Michael Franzese is a fascinating man….
We’ve covered him here before, but in case you don’t know him or his story, he is one of the few people to ever successfully get out of the mob and now he’s using that history for the “good guys”. That’s basically my summary, but here’s a more detailed bio:
Michael Franzese’s journey from a high-ranking member of the Colombo crime family to a respected public figure and motivational speaker is a story of rare transformation and redemption. Born into the mob life as the son of notorious underboss John “Sonny” Franzese, Michael quickly rose through the ranks, becoming one of the youngest and most financially successful figures in organized crime. At the height of his career, he was known for pioneering lucrative schemes, including a multimillion-dollar gas tax scam that brought him substantial wealth and influence.
However, the turning point in Franzese’s life came in the 1980s when he met and fell in love with Camille Garcia, a dancer who inspired him to reconsider his path. Coupled with the realization of the toll his lifestyle was taking on himself and those he loved, Franzese made the extraordinary decision to leave the mob—a step virtually unheard of in the mafia, where leaving usually means death. His departure was facilitated by a combination of strategic moves, prison time, and leveraging his father’s influence to negotiate his exit without fatal repercussions. His faith played a significant role, guiding him through the perilous process of extricating himself from the mob’s reach.
Franzese’s post-mob life has been marked by impressive achievements. After serving time in federal prison, he committed to turning his life around and became a devout Christian. This newfound faith became the cornerstone of his personal transformation and public message. Today, he is an accomplished author, having penned several books, including Blood Covenant, The Good, the Bad, and the Forgiven, and I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse: Insider Business Tips from a Former Mob Boss. These works combine riveting personal stories with lessons on leadership, ethics, and resilience.
Franzese’s success extends to his role as a motivational speaker and mentor. He has spoken at major events, corporate conferences, and universities, where his firsthand account of the dangers of the mob life and the power of redemption resonates deeply. His message emphasizes personal responsibility, integrity, and the ability to overcome one’s past. He has also been featured in documentaries, including Fear City: New York vs The Mafia on Netflix, showcasing his insight into organized crime and its impact on society.
Beyond speaking engagements and books, Franzese has established himself as a successful entrepreneur, launching several legitimate business ventures and consulting on media projects related to organized crime. His positive influence has been recognized with awards for community service and outreach, particularly for his work with at-risk youth and individuals seeking a second chance.
Today, Michael Franzese’s story is a testament to the possibility of change, no matter how deep one’s past may be. He continues to inspire thousands with his journey from a life of crime to one of faith, integrity, and hope, proving that even in the most unlikely circumstances, redemption is attainable.
So the guy is absolutely fascinating, and he knows how the criminal mind works.
Which is why I follow him and why I want to show you this video he just posted.
Some of you may know PARTS of this but I bet you don’t know all of it.
On some level, we know the “Deep State” is well connected, but I bet you don’t know just how “deeply” (pun intended) they are connected.
We’re talking serious intermarriage and connected that go back centuries!
Starting just with San Francisco, here are four deeply interconnected power families: Brown, Pelosi, Newsom and Getty:
Think it’s just random who rises to power?
Hardly!
It’s all meticulously planned for decades.
While you and I think in terms of days and weeks, these people think in terms of 50 and 100 year blocks of time.
Now we go to Michael Franzese who did an incredible job of pulling it all together in this video below.
The connections just keep going, deeper and deeper and deeper….
I think this is really going to blow your mind, please enjoy:
ALL THESE PEOPLE IN THE POSITION OF POWER ARE CONNECTED. THE MAFIA IS ALIVE AND WELL. #government #DemocraticParty #DemocratsHateAmerica pic.twitter.com/p9F0tMargs
— Michael Franzese (@MichaelFranzese) November 3, 2024
Newsweek has more details on the deep generational connections between the Getty, Pelosi and Newsom families:
There are few true American dynasties. The Rockefellers, Mellons, Astors and DuPonts come to mind. The Gettys, too, are on that list. Founded by oil baron J. Paul Getty who moved under the radar until his “outing” as the richest American by Fortune magazine in 1957, the subsequent four generations of his family have been in the spotlight navigating fields from environmentalism to fashion to business, music, digital archives, arts, LGBTQ rights and politics. With five wives, the patriarch of the dynasty, J. Paul Getty, fathered four sons who lived to adulthood, and the family tree has flowered to some 19 grandchildren, 40 great-grandchildren and 15 great-great-grandchildren.
Family scandals and internal squabbles such as Getty’s son Gordon’s (unsuccessful) seven-year court challenge over the family trust in the 1960s and the kidnapping of his eldest grandson in 1973, as well as subsequent battles with drug addiction, depression, adultery and internal squabbles over the sale of Getty Oil have been tabloid fodder for years and led to talk of “The Getty Curse.” In the wake of the sale of the company in 1985 to Texaco for $10.1 billion—at that time the biggest corporate acquisition in history—$3 billion was partitioned into four separate trusts. Currently, the family’s combined net worth could be in the neighborhood of $20 billion, which will finally be divided among all the heirs upon the death of J. Paul Getty’s last living son—Gordon, currently 88.
As the family has navigated personal and professional successes and failures, it has also become inextricably enmeshed into the California political fabric, with longtime close family friendships developing between the Gettys and current Governor Gavin Newsom, Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as well as their families. William A. Newsom II, Gavin’s grandfather, was a surrogate father to Getty sons John Paul Jr. and Gordon. William “Bill” Newsom III, Gavin’s father, was even the bearer of the ransom money when John Paul III was kidnapped. Newsoms, Harrises, Pelosis and Gettys are godparents to one another’s children and make appearances at important family events. This adapted excerpt from James Reginato’s Growing Up Getty (Gallery Books) offers a window into how it all began.
During their youths in the 1930s and 1940s, Paul Jr. and Gordon Getty could enjoy the camaraderie that came with being the only pair of full siblings born to J. Paul Getty, the richest American of his time. The oil mogul’s three other sons had each been born to a different wife (of which there were five), and the half-brothers rarely saw each other.
Following her 1936 divorce from Getty, Paul Jr. and Gordon’s mother settled her boys into a rambling house on Clay Street in San Francisco. Gregarious and artistically inclined, she was often absent. Their father, a workaholic who lived primarily in Europe, was virtually never present.
Left to their own devices, Paul Jr. and Gordon spent a good deal of time at the nearby home of their St. Ignatius prep school classmate, William “Bill” Newsom III, and his five siblings. This lively Irish-Catholic household was presided over by William A. Newsom II, a real estate developer and campaign manager for Edmund G. Brown, governor of California from 1959 to 1967 (whose son Jerry subsequently reclaimed the office in 1974 for the first of his four terms).
In the genial Newsom père, the Getty boys found a surrogate dad. Their great affection for him endured. When Paul Jr. died at his mansion in England in 2003, a framed photograph of Newsom II was near his bed. This intimate family friendship between the Gettys and the Newsoms spanned generations, including Gordon’s four sons—Peter, Andrew, John and Billy—and Bill’s son—Gavin, California’s 40th governor.
Gordon had read of Leakey’s work in newspapers and was eager to learn more. So, too, were Ron and Barbara Pelosi—nee Newsom, she was one of Bill’s sisters—as well as Ron’s brother, Paul Pelosi, and his wife, Nancy.
Since moving with her husband to the Pelosis’ hometown of San Francisco in 1969, Baltimore-born Nancy had her hands full taking care of their four children; their fifth child was born in 1970. Though she’d grown up in a political household, the idea of herself taking office was still nearly two decades off.
At the time, Ron and Barbara had the highest political profiles of any in the gang. Ron served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and Barbara had grown up steeped in the city’s Irish-Democratic politics.
Their first large event, a two-day symposium held at the Palace of Fine Arts in 1973, was a triumph: Australian anthropologist Raymond Dart recounted his seminal discovery of Australopithecus africanus at a cave in Taung, South Africa; Mary Leakey brought the latest news of the digs at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania; Dian Fossey discussed her study of the mountain gorillas of Rwanda; and Jane Goodall talked of her work with wild chimpanzees at Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania.
Over the next decades, Gordon served as chairman, and made substantial financial contributions to the organization. In 2013, the Leakey Foundation celebrated Gordon’s 40 years of service with a four-day celebration, with toasts from attendees including Life Trustee Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul. According to a citation from Don Dana, the foundation’s president, “No person has contributed more to the science of human origins than Gordon Getty.”
In the years after these families met and became intertwined, as they rose to the peaks of wealth and power, there have been inevitable accusations of cronyism. But they bonded over old bones. They were all fascinated by the science—though doubtless learning about the survival of the fittest surely came in handy as they tangled with the modern hunter-gatherers of Pacific Heights, Capitol Hill and beyond. (Barbara and Ron divorced in 1977, after which she reverted to her maiden name of Newsom and served as the U.S. representative to the United Nations. She remained a staunch supporter of her former sister-in-law and her nephew Gavin.)
That 10 minute clip above is from a longer video Franzese posted to YouTube.
I’ve got that for you here if you’d like to see the whole thing — plus I will post a transcript if that’s easier for you:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
[Michael Franzese]
Because they’re underhanded, they’ll stop at nothing. They don’t care about violating the law. They installed all of their people in the right place. We used to do that too, in the mob, put our people in the right place in the union so that we could control them, get our people close to government officials so we could control them. This is exactly a mafia democracy. This is what I’m talking about.
[Michael Franzese]
Welcome everyone to another sit-down with Michael Franzese. Hope everybody is doing well. All is very good here, very blessed on this end. As always, my friends, I give all the praise, honor, glory, and thanksgiving to my God for that, and I always will. That’s just the way it is because He deserves it all.
[Michael Franzese]
Interesting topic today. I know you want to hear mob stories, Mafia stories, and I’m going to give you a good one today, one that’s current. I’ve told people in the past that I’m not going to go back and make up stories. I’ve given you many, many—probably out of the 500 videos that I have up, 400 were mob-related stories, my own experiences, and then I talked about others in that life. We get it. I know you like to hear it, and I get it. That’s how we built this platform to a large degree, but we have kind of drifted into other things. I did reviews of movies and so on and so forth, and we’ve had a good time. We’ve built the channel, and I thank all of you for being my followers. I really mean that.
[Michael Franzese]
Today, I’m going to give you a real Mafia story, and I want you to pay attention—it’s an important one. The first thing I want you to do is go on Google and get the definition of “Mafia.” I’m going to read it to you, and then you can follow up on your own. It’ll probably be posted here because my editors do a great job. Let me read.
[Michael Franzese]
According to Google, the definition of “Mafia” is actually threefold. The first one: an organized international body of criminals operating originally in Sicily and now especially in Italy and the US, having a complex and ruthless behavioral code. That’s the tried and true definition that we all believe to be the truth—the real one. The Mafia originated in Italy, in Sicily. We know the story; I don’t need to go into all of that now. Is it an accurate description? Yes, it is. They operate in Sicily, they operate throughout Italy, they operate here in the United States, and in other countries too—Australia and others. I think it’s a good definition.
[Michael Franzese]
But they go on to give another definition: any organized group using extortion and other criminal methods. So, you don’t have to be Italian, you don’t have to be part of the Italian mob to be named “Mafia.” You can be another criminal group that uses extortion to earn money and conduct its business. That’s another definition that Google provides.
[Michael Franzese]
Now, I want you to pay attention to this one: a closed group of people in a particular field having a controlling influence.Let me read that again: a closed group of people in a particular field having a controlling influence. Now, when you read that, what does that remind you of? Right away, think about it. I’m telling you, right away it reminds me of the government. I wrote a book about it. According to Google, the government can be a mafia. Now, I didn’t look up that definition when I wrote this book, and I’m not here to plug the book—it’s there all the time. I want you to see it, and obviously, if you want to read about it, go and buy it, of course, because the information in there is accurate, right down the middle.
[Michael Franzese]
We’re talking about the government. We’re not talking about Democrat or Republican; we’re talking about the operation of the government here in the United States. I want to read a couple of things so you understand where I’m coming from. There is no bigger Mafia that exists in the United States than the government. That’s it, plain and simple. It’s accurate, true, and real. It’s right in line with the definition that Google gives us of what a “Mafia” is.
[Michael Franzese]
I’ll read it one more time so you get it, and think about it: a closed group of people in a particular field having a controlling influence. Well, they have a lot of control and influence, don’t they? Over all of our lives—not only in this country but in other countries, in the entire world. That’s a mafia, according to Google.
[Michael Franzese]
Now, let’s get deeper. We all know what the Mafia on the street was; we understand what the government labeled us to be. In many cases, it was accurate. Sometimes, it’s not. They get a little broad in their definitions and embellish things with us, but you know, I was part of it for 20 years. I was a recruit, a soldier, a capo regime—a street boss by definition. I did control a number of men, so that’s it. Other people may say “boss,” but not me. I was a capo regime, and that’s the deal.
[Michael Franzese]
The government sometimes embellishes what the Mafia really did and what it was all about, but you’ve seen the movies, the TV series, the newspapers, the headlines. You get it. Over the past 25 years, I’ve had the chance to meet with thousands of people, speak to millions, both in person and online. And you know, when I open it up for a Q&A, you’d think people would ask mob questions. I get a couple of those, but really, it’s personal questions like: “Michael, how did you overcome the challenges you faced? How did you do all that time in solitary? How did your wife and kids cope when you got back home?”
[Michael Franzese]
These are questions I’ve answered and mentored people on over the years. It’s become more intense in the past 2 or 3 years. People want to be part of a community, part of a family. They look back and ask, “Michael, how was it when you had this family of like-minded people around you?” Truthfully, that’s what I miss about my former life—the camaraderie. It was powerful. So, I’m motivated to create this community, this family, where people can share experiences, get advice, and mentorship from others who have been there and overcome challenges.
[Michael Franzese]
We’re going to have Zoom calls, programs, and meetings where we all get together, enjoy some Franzese wine, share slices of pizza, and be a benefit to one another. Community and family—there’s nothing like it. If this interests you, if you want to be a part of me and the team I’ve created, you’re going to benefit. This is not just for the elite; it’s for everyone.
[Michael Franzese]
Now, let’s talk about power, control, and wealth—that’s what the Mafia is all about. And if that doesn’t describe our government, then let me explain further. Let’s focus on the Democratic Party, and this isn’t about Trump. Imagine Trump doesn’t exist. Let’s just talk about the Democratic Party and facts. If you disagree, show me, dispute me, write a comment, but listen carefully.
[Michael Franzese]
Before you vote this November 5th, here are some facts: The governor of Michigan used to work for George Soros. California governor Gavin Newsom is Nancy Pelosi’s nephew. Adam Schiff’s sister is married to George Soros’s son. John Kerry’s daughter is married to an Iranian. ABC News executive Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser. The connections go deep.
[Michael Franzese]
CBS President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser. ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman is married to Jay Carney, former Obama press secretary. This is a stacked deck, people. If you wondered why the media seems biased, this might explain it.
[Michael Franzese]
The Clinton Foundation was audited by DLA Piper, where James Comey’s brother, Peter Comey, was an executive. This is Mafia-level stuff. This is why Hillary Clinton wasn’t indicted. This is why Trump’s allegations about election fraud are serious. Look at Dominion Voting Systems and its ties to Democrats.
[Michael Franzese]
And that’s just scratching the surface. The control, the connections, the influence—it’s all there. This is the real Mafia, not the one from the movies. This is a mafia that controls media, government agencies, and law enforcement. Think about it. This election matters.
[Michael Franzese]
Remember, trust is everything. If you can’t trust these people, how can you trust them to lead this country? That’s it for today. Be safe, be healthy, and God bless America.
And before I go, Patrick Bet-David has also become good friends with Michael Franzese and had him on his show many times over at Valuetainment.
This particular one is probably the best and has been viewed over 15 million times:
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