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Little Caesar
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| So, this story is about a
small-time organized crime figure who uses extortion, bribery,
tax evasion, fraud, and threats of violence to execute his
endless get-rich schemes. |
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| By
Debby Long |
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 “That's like bringing a guy up from the
minors to pitch the World Series.” Mario Puzo, The Godfather
There are so many threads to the epic story of Donald Trump’s
seven-year reign of terror in America that screen writers would
be tempted to include an alien invasion of Schrodinger’s cats
somewhere in the script just to make the story hang together.
But in light of last week’s FBI search of Mar-a- Lago, a 1931
movie classic entitled “Little Caesar” comes to mind:
Edward G Robinson plays the small-time gangster, Caesar Enrico
"Rico" Bandello, who moves up into the top ranks of organized
crime but finally gets gunned down by the Feds. As he is lying
in an alley dying, Rico asks this rhetorical question: “Mother
of mercy, is this the end of Rico?”
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) of
1970 is thought to be named for this movie and this character.
In 1985 the RICO ACT was successfully used by US Attorney
Rudolph Giuliani of the Southern District of New York, to indict
and prosecute 11 organized crime figures. This included the
heads of New York City’s “Five Families” on charges including
extortion, labor racketeering, and murder.
The original transcripts of this prosecution are filed under the
rubric “Criminology for Dummies” and are believed to be located
somewhere in the Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room
in the Trump Library at Mar-a-Lago. Downstairs, it’s black tie,
but upstairs in the Rare Books section of the library, it’s
white gloves only. Russian operatives and sexy foreign spies are
monitored by an Eye in the Sky that Trump lifted prior to the
second bankruptcy proceeding of the Taj Mahal. Also, in this
reference room can be found the box containing files concerning
the recent prosecution of the Trump/Giuliani operative in
Ukraine, Lev Parnas, and his LLC named “Fraud Guaranteed”. (Note
to reader: The name of this LLC has since been permanently
retired by the Internal Revenue Service.) Additionally, the
original Articles of Incorporation for: Trump Steaks, Trump
University, and the mission statement for the charity known as
The Donald J. Trump Foundation can be found in the vestibule
known colloquially as the “Fool Me Once” room. The vestibule is
cleverly decorated with numerous stolen and fraudulent
memorabilia seized from Hobby Lobby’s cache of rare biblical
artifacts.
So, this story is about a small-time organized crime figure who
uses extortion, bribery, tax evasion, fraud, and threats of
violence to execute his endless get-rich schemes. And this story
is also about a Russian dictator named Vladimir Putin, a former
spy himself, who uses the acronym MICE (Money, Ideology,
Coercion, Ego) to identify potential agents to support his
ceaseless efforts to rule the world.
When Donald Trump brought his art of the deal to Moscow in
November of 2013 with his Miss Universe pageant, one of the VIP
guests was Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, a Russian mobster indicted in
the US seven months earlier for running an illegal gambling ring
out of an apartment in Trump Tower in New York City. According
to David Corn of Mother Jones, “After the event [the beauty
contest], Trump boasted to the New York Post, “Almost all of the
oligarchs were in the room.” Corn goes on to write:
“The indictment filed by Preet Bharara, the US attorney in
Manhattan, which triggered the 2013 raid, identified
Tokhtakhounov as a “vory v zakone”—or a vor—a Russian term for a
select group of the highest-level Russian crime bosses. A vor
receives tributes from other criminals, offers protection, and
adjudicates conflicts among other crooks. The indictment charged
that Tokhtakhounov used his “substantial influence in the
criminal underworld” to protect a high-stakes illegal gambling
ring operating out of Trump Tower. He sometimes deployed
“explicit threats of violence and economic harm” to handle
disputes arising from this gambling operation. The indictment
noted that in one two-month period Tokhtakhounov was paid $10
million by this outfit for his services. The indictment also
alleged that he and others ran “an international gambling
business that catered to oligarchs residing in the former Soviet
Union and throughout the world”, used “threats of violence to
obtain unpaid gambling debts”, and “employed a sophisticated
money laundering scheme to move tens of millions of dollars…from
the former Soviet Union through shell companies in Cyprus into
various investments and other shell companies in the United
States.” According to the US attorney, their enterprise “booked
sports bets that reached into the millions of dollars” and
laundered approximately $100 million.
In 2013, The Donald had found his Don.
In this version of reality, Americans have been the popcorn
munching audience of America’s most extraordinary “Goat Rodeo”
in its 246-year-old history. It was conceived and directed by
Donald Trump and produced by Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump has been done in literature before. He is Jerzy
Kosinski’s main character, Chance the Gardener, in his 1970
novel, Being There. It is a novel about a simple-minded gardener
whose life consists of managing the grounds of a wealthy man’s
estate and watching TV in his room. His only knowledge of the
outside world comes from the world depicted on television. After
the old man dies, Chance, dressed in the man’s elegant suits,
leaves the estate and is discovered by the wife of a powerful
financier who mistakes the name he gives her, Chance the
gardener, for Chauncy Gardiner. Due to his sartorial elegance,
the woman assumes that Chauncy is brilliant, wealthy, and
powerful. Chance’s simple speech is interpreted as
metaphorically profound and insightful, and he ultimately
becomes a celebrity who is embraced by powerful leaders,
including the US President and the Soviet Ambassador Vladimir
Skrapinov, both of whom assume that Chauncy Gardiner is a
high-level international power broker.
Which somehow brings us to the leaked document known as The
Kremlin Papers. This document refers to a transcript of the
meeting of Russian Intelligence heads that was presided over by
Vladimir Putin and held in Moscow on January 22, 2016. It
details how and why Donald Trump would be “the most promising
candidate” to provide support to during the 2016 campaign for
the US Presidency. In it, Donald Trump is described as an
“impulsive, mentally unstable, and unbalanced individual who
suffers from an inferiority complex”. And further, that a Trump
win “will definitely lead to the destabilization of the US’s
sociopolitical system”. And the document lays out several
American weaknesses, including a “deepening political gulf
between left and right”, the US’s “media-information” space, and
a growing anti-establishment mood under President Barack Obama”.
While this leaked document reported in The Guardian and known
as: - “No 32-04 \ vd” - hasn’t been formally validated, there is
another document that does, indeed, support Russia’s
exploitation of its “witting or unwitting” agent, Donald Trump:
“Senate Report by the Select Committee on Intelligence,
Concerning Russian Active Measures Campaigns And Interference In
The 2016 U.S. Election. (Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats
and Vulnerabilities)
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/.../report_volume5.pdf
The introductory “Findings” section of the Select Committee
Report states this:
“The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an
aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to
influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Parts
of this effort are outlined in the Committee's earlier volumes
on election security, social media, the Obama Administration's
response to the threat, and the January 2017 Intelligence
Community Assessment (ICA).
The fifth and final volume focuses on the counterintelligence
threat, outlining a wide range of Russian efforts to influence
the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election. In this volume the
Committee lays out its findings in detail by looking at many
aspects of the counterintelligence threat posed by the Russian
influence operation.”
I’m going to go with “witting” on this. This goat rodeo we have
been watching has evolved into the worst threat to our liberal
democracy since the Civil War. Donald Trump, our 45th President
of the United States, is nothing but a good fella - a wise guy -
but he’ll never be the real top Don. Vladimir Putin holds that
exalted seat at the rodeo. The Don of all this is the criminal
who is trying to bomb Ukraine back to the Stone Age in order to
reconstitute the Russian Empire of 1917. And the Republican
Party represents the rubes who couldn’t see the con until they
became part of it. |
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