Top Trump Organization official Matthew Calamari attended NYIT

Teri West
Matthew Calamari, a top official at The Trump Organization, attended NYIT. (Picryl)

In testimony to the House Oversight Committee last week, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, named an Old Westbury NYIT grad as someone who would have known that President Donald Trump inflated his assets before presenting them to insurers.

Matthew Calamari, the chief operating officer of The Trump Organization, graduated from NYIT in 1979, according to the university.

The mention of his name came during questioning from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Queens), who asked Cohen whether Trump ever gave inflated assets to an insurance company.

After Cohen responded that Trump had done so, Ocasio-Cortez asked him to name other people who share that knowledge.

All three individuals Cohen named are Trump Organization officials, the last of which was Calamari.

Calamari has worked for Trump for more than 35 years, according to BuzzFeed News, starting out as his personal bodyguard.

Before that, however, Calamari was on NYIT’s football team, a university spokeswoman said.

He donated at least $5,000 to the school during the 2008-09 academic year, earning him recognition as a leadership member of the “President’s Society” in the university’s President’s Report.

He lives in Glen Head, according to digital publication Insider.

Trump first hired Calamari after seeing him tackle hecklers while working as security at the 1981 US Open, according to a 2015 Bloomberg article on Trump’s empire.

Bloomberg cited Calamari’s loyalty to Trump and eagerness to stick with the candidate on the campaign trail.

“I just enjoy it,” Calamari said. “It’s not the money. I enjoy working for the man.”

Calamari’s son, Matthew Calamari Jr., also works for The Trump Organization, where he started as a security officer and is now the company’s corporate director of security, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He attended Chaminade High School in Mineola from 2007 to 2011, according to the school.

Many following Cohen’s congressional testimony took to Twitter after he named Calamari, often amused by his last name. Calamari is the Italian name for squid.

“Matthew Calamari sounds like the child CEO of Olive Garden,” tweeted television writer Vanessa Ramos.

“Don’t mind me, I’ll just be exclaiming ‘Matthew Calamari’ randomly in my head on loop for the next week,” MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeted.

Share this Article