Thread: Why Mike Tyson has become an election issue for Trump

By David Weigel 11:49 AM Sunday May 1, 2016

Boxer Mike Tyson. Photo / Animal Planet

Trusted Leadership PAC, one of the many groups backing Senator Ted Cruz's campaign for US president, has announced a six-figure online Indiana ad buy that exploits an issue Donald Trump actually introduced to the race.

In 30 seconds, the spot compares the backing of Cruz by Indiana Governor Mike Pence to the friendship between Trump and Tyson - which was tested when Tyson was convicted of rape in Indiana and Trump defended him.

Indiana holds its primary on Wednesday.

Tyson's rape case dates back to July 1991, when a Miss Black America contestant was attacked by the champion boxer in an Indianapolis hotel room.

After serving jail time and making a series of controversial comebacks in the sport, Tyson eventually built a new, goofball public persona.

He played a violent-yet-sensitive version of himself in the Hangover trilogy of blockbuster comedies; as of last year, he has lent his voice to Mike Tyson Mysteries, a throwback cartoon series in which he bumbles his way through adventures alongside a sex-crazed pigeon (voiced by Norm MacDonald) and the ghost of the Marquess of Queensberry.

Trump seemed to be invoking the new, tough-but-silly Tyson in Indianapolis last week. Not far from the site where Tyson was convicted of rape, he reminded voters that the boxer had endorsed him.

"I love it, he sent out a tweet," Trump said. "Mike. Iron Mike. You know, all the tough guys endorse me. I like that, Okay?"

Trump did not mention the context of the rape case, after which he said the boxer had been "railroaded" and suggested that the accuser had been exploitative.

Why Mike Tyson has become an election issue for Trump

Mike Tyson was a great boxer. He was also a really nice kid at the time and many doubted the veracity of the charges. Donald Trump is a loyal person and a dedicated friend. Ted Cruz doesn't understand that because he really has no friends let alone black friends and if he did, he would throw them under the bus after he stabbed them in the back if he thought it would help him in some way. Donald Trump isn't like that.

Donald Trump will stand up and fight for you, whether you're Corey Lewandowski, Mike Tyson, or a citizen in trouble. He may not always be right about the facts, although I believe in both of these cases, Trump was right, but as a friend, he'll look into it, come up with his own conclusion and take a stand and endure the heat for doing so.

Most young women know by the time they're 18 that when you get a call at 1:36 am in the morning to come to someone's hotel room, they want to have sex and when they're making out with you in the limo on the way to the hotel room after being picked up, it's pretty clear this meeting was all about sex. But if there was a question, the time to run was between the limo and the hotel room. The limo driver was a woman, hotel's have people in the lobbies all over the place.

Tyson was set up.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/26/sp...sual-turn.html


Tyson Case Takes an Unusual Turn
Published: June 26, 1992

PROVIDENCE, R.I., June 25— The Rhode Island Supreme Court, in a highly unusual move, today ordered evidence forwarded to the Indiana judge who presided over the rape trial of the former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson that indicates the victim and her father may have committed perjury.

The information "might well have an effect upon the validity" of Tyson's conviction, this state's highest court said.

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard Law School professor now representing Tyson, said he would use today's action in a bid to get a new trial for Tyson and in a renewed effort to obtain bail for him during an appeal process.

"When the highest court in Rhode Island says Desiree Washington may have perjured herself, it has real impact on a new trial motion," said Dershowitz. A Signed Agreement

The information being forwarded is an agreement that Washington signed with a Rhode Island lawyer, Edward Gerstein, to pay him a percentage of whatever money she might recover in a potential civil suit against Tyson.

The agreement, the court says, was signed by the victim and witnessed by her parents before Tyson's criminal trial earlier this year, in which he was convicted of raping Washington in July of last year. Tyson is serving a six-year sentence.

Gerstein attended the initial stages of jury selection in the trial, which was held in Indianapolis last January and February. But he was precluded from further attendance by his client at the suggestion of the prosecutor.

Gerstein subsequently became concerned that testimony at the trial did not accurately reflect the agreement between himself and Washington. He contacted the Rhode Island Supreme Court's disciplinary counsel, Mary M. Lisi, and it was she who ultimately brought the matter to the attention of the court, leading to today's action.

Lisi said that the victim had testified during the trial that she did not have a contingency arrangement with Gerstein.

Lisi said she construed the victim's testimony as indicating that the victim "had no firm concept of her financial relationship" with Gerstein; that she did not know what a retainer meant, and that she did not know whether her parents had a fee arrangement with Gerstein.

Lisi said that the victim's father testified at the trial that Gerstein's function was to help in dealing with reporters. The father also testified, according to Lisi, that he did not understand what a contingent fee agreement was and that he had only agreed to pay Gerstein's expenses.

In addition, the father was questioned on the witness stand about the possibility of a civil suit against Tyson. The Rhode Island court, in its action today, said that the father, in his response, indicated that "the family had not yet considered that issue."

Because of the contradictions between the testimony given by Desiree Washington and her father in contrast with the existence of the written fee agreement, the court said that all of this material should be made available to Tyson's criminal trial judge, Patricia J. Gifford.

"It is not the function of this court to determine whether the victim in the rape trial testified falsely or whether defense counsel failed fully to explore the issue in examination of the victim," the court said. "It is also not our function to determine whether counsel or the prosecution knew or should have known of the contingent fee agreement."

But the court said the existence of such an agreement "should have been made known to the trial court and its existence might well have had a bearing upon the jury's determination."

Gerstein said that while the case was still being tried, he learned from news accounts that Washington, while on the witness stand, did not fully disclose the nature and extent of her contingent fee agreement with him.

He said he sought advice from Lisi to ascertain whether he was ethically bound to disclose to Tyson's trial judge the existence of such an agreement.

He told Lisi that he was not certain that his client had testified falsely and that he didn't know whether he was obligated to disclose the information under court rules, which usually require that a lawyer not disclose information relating to representation of a client without the client's consent.

However, Lisi told Gerstein that he had a duty to ask his client to correct any false testimony and that if the client refused to do so he had a duty to apprise Tyson's trial judge that such testimony might have been false.

By the time Gerstein got the trial transcript, he had been dismissed by Washington and she had hired a new lawyer to represent her in a civil suit, which was filed in Indianapolis earlier this week. He said from reading the transcript he still could not tell for sure whether his client had committed perjury.

Lisi suggested to Gerstein that she seek an opinion from an ethics advisory panel of the Rhode Island Supreme Court regarding whether he was obligated to disclose the information to the Indiana trial judge.

The court said Gerstein agreed to do so in April but then never followed up.

Lisi then decided after reading the testimony that Gerstein had an obligation to forward the information and petitioned the court, asking for instructions.

"We believe this obligation under the rules of professional conduct superseded his obligation of confidentiality toward his client," the court ruled in ordering that the evidence be forwarded to the Indiana court.
_______________________________

Both Desiree and her father lied on the stand about the financial and legal arrangements surrounding her story and the Tyson Trial. She sued of course and got a bunch of money, but needed a conviction, which she lied to attain.

More GOP mudslinging.

Forgive my honesty but Mike Tyson is a sleaze bag and pretty much always has been. His life has been full of violence, drugs, alcohol, and lawsuits. By time he was 13 he had been arrested 30 times. At age 11, as the member of a gang, he had a job cleaning out cash registers during armed gang robberies. He was paroled from reformatory school at age 14 and later kicked out of high school for violent and erratic behavior. The violent and erratic behavior has followed him his whole life. He's been married three times with his 2nd wife leaving him because of adultery. His first two wives also made claims that he had physically abused them. This is just a small window into what has been the sum total of Mike Tyson's life. If the rape charge was all there was on Tyson, I could believe it was mostly a fabricated set up. However, in view of how the man has lived his life up to this point ..... I'm not so sure.

Source of my information:

http://www.biography.com/people/mike...#personal-life

Throughout his childhood, Tyson lived in and around high-crime neighborhoods. According to an interview in Details, his first fight was with a bigger youth who had pulled the head off one of Tyson's pigeons.[22] Tyson was repeatedly caught committing petty crimes and fighting those who ridiculed his high-pitched voice and lisp. By the age of 13, he had been arrested 38 times.[23] He ended up at the Tryon School for Boys in Johnstown, New York. Tyson's emerging boxing ability was discovered there by Bobby Stewart, a juvenile detention center counselor and former boxer. Stewart considered Tyson to be an outstanding fighter and trained him for a few months before introducing him to Cus D'Amato.[18] Tyson dropped out of high school as a junior.[24] He would later be awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Central State University in 1989.[25]

Kevin Rooney also trained Tyson, and he was occasionally assisted by Teddy Atlas, although he was dismissed by D'Amato when Tyson was 15. Rooney eventually took over all training duties for the young fighter.[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Tyson

Trump has 15 point lead in Indiana in NBC poll out today:

http://www.alipac.us/f9/donald-trump...a-race-331927/

By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times - Sunday, May 1, 2016

Donald Trump dismissed attacks over his endorsement from boxing legend and convicted rapist Mike Tyson, saying the criticism only proves that his main rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Ted Cruz, is a “liar.”

“It just shows what a lier he is,” Mr. Trump said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Mr. Cruz and a super PAC supporting him have been assailing Mr. Trump for the endorsement last week from Mr. Tyson, as well as for Mr. Trump defending Mr. Tyson in 1991, saying the boxer was “railroaded” when he was convicted of rape in Indiana.

The attacks came ahead of a key primary Tuesday in the Hoosier State.

“I haven’t seen Mike in years,” said Mr. Trump, the GOP front-runner. “This guy is a real liar. That’s why we calling him Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”

In a separate interview on the same show, Mr. Cruz blasted Mr. Trump’s ties to Mr. Tyson, who served three years in prison for raping Miss Black America contestant Desiree Washington.

“Donald Trump said he thinks Mike Tyson is a ‘tough guy.’ Well, I don’t think rapists are tough guys. I think they are cowards and weaklings and bullies,” said Mr. Cruz.

He continued: “And you want a contrast of this entire race, it is Donald and Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist, versus me standing with Carly Fiorina and [Indiana Gov.] Mike Pence and I think [for] the good people of the Hoosier State, that’s a choice Midwestern good sense and common judgment is going to yield I hope the right decision.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...tacks-over-mi/

I saw the interview and thought Trump handled the issue really well. Mike Tyson is a hero to a lot of people, and when Mike endorses Trump or tweeted apparently that he was voting for Trump, that means a lot to people who admire Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson is Mike Tyson and nothing is going to change that, and in certain groups that endorsement from the heart because Trump was good to Mike Tyson means far more than a half-hearted endorsement from Mike Pence because the Koch Brothers or Club for Growth donations.

Everything Ted Cruz is doing to try to over-turn or block the will of the people of our country just blows up in his face. Just like Wiley Coyote.

Bring it home for Trump, if you can, Indiana! You can put him over the top and on his way to the White House to help US fix our country.

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