Just call him “Scareface”

By BRUCE LOWITT

The National Park Service announced Monday its intention to reopen Alcatraz to accommodate Donald Trump when the former president, who recently compared himself to the “great” Chicago gangster Al Capone, is convicted of election interference and other federal charges.

“Did anybody ever hear of the great Alphonse Capone, Al Capone? Great, great head of the Mafia, right?” Trump, at a Reno, Nevada, campaign rally, said of the mobster who wound up in Alcatraz after being sentenced to 11 years in federal prison following his conviction in 1931 for tax evasion. “Now I heard he was indicted once … but I was indicted four times,” Trump said.

Wrong. Capone was indicted in 1926 for violating prohibition laws, in 1929 for carrying concealed weapons, three times in 1931 for tax evasion (twice) and bootlegging, and 1933 for racketeering, according to A. Brad Schwartz, co-author of a book on Capone.

Trump, advised of that, said there’s “no way” he’ll be outshone by Capone’s six indictments and that he’ll “do whatever it takes to rack up three more to get to seven.”

Charles Sams III, director of the National Park Service, said he wants Trump “to enjoy all the benefits that Scarface experienced, so I’ve asked the Department of the Interior and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to reestablish Alcatraz as a federal prison for him, and I mean just for him, and just like in was in the 1930s.”

“I’m not going to spend a whole lot of money to gussy up the place,” Sams said. “We’ll just hose down a cell and maybe the prison laundry – and we won’t be shutting it down as a tourist attraction, either.

“People will still be able to take a boat ride out to Alcatraz to see it – and him, any time he’s in the prison yard. One thing, though; he’ll love the uniform we give him. It’s bright orange. We can even put his number forty-five in gold on the back.”