An entourage of greater than a dozen supporters who joined President Donald J. Trump in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday included a former president of an outlaw motorbike gang in New York Metropolis who spent years in jail on drug costs.
The person, Chuck Zito, helped discovered within the early Eighties the New York Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels, the notorious membership that began in California. The Justice Division described the group as a prison enterprise and linked the New York chapter to the Gambino crime household. Mr. Zito later left the biker group to attempt change into a film star in Hollywood.
Mr. Trump has lengthy proven an affection for macho bikers, and addressed a rally of them in Washington in 2016 earlier than the election. (“Will we love the bikers? Sure. We love the bikers,” he instructed the gang.) A gaggle referred to as Bikers for Trump took half in a number of so-called Cease the Steal rallies after Mr. Trump misplaced the 2020 election.
Mr. Zito was joined within the courtroom on Monday by a number of Trump allies who’ve been charged with crimes.
They included Boris Epshteyn, a authorized adviser indicted in an Arizona case associated to makes an attempt to maintain Mr. Trump in energy after the 2020 election, and Bernard Kerik, the previous commissioner of the New York Police Division, who was imprisoned for tax-related costs and later pardoned by Mr. Trump. The entourage was so massive that Mr. Epshteyn helped coordinate seating.
Mr. Zito has expertise with the prison justice system, having served a jail time period from 1985 to 1991 on drug conspiracy costs. In latest many years, he has created a brand new profession as a stuntman and occasional actor, starring most prominently as Chucky “The Enforcer” Pancamo within the HBO jail drama “Oz.”
Mr. Zito can also be one thing of knowledgeable tough-guy-about-town with many acquaintances in New York and Hollywood. He as soon as served as a boxing coach for the actor Mickey Rourke, and when the mob boss John Gotti died of most cancers in 2002, Mr. Zito was one of many few non-Mafia members to attend the wake at a funeral residence in Queens.
