Washington D.C.
For at least the past year, The Bad King has been ballyhooing the finding that his wholly partisan DOJ consigliere, Bill Barr, found no proof of collusion by the president with Russia in his investigation. Even though there were more than a hundred contacts between The Bad King’s campaign staffers and the Russians—all of which they later lied about to investigators—the report concluded that the president’s involvement with Russians gave no evidence of conspiracy and did not rise to the level of a crime. The question: if there was no collusion, then why all the lying by the president and the members of his team about their contacts with Russians before and after the election. The president himself lied about the June meeting at his New York tower. He claimed during the campaign that he was not working on any plan with the Kremlin to build a Moscow Hotel Tower when, indeed, he was—as his former lawyer Michael Cohen later testified. The special counsel’s team—after twenty-two months of investigative work involving more than 2,800 subpoenas and testimony from some 500 witnesses—was not able to reach a conclusion on the obstruction question—stressing, however, that if they could have exonerated the president they would have—but could not.
Against all precedent, the DOJ (Crime Council) attorney general and acting attorney general—both DOJ political appointees—after less than forty-eight hours of review, took the highly unusual, questionably legal, and wholly political, step of declaring after their cursory reading of the evidence that there was no obstruction to be found on the part of the president or his team. The mystery: the special counsel was mandated as the non-political appointee to come to a determination on obstruction, and he declined—even though the report in its conclusion detailed ten specific instances of obstruction by the president. The special counsel thought it would be unfair to charge the president, when—according to the department of justice OLC guidelines—a sitting president could not be indicted and therefore would be deprived of the opportunity to defend himself in court if there was no trial.
The president’s highly partisan new attorney general (Consigliere) Bill Barr—was not mandated to make the decision on obstruction—but he did. Perhaps the biggest, most public obstruction of justice was the president’s appointment of the already compromised, highly politicized attorney general. The AG’s vociferous “No collusion! No obstruction!” assessment of the special counsel’s report was a total mischaracterization of what the report had concluded—in short, a lie. The Bad King now wants to weaponize the AG’s dishonest characterization of the report against his political enemies. Indeed, the mantra has become a rallying cry among the president’s MAGA supporters for his re-election in the 2020 campaign.
“No Collusion! No Obstruction!”
The president has recently returned from a campaign swing through Michigan, a state he barely won in the 2016 election. On the stump in campaign rallies across the state the president became livid, almost unhinged, calling what happened to him, in the twenty-two months of the special counsel’s investigation, illegal, an “evil take-down” bordering on treason. He is bitter, has a list of enemies, and wants to push a vendetta against anyone he feels wronged him, people he now wants prosecuted and put in jail. These are people in the media, the FBI and DOJ, and Democrat political opponents on the Hill whom he regularly attacks at his rallies. The Bad King calls these people out by name from the podium, and his supporters, chant:
“Lock ‘Em Up!”
The Republicans are in power, and Washington, it seems, is awash in cover-up politics of the dirtiest kind. The corruption is so blatant, the Republican toadies who serve the president do not even try to excuse or even apologize for his crude, obnoxious behavior. The DOJ had not as of early April 2019—immediately following the initial release of the special counsel’s report—released the full contents of the report, but only a highly redacted version. Republicans and the administration worked hard in the Congress to suppress parts of the report under claims of executive privilege, grand jury secrecy, and the need to protect classified information. The obstruction question still—as of February 2020—has not been decided or even properly addressed—remains a year later a hotly debated, hotly contested issue—with the president angrily calling, as usual, on his angry, disaffected base for support and political affirmation. The always scheming Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, (The Devil) early on—after the report’s first 2019 release to the AG—sponsored a vote in the Senate opposing the full release of the special counsel’s report to the public. Republicans in the Senate—in service to their own greed and raw ambition—actively aided and abetted The Bad King, were themselves complicit at the time in his obstruction, his anti-democratic authoritarianism.
The “Party of No” is now living up to its obstructionist credo. There has been—since the first release of the Mueller report to the DOJ—no cooperation, no compromise with the Democrats in getting at the truth. The MAGA Republicans in the Freedom Caucus have purposefully and deliberately chosen the obstinate authoritarianism of the Taliban—the Afghanistan, extremist Islamic sect—as their governing model. Conservative bloggers, radio hosts, and talking heads at Fox News—the propaganda arm of The Bad King’s administration—have been proclaiming the president’s complete exoneration. The president has moderate Republicans—who might seek to find a conscience—all afraid of a primary challenge. The Democrats must be careful in exercising their constitutional oversight duty for fear of being charged with overreach by the hard right-wing Republican echo chamber. Indeed, in July 2019 the full House—led by the rancorous Freedom Caucus—voted against and roundly defeated a resolution calling for the impeachment of The Bad King for his racist remarks against four freshman congresswomen of color—Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, Ayanna Pressley, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez—in the House.”
Because the special counsel failed to make a finding on obstruction of justice, the AG, Bill Barr, (known as the Consigliere)—who should have recused himself because of his conflicts of interest—took it on himself to interpret the meaning of the report, saying in effect, in well publicized statements put out by the DOJ, that there was “No collusion! No Obstruction! This was a lie.
In April 2019, after much public pressure, a redacted version of the report was printed and released to the public. A year later—because of the Republicans cover-up efforts in the Congress and AG’s obstructionism on the behalf of the president—the Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, and the American public, still wait to see what lies behind the many blacked-out redactions in the printed report.
Mysteriously, so-called evangelicals—the old “family values” sect of the Republican party—continue to support the president even though court documents released in 2019 show he was intimately involved with his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen (who now sits in prison) in an illegal hush-money scheme to silence a now famous former porn star and stop her from going public with revelations about her affair with the president. When reporters put questions to him, The Bad King flat-out denied the affair and said he had no knowledge of any illegal payments. This, too, has been shown to be a lie.
The Hay Adams Hotel
Once upstairs in their rooms, Billy checks and locks the French doors that open out onto the balconies. He closes the blinds and pulls the heavy brocaded drapes on Rosie’s doors and then turns back into the room.
The elegant old Hay Adams is probably Washington’s most historic and emblematic hotel. “I could start to like this,” Rosie says, looking around the luxurious, well-appointed room with an admiring eye.
During her time with Billy in New Orleans, as NBC’s chief White House correspondent, Rosie had been following the news, keeping up with reports about the president’s campaign activity on her phone. The talk now is mostly about the upcoming Super Tuesday primaries.
Taking her phone from her purse, “I have to call my boss,” Rosie declares. “Super Tuesday is coming up, and he’s going to want me to cover the president’s rallies.”
“Don’t!” Billy almost yells. He quickly crosses the room and grabs the phone out of her hand before she can start the call.
“You can’t use that phone anymore. It’s too dangerous. The Russians will be able to trace the signal and identify our location.”
Billy has been thinking and worrying a lot about Rosie and her predicament. He is sure she was in considerable danger. And he now feels a responsibility for her—not just because she had been referred to him for protection by his deceased friend, Scott, but also because he is now himself involved. Surely the Kremlin has by now figured out that the two Russian goons dispatched to kill Rosie disappeared after they came to his boat looking to kill her. Tsar Peter has tried once, and Billy is sure he will have his agents try again. As a national reporter, NBC’s White House correspondent, Rosie—because of the information she holds—is the principal outstanding threat to the Kremlin Red Dragon operation, the Russian dictator’s plan to start a civil war, pitting a divided America against itself, to co-opt the government of the United States using the military, the police, and his agent/asset The Bad King.
Billy tells Rosie, “Before we left the airport, I called Shane, my contact and handler at the CIA, we’re going to have a meeting with him tonight at 9:00 o’clock in the bar downstairs.” Billy pauses and smiles. “He’s eager to meet you, Rosie. And he wants to take the Red Dragon file back to Langley so he can have his team go through it. I told him to bring along a secure phone for you to use.”
Billy gives Rosie his own phone. “For right now, you use my phone. The signal gets routed through a secure server in the basement of CIA headquarters at Langley where it’s encrypted and redirected so the point of origin can’t be traced.”
Billy tells Rosie that, likewise, her apartment is off limits.
“But if I’m going back to work,” Rosie replies, “I’m going to need some clothes. I don’t have anything to wear except what’s in my suitcase,” she complains.
Billy offers a suggestion, “There’s a boutique with women’s clothes downstairs in the mezzanine. You can get what you need there.”
Rosie frowns. “I’m just an under-paid journalist, Billy—not a movie star,” she comes back. “I can’t afford to shop there. The prices are three times what I would pay at the mall.”
“I told you, Rosie, not to worry about the money.” Billy knows that whatever Shane has in mind, he’s going to have another big payday.”
“Okay, Billy,” she says with a smile.
Rosie takes a hot bath, and then goes downstairs on a serious shopping excursion with her new credit card while Billy takes a short nap. Later they will have dinner together in the dining room.