening, had a friend call the police.

Calamari threatened to harm the family if they spoke to police about what happened, according to the lawsuit. After 90 minutes, the police arrived and the Bajrushis were freed.

They sound nice. ALLEGEDLY. There's much more to the story, so read it if you like reading things the Trump Organization says are JUST CRAZY! And if you want to read more about the ALLEGED behaviors of Trump Organization security people, Ken Vogel wrote a thing about that for Politico in 2017.

One more place Calamari's name shows up is in the story of the SALACIOUS RUMOR that Trump fathered a lovechild with a former housekeeper back in the late 1980s, a SALACIOUS RUMOR Trump's buddies at AMI/ National Enquirer reportedly did a "catch and kill" on during the campaign, paying a former doorman named Dino Sajudin to STFU about what he had heard about the whole ALLEGED sordid affair. (This came up yesterday during the Cohen hearings. Cohen, for the record, says he doesn't think it's true, but that yes, there was a payoff.)

And where did Sajudin allegedly hear the alleged rumor about the alleged lovechild? Over to Ronan Farrow, reporting last year in The New Yorker :

[S]ix current and former A.M.I. employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared legal retaliation by the company, said that Sajudin had told A.M.I. the names of the alleged mistress and child. Reporters at A.M.I. had spent weeks investigating the allegations, and Sajudin had passed a lie-detector test, during which he testified that high-level Trump employees, including Trump's head of security, Matthew Calamari, had told him the story.

 The New Yorker has uncovered no evidence that Trump fathered the child. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization denied the allegations, including the assertion that Calamari told Sajudin the story.

All righty then!

Anyway, Michael Cohen -- who is now spilling his guts about where all the bodies are buried, at least the ones he knows about -- says maybe Congress should go check with Matthew Calamari and a couple other folks to find out about if Donald Trump committed bank and insurance fraud. Because he's NOT JUST A MEATHEAD, OK?

Maybe Congress might want to talk to Calamari about some other stuff too? We dunno, we'll just let Elijah Cummings figure it all out, with subpoenas.

[ Washington Post / BuzzFeed / The New Yorker ]

 Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!  

 Wonkette is ad-free and funded ONLY by YOU, our dear readers. Click below to keep the lights on, please. We appreciate you, most of the time.