In an MSNBC interview broadcast Saturday, Donald Trump’s biographer, Craig Unger, detailed the alleged links between the president and the Russian mafia, Raw Story reports.

The author of House of Trump, House of Putin detailed on MSNBC’s AM Joy how the Russian mob functions. According to the author, unlike the Italian mob and other similar criminal organizations, the Russian mafia is tied to the state. Russian mobsters, according to Unger, report to Vladimir Putin.

President Donald Trump — who is being accused of coordinating with official Moscow to sway the 2016 election in his favor — is connected to the Russian mafia, according to Unger, and the relationship between Trump and Russian mafia has been going “on and off” for nearly four decades.

“I found 13 people who have had been in Trump Tower, associated with the Russian mafia,” he said, adding that the president’s Manhattan building served as a “base of operations” for the Russian mob for the past 35 years. Furthermore, according to the writer, the Russian mafia helped Donald Trump on numerous occasions, notably when the now-president’s Atlantic City casino business wend under.

“Russian money played a huge, huge role” in Donald Trump’s financial recovery post-Atlantic City, according to Unger.

Currently investigating alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia is Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose office made the news on Friday following recommendations that former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort serve up to 24 years in prison.

69-year-old "unrepentant crook" Paul Manafort looking at decades in prison https://t.co/WirBlR3nnn — The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 16, 2019

As reported by the Guardian, in a court filing made public on Friday, Mueller’s team said that Manafort should serve a prison term of up to 24 years for “serious, longstanding, and bold” financial crimes.

In August 2018, Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of tax fraud, one count of bank fraud, and one count of foreign financial accounts. The jury found the longtime Republican operative guilty of hiding more than $16 million in income from United States authorities. Manafort also had millions of dollars parked in foreign banks.

Like all Trump campaign officials indicted in Mueller’s probe thus far, Manafort was found guilty for crimes unrelated to the alleged collusion. But the former Trump campaign chairman is also being accused by the Special Counsel’s office of collaborating with an alleged Russian intelligence operative, Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to help Donald Trump win the election.

According to President Trump’s biographer Craig Unger, Paul Manafort is “playing for a pardon,” and he is afraid for his life.

“The Russian mafia is serious. People have been dying over this, there have been a lot of unexplained deaths. It wouldn’t surprise me if Manafort was afraid of that,” the author concluded for MSNBC.