CSI: American Carnage (Tuesday, October 15, 2019)
NEW YORK – The Times guy makes his way into the Carlyle, sees the Post guy at a table, and joins him. It is between sets and a low murmur fills the nearly full room. The Times guy says, Woody just keeps on. It’s really amazing. Sorry I missed the set. The Post guy says, there’s always the next one. In Woody’s world, there’s always the next one. The Times guy orders a BrewDog and says, Nice job on Fiona. The Post guy shrugs. He says, Donald is backing himself into a very tight corner, very fast. It seems that’s his preferred deal-making strategy. Bolton’s pissed, it’s safe to say. Can you believe it? Bolton? As Nixon would say – my god! The Times guy says, Bolton’s a manipulator of the system, not a complete nihilist like Donald. The Post guy says, Like Fiona says, Bolton didn’t want be part of any blown drug deal going down in Kiev or Kharkiv. Preservation. The Times guy says, Rudy’s even picked up millions from Pavel Fuks, Donald’s old partner from the Trump Tower Moscow days. It’s kind of breathtaking when you start poking and pulling. Donald’s syndicate reaches all over the place, it goes back years. Donald never met a wiseguy or a Don he forgets and can’t do a deal with. And now Rudy’s right there with him, shucking and jiving and taking the payments. He’s setting up the drops, carrying the cash, making side deals all over. This is the way Donald has always operated. I’m a little surprised Donald’s old pal, Semion, hasn’t surfaced yet. You know, he’s from Ukraine. Yeah, says the Post guy, Mogilevich would be a fruitful line of inquiry. Man oh man, Rudy’s got himself under investigation by the feds for his efforts. Taxes. Finances. Campaign deals. Deals in multiple cities. The Times guy says, Yeah, Rudy was running around with Frick and Frack, the guys now in jail, Lev & Igor, for years! What a crew, Donald’s guys. Frick and Frack – busted and in jail down in DC. The Post guy says, Rudy says he doesn’t know anything about any shadow foreign policy, never heard of such a thing. He was reporting back to the State Department and the president. The Times guy says, And if the president knows about it not only is it legal, you can’t find out anything because of attorney-client privilege, executive privilege, national security, sensitive foreign policy negotiations. Everything off limits. And Manafort is up to his eyeballs, pulling strings from jail, and the oligarch, what’s his name? The guy whose fighting extradition to the US to avoid prosecution? The Post guy says, Yeah, charged with racketeering and bribery, the usual. That would be Firtash. Yeah! says the Times guy, Dmitro. He’s been pushing the bogus affadavits on the Bidens. You think they’re forged? The Post guy says, Nah. Why forge them? You got Shokin there to write them all day long. The Times guy says, Shokin, you mean the disgraced and fired Ukrainian prosecutor? The Post guy says, None other. And you have the fevered imagination of Manafort shooting out sparks and fire from jail. Anything to get out of jail. So the way it lies now, Donald is relying on Rudy who’s been relying on Manafort and is assisted by Frick and Frack and backrolled by Firtash and Fuks. That’s quite a cast of characters. The only people who aren’t in jail or under indictment are the civil servants testifying before Congress. Who’s the Don of Don’s? Who runs the syndicate? The Post guy laughs and says, As if you didn’t know. Hey, let’s chill. Here comes Woody. – Tuesday, October 15, 2019