CSI: American Carnage (Saturday, January19, 2019)
It is late. There are no cars on K Street. The reporter turns up the collar of his trench coat to ward off the icy wind. His leather shoe heels clack as he turns down the ramp at the entrance of a silent parking garage. They echo and reecho off the concrete walls and pillars. As he proceeds down to level B and then level C, the night closes in and his pace slows. Finally, at D, he stops. The light is dim. It is as quiet as an old meat locker on the Delaware River. A voice comes out of the shadows: You’re late. The reporter is startled, even though he demanded this rendezvous. He says, Had to walk. Look, what’s going on? Mueller’s guys say the story’s not accurate. You assured us it was. The man chuckles: Heh heh heh. He lights a cigarette. The smoke twirls up in the dim, blue light. The reporter says, There’s nothing funny about it. I got the president on my case. The man takes a deep drag. Heh heh heh. The reporter says, I am not the enemy of the people! Why did you lie to us? You confirmed the texts, the emails, the documents, the whole kit and kaboodle, everything we got from the others. The man says, I didn’t lie to you. I told you this is what Trump does. He digs into the cracks and then bloats himself until the whole building splits apart and crashes to the ground. You oversold the story. Fatal error. The reporter becomes angry. Oversold it? Oversold it? We wrote what you confirmed for us. The man inhales and blows out a gust of smoke. The reporter says, Hey, you’re not supposed to smoke in here. The man chuckles. Heh heh heh. He says, You framed it too aggressively and you gave the special counsel a way to sidestep all of it by casting doubt on a small portion. The reporter says, How? How did we fuck up the context? We gave it context. We wrote it, we wrote, so that people could understand it. The man says, It wasn’t the first known time Trump has directed an underling to lie about Russia. That’s absurd on its face. The fucking Times reported the pardons floated for Flynn and Manafort a year ago at the same time Mueller was asking Trump about Flynn. We are talking serial lies here. Lie after lie after lie. So, no, this wasn’t the first time. We are talking an entire ecosystem of prevarication. So no, you are wrong. And that gave Mueller enough of an angle to take down the story with a single shot. Boom! The reporter jumps. The man says, Don’t let the guys from SDNY do your thinking for you, such as it is. The reporter says, Now wait a minute. Listen here. There’s no need for that. We think. We think hard. But the man is gone.
— Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019