Moses retaliated using scandals from opponents’ fathers’ pasts

Evidence

There were men whose past contained not even a speck of grist for Moses’ mill. This, however, was no guarantee against attack. Perhaps their fathers had committed an impropriety. If so, Moses would visit the sins of the fathers on the children. A respected financier, rising in a City Planning Commission hearing to oppose a zoning change sponsored by Moses, was astounded to hear Moses reply by reading into the hearing transcript newspaper accounts of a scandal, unconnected in any way with zoning, in which the financier’s father had been involved—forty years before, when the financier was eight years old. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 77

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Robert Moses weaponized personal dossiers to coerce city officials — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 76