Scoundrels, Bounders, Villains and Blackguards

 "They may smile a smile yet be a villain.'

Isn't it odd that all the palaver about Michael 'Take-a-bullet' Cohen is on whether he will 'flip', and NOT asserting that Drumpf and Cohen are innocent? One must suppose that even to a die-hard Drumpf cultist, the notion that either of these two dirt-bags is 'innocent' is simply too preposterous to consider.

As a follow-up to the article 'The Company He Keeps'... (please follow this blog by clicking the appropriate place in the left-hand column...) which zeroed in on the menagerie of miscreants that Drumpfen-dork associated with, (e.g. Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Roy Cohn, etc), let's look at the ne'ver-do-wells which currently populate (infest? beset?) 45's administration.

 
The current administration is rife with corruption on a level never seen in modern times; Zinke, Pruitt, Mnuchin, DeVos, Perdue, Ross, Carson, Chao, have all been cited for misconduct and/or misappropriations. Here's a handy compendium of articles from actual journalists which report the despicable activities of these scoundrels, bounders, villains and blackguards.

Alexander Acosta; Secretary of Labor 

...from Florida!
https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-labor-nominee-alexander-acosta-is-more-dangerous-than-you-think/

Alex Azar - Secretary of Health and Human Services

 

...from Pennsylvania!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2018/04/20/the-health-202-alex-azar-is-surrounding-himself-with-industry-insiders/5ad8b94c30fb0437119267c8/?utm_term=.11d9fccb1dc6

Jim Bridenstine - NASA Administrator,  Oklahoma

 

...from Oklahoma!
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17253560/nasa-administrator-jim-bridenstine-confirmation

Ben Carson - Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

...from Michigan!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/how-ben-carson-hobbled-hud

Elaine Chao - Secretary of Transportation

...from Taipei, Taiwan! (Kentucky)

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/donald-trumps-14-billion-cabinet/11/

Betsy DeVos - Secretary of Education

from Michigan!
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/betsy-devos-rescinds-guidelines-disabled-students

Gina Haspel - CIA Director (nominee)

...from Kentucky!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/23/gina-haspels-cia-appointment-will-delight-torturers-trump
http://time.com/5250440/gina-haspel-retired-military/

Steve Mnuchin - Secretary of the Treasury

...from New York!
http://www.newsweek.com/mnuchin-travel-costs-make-carson-and-others-look-pikers-847991
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/11/steven-mnuchin-louise-linton-embarrassing/

Mick Mulvaney - Director of the Office of Management & Budget

...from South Carolina (by way of Virginia)!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/02/12/why-mick-mulvaney-is-the-perfect-scoundrel-for-trump/?utm_term=.2d4b0756f9b0
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/mick-mulvaney-explains-his-pay-to-play-rule-for-lobbyists-while-in-congress.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/mulvaney-consumer-financial-protection-bureau.html

George Ervin "Sonny" Perdue III - Secretary of Agriculture

...from Georgia!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/politics/sonny-perdue-georgia.html
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/donald-trump-sonny-perdue-agriculture-235982

Mike Pompeo - CIA Director/ Secretary of State

...from California! (no not the 'good' California... Orange County...)
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/it-turns-out-mike-pompeo-never-served-in-the-gulf-war.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38029336

Scott Pruitt - Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

...from Oklahoma!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/us/politics/scott-pruitt-oklahoma-epa.html
http://time.com/5241932/scott-pruitt-privacy-booth-scandal/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/04/24/senate-republicans-call-for-greater-scrutiny-of-pruitts-management-spending-decisions/?utm_term=.40c1752688cc

Wilbur Ross - Secretary of Commerce

...from New Jersey!
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/leaked-documents-show-commerce-secretary-concealed-ties-putin-cronies-n817711
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/11/07/the-case-of-wilbur-ross-phantom-2-billion/#121c85567515

Jeff Sessions - Attorney General

...from Al'bama!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/us/politics/jeff-sessions-special-counsel-russia.html
http://wsau.com/blogs/ben-armstrong-blog/20344/a-lot-of-questions-about-jeff-sessions/

 Ryan Zinke - Secretary of the Interior

...from Montana!
https://newrepublic.com/article/148017/scott-pruitts-scandal-clone-ryan-zinke
https://www.sierraclub.org/lay-of-the-land/2018/02/ryan-zinke-s-rocky-scandal-ridden-year-interior
https://www.salon.com/2018/03/09/interior-secretary-ryan-zinke-is-the-latest-trump-official-to-be-caught-making-pricey-purchases/

Match these incompetents with the corruption of the office of POTUS by Drumpf's open and brash violation of the emoluments clause and we have a recipe for disaster unparalleled in modern American history. 

We've entered a new, more corrosive 'Gilded Age' which is bankrupting the nation and undermining American credibility and honor on the global stage.

Impeach the president and end this assault on the Constitution and the respectability of the Republic.  

The Company He Keeps

“A man is known by the company he keeps.”― Aesop

So saith the wise man.

Whose company has our current occupant of the White House kept over the years? The company of wise counselors? The companionship of doughty, honest people of staunch character and steadfast integrity? The camaraderie of learned scholars and acknowledged academicians? Indeed, has Drumpfen-putz ever enjoyed association with esteemed comrades and leaders of Science, Art, Education, Philosophy or Diplomacy?

Hard to say...
Maybe in passing...
Perhaps a notable personage (such as Alan Dershowitz!) and Drumpf  both attended a cocktail party follow-on to a movie premiere which lead-up to an after midnight orgy. (More on that later in the broadcast...)

Who's to say?

What can be said irrevocably and without reservation is that Drumpf has kept company with a most nefarious, low-life cast of characters.  

Here's a short list. I'll leave out the current positions of each as related to the gargantuan kerfuffle that is the current state of affairs. Most of these creatures have been interviewed by Team Mueller, the Wimps in the House and the Gang of Grandpas in the Senate. A couple have been indicted.  

The only one not presently under investigation, in all probability, is Roy Cohn. Roy is not on the list for the simple reason that he's been dead since 1986. Otherwise, he'd probably have Gorsuch's Supreme Court seat.

The dramatis personae:

Roy Cohn;
Roy was the young Trump's mentor. Cohn was the right-hand man, chief counsel and instigator for the infamous Red-baiter and violator of Americans' civil rights, Senator Joe McCarthy. Roy was disbarred for "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation" by the State of New York.
Cohn was also a fixer for the Mob.
The Drumpfen-dork openly and pridefully crows his mentoring with Cohn, much as a student of Jascha Heifetz might cite the Maetro as his teacher.
Drumpf, as POTUS, has been heard lamenting that he didn't have Roy to turn to now. There's good, creepy movie about Roy as played by the comparably creepy, James Woods, called 'Citizen Cohn'.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/06/24/roy-cohn-is-disbarred-by-new-york-court/c5ca9112-3245-48f0-ab01-c2c0f3c3fc2e/?utm_term=.cde0de105c09
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-cohn-relationship

Paul Manafort;  
Manafort has been an on-again, off-again fixture for most of the professional life of the Drumpfen-putz. Manafort's law firm did many of the tasks that Michael Cohen later would do as a fixer for Drumpf.
Roger Stone (more on him in a second) was a partner in a lobbying firm with Manafort and Lee Atwater. This team of weenies perpetrated the 'Willie Horton' campaign which sunk what little chance Dukakis had against Reagan.
Manafort worked for other notorious Ukrainian and Russian louts as such Viktor Yanukovych, Oleg Deripaska, Konstantin Kilimnik and Dmitry Firtash. 

Manafort and Stone knew Roy Cohn personally. (Lucky them...)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/a_timeline_of_paul_manafort_s_relationship_with_the_trump_world.html
https://www.justsecurity.org/46464/timeline-paul-manaforts-relationship-trump-world/

Roger Stone;
(Full disclosure; of all the villains on this list, I harbour a particular resentment for this dung-eating, atavistic pestilence in quasi-human form. Can't really explain it. Perhaps I was frightened by an albino lemur as a child.)
...ahem...
Roger Stone was introduced to the young Donald when both were journeyman scum-buckets seeking that one big score that would propel them onto a life of profitable dirt-baggery; real estate scams, influence-peddling, dirty tricks, fixing, muscling,  fraud, embezzlement, etc... white-collar crimes.
You know... for smart white guys.
Stone made his political bones working on the Nixon and Reagan campaigns. The Willie Horton propaganda was promulgated by Stone with Manafort and Lee Atwater.
Fun fact: Stone has a larger-than-life portrait of Richard M. Nixon tattooed on his back.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/us/roger-stone-donald-trump-russia.html

Sam Nunberg;
Sam is a loser's loser. He's a hanger-on - a sort of lamprey to Stone's slithering shark act. Hired and fired several times by the 'stable genius', Drumpfen-squat, Nunberg has a kind of 'genius' for pissing off his associates. A self-proclaimed life-long buddy of Roger 'the Alien/Lemur' Stone, Stone has called him a coke-freak in public.
Sam was sued by Drumpfen-shite for violation of an NDA (...funny that Drumpf has so many signed those things, ain't it?), worked for Mitt Romney and endorsed (ugh) Ted Cruz(!) after Drumpf fired him from his campaign.
Infamous for his racist remarks, Sam called Al Sharpton's daughter a 'N---' and said Barack Obama was "a Socialist Marxist Islamo Fascist Nazi Appeaser".
(Whatever the feck that means, he didn't mean it as a compliment.)
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/05/politics/who-is-sam-nunberg/index.html

Felix Sater;
Felix Sater is that seedy, unsympathetic character in a cheap detective story; the snitch that nobody likes and everybody would like to see face-down in a ditch somewhere.
Felix worked for the Mob before becoming a cooperating witness (stoolie) for the FBI, 'having pled guilty in 1998 “to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the prominent Genovese and Bonanno crime families, according to court records...'
(Talk about leading a dangerous life!)
His Drumpfen-schmuck connection was through Bayrock Group, a real estate investment firm, which set up financing for Drumpf properties including Drumpf's interrupted wet-dream; a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Sater held the position in the Trump Organization of 'Senior Advisor to Donald Trump' with a personal email address (@TRUMPORG.com), his own office phone and fax number although Drumpf, himself, stated that he wouldn't be able to identify Felix if he sat down to lunch with him.
Felix was born on the road to perdition; his father Mikhail Sheferovsky, was a longtime underboss within the Russian Mogilevich Organization. (i.e. the Russian mob).
Felix's preferred method of criminality is fraud; bank, real estate, stock... but...
In a Midtown Manhattan restaurant in 1991, Felix stabbed a business rival in the face and neck with the stem of a margarita glass, broke his jaw, lacerated his face, and severed nerves, creating a wound that required 110 stitches. Sater was convicted of first degree assault and serve 15 months before being paroled.
It seems he wasn't sufficiently rehabilitated as he was later convicted of fraud in a penny-stock scam.
All in all, a real sweetheart if you'd consider Lizzy Borden your soul-mate.
https://medium.com/@JamesFourM/trump-putin-and-the-mob-part-6-trump-felix-sater-and-their-ties-to-mafia-don-semion-mogilevich-34d4a5a83d72

Michael Cohen;
Michael Cohen is Drumpf's low-grade consigliere - his lawyer for when a lawyer has to do unlawful stuff.  Cohen's brash, bullying demeanor and thug-like style is well-documented and has earned him the unseemly cognomen, Trump's Pit-bull'. Cohen levels the threats that 'Cadet Pussy-foot  J. Bone-spurs' doesn't have the marbles to deliver himself. Basically, Michael is the schlemazel to Drumpf's schlemiel. He has to clean up the messes that Drumpfen-yutz makes wherever he goes.
It's a living...
In January 2017, Felix Sater introduced Cohen to a Ukrainian lawmaker, Valentyn Ogirenko, with a proposal for US policy for the region, which Cohen presented to Drumpf's disgraced Nat'l Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. Cohen has denied passing the info along, of course.
Cohen and Sater also met with Ukrainian lawmaker, Andrii V. Artemenko, in NYC about US policy toward Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea.
Ironically, Cohen worked on the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign which Atwater, Stone and Manafort helped scuttle.
 http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-cohen-history-with-trump-2018-3  
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/27/michael-cohen-who-is-trumps-pugnacious-and-loyal-lawyer-

This just in from WNYC and ProPublica on Mr Cohen. His roots in Queens, Long Island and Brooklyn. Coincidentally, the article is entitled 'The Company Michael Cohen Kept'.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/trump-inc-podcast-company-michael-cohen-kept/

Jeffry Epstein:
Saving the 'best' for last.
Jeffry Epstein was Drumpfen-grabber's party buddy. Epstein specialized in providing under-age girls to his guests at his infamous sex orgies. His parties were attended by the glitterati of shit-heels and included, along with Drumpfen-schvantz, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz and members of the British Royal Family. (no pun intended).
Drumpf, himself, is on the witness list for a civil trial against Epstein by one of his victims, who was 15 at the time of her sexual assault.
It was alleged that Epstein molested more than 40 under-aged girls between 2002 and 2005 at his Florida mansion, near Mar-a-lago. Jeff pled guilty to two counts; solicitation of prostitution and soliciting a minor for prostitution. He served 13 months in a county jail and paid financial settlements to many of the roughly 40 women the FBI deemed to be his victims.
Interestingly, Epstein’s personal phone directory had 14 phone numbers for Donald Trump, including emergency numbers, car numbers, and numbers to Trump’s security guard and houseman.

About his party-host, the Drumpfen-douche had this to say in an interview with New York Magazine: 
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Yee-oow...
(Dear Reader, you may now want to Purel yourself...)
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/04/jeffrey-epstein-trump-lawsuit-sex-trafficking-237983
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-civil-case-witness-list-billionaire-paedophile-a7631891.html
https://nymag.com/nymag/features/41826/index2.html

Quite a group of grifters, sharks, fraudsters, shysters, hustlers, fixers, ne'er-do-wells and convicted sex-offenders to be hanging out with over the years.

There's not a single one I'd willingly invite into my house nor whom I'd trust to tell me the correct time.

Maybe that's just me...