Beat Up By Exercise Bands (Wink Wink): Dirty Harry Loses Lawsuit

The dirty, rotten scoundrel who “served” in the United States Senate for 30 years had his lawsuit against the makers of an exercise band flatly rejected.

Four years ago, Harry Reid blamed blindness in one eye, fractured ribs, a concussion and bruises on an “accident” in his bathroom on New Year’s Day.

Following eight days of testimony, an eight-member civil trial jury deliberated for about an hour before proclaiming Reid never proved the device he used was a TheraBand® made by Ohio-based Hygienic Corporation.

Why would I intimate Reid’s incident with an effing rubber band wasn’t just an unfortunate encounter between a scrawny little worm and exercise equipment?

Dirty Harry served as Nevada gaming commissioner in the 1970s affording him the opportunity to rub elbows with organized crime members.  He entered public service in 1987, but Reid got rich while serving in the U.S. Senate.  His considerable fortune came, in large part, from sweetheart land deals he acquired through at least one person associated with the mob.

Not possible you say.  The mob’s been gone from Sin City for decades, right?  Nope.  Vegas still celebrates Mob Month every January.  There’s even a Mob Museum whose mission it is to “advance the public understanding of organized crime’s history and impact on American society.”

From a published report from Circa, we are told a massive FBI organized crime investigation back in the 80s developed information that Reid may have received money from a mob figure that was routed through a friend, and subsequently took action as Nevada’s top gaming regulator that allowed a mob-controlled casino to keep operating, according to internal Bureau memos and wiretap tapes that escaped public notice for most of Reid’s Senate career.

The evidence included an interview with Joseph Agosto, a now-deceased La Cosa Nostra crime family figure who told FBI agents he provided through an intermediary “$25,000 or $30,000 to be used to furnish Reid’s new office” in 1977 right after Reid was named chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission.

That interview was part of the FBI’s extensive Mafia history files that were released in 2013-14 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Wiretap intercepts reviewed by Circa also captured major mob figures discussing in 1978 —a year after the alleged gift—that Reid had helped them resolve a case that threatened to revoke the license of a large mob-controlled casino. According to FBI documents, the mobsters in the tapes referred to Reid by the codename they had given him, “Clean Face” or “Clean.”

Reid’s commission opted to fine the Stardust casino $100,000 in 1978 rather than revoke its gambling license as Gaming Control Board regulators had recommended, the records show.

“I’m happy that Clean, you know, was able to deliver,” the late Agosto was captured on a wiretap tape saying as he described the reaction of a mob associate shortly after Reid persuaded the regulatory commission to approve the fine and keep the casino open. 

Agosto, the Kansas City mob’s top lieutenant in Las Vegas, told the FBI in a subsequent jailhouse interview in 1983 that Reid’s action in the Stardust matter was “so favorable," confirming the FBI’s suspicions that the regulatory decision allowed organized crime to keep skimming funds from the casino.

One of the main characters of the Obama sewer who would have stayed in “public service” until they carried him out by the handles was “exercise-banded” into early retirement.

UPDATE:  Welcome readers of iOTWReport.  We are grateful to the inimitable MJA for linking to this post.