A newly uncovered video has contradicted Donald Trump’s adamant claim that he never knew a high-stakes gambler who was banned from New Jersey casinos for alleged ties to organised crime.

The reputed mob figure, Robert LiButti, can be seen standing alongside Trump in the front row of a 1988 “WrestleMania” match in Atlantic City, N.J.

LiButti wasn’t there by accident, according to his daughter, Edith Creamer, who also attended the event. “We were his guests,” she told Yahoo News in a text message this week.

“It p***es me off that he denies knowing my father,” Ms Creamer said.

View photos Footage has emerged of Donald Trump standing ringside with the known mobster back in 1988. More

“The ‘WrestleMania’ event is just one of many times that Trump was close to Bob, who was the biggest loser at Trump casinos and therefore Trump’s most important customer,” former New York Times journalist David Cay Johnston said.

However that’s not how the real estate mogul recalled the event, downplaying his relationship with the Jersey mobster.

“If he was standing here in front of me, I wouldn’t know what he looked like,” Trump told the Philadelphia Inquirer when he was first questioned by Mr Johnston about LiButti in 1991.

The video was given to Yahoo News by a confidential source who discovered it in the online archives of World Wrestling Entertainment, the sponsor of “WrestleMania.”

The video appears to lend new support to assertions Trump once had close relations with LiButti, who was banned from the state’s casinos in 1991 because of his ties to Mafia boss John Gotti, then the chief of the Gambino crime syndicate.

View photos Trump has repeatedly denied knowing who LiButti even was, but could now face serious fines for his alleged ties to the New Jersey man. More

Separately, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that same year levied $650,000 in fines against the Trump Plaza hotel over its dealings with LiButti, who gambled huge sums at the hotel’s casino. LiButti died in 2014.

“That’s definitely Bob LiButti standing right next to Donald Trump,” said Mr Johnston.

“It’s at an event that Bob described to me a quarter century ago when I spent an afternoon in his Saddle River home,” Johnston added.

In the video, LiButti can be seen alongside Trump as the real estate mogul greets the ring announcer, sportscaster Bob Uecker, and later as Trump kisses special guest Vanna White. LiButti can also be seen sitting throughout the 3 1/2-hour event in a front-row seat next to

Trump and his then wife, Ivana.

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