As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster…Donald Trump has been complaining about rats and flippers. “I know all about flipping. For 30, 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. Everything’s wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they — they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go … [It] almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair.” That could easily be a line from a classic mafia movie. And someday it might be. But for now, it’s America’s top official lamenting about the way federal crimes are often prosecuted. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on Donald Trump’s Mafia Mind-Set. “What we see … is an implicit endorsement by the president of the United States of omertà, the Mafia code of silence.” Sadly for Trump, the feds have been quite effective at making his cronies an offer they can’t refuse.

+ You learned the two greatest things in life… never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut… From NY Mag: “It is obviously quite rare to hear a high-ranking elected official openly embrace the terminology and moral logic of La Cosa Nostra. But Trump is not just a guy who has seen a lot of mob movies.”

+ You go in alive, you come out dead and it’s your best friend that does it… Gabe Sherman in Vanity Fair: “Now Trump’s most powerful media ally next to Fox News has broken with him. According to two sources briefed on the Cohen investigation, prosecutors granted immunity to David Pecker, chairman of The National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc.” (We always knew Trump’s Pecker would come back to haunt him.)

+ Say hello to my little friend… Jeff Sessions fires back after Trump insults him by saying “what kind of a man is this?'” Sessions: “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

+ Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family… From CNBC: Michael Cohen paid a mysterious tech company $50,000 ‘in connection with’ Trump’s campaign. And equally troubling for the Trumps, Cohen is now talking to the NY Attorney General’s office about a damning case against the Trump Family Foundation, and maybe Trump, Inc too.

+ The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room… From Trump: “If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”

+ Editor’s note: We’re all sick of Trump news, but just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in. You’ve got the best prosecutors in America going after an unashamed liar who surrounded himself with low rent thugs. We’ve just dipped a toe in what will be a bottomless pit of charges, indictments, and humiliations. Trust me, if you think this is even close to over, fuhgeddaboudit.

+ NextDraft will be off tomorrow. But don’t worry, I doubt there will be any breaking news…