When our Caesar Disgustus casts about for talent he uses
not a fishing rod but a dragnet.
The dragnet is an appropriate metaphor, used by Jack
Webb in his televised 1950's crime show in which the intrepid Sgt.
Friday would scrape the depths of the underworld in a heroic effort
to clean up greater Los Angeles. (1) Likewise, our Caesar Disgustus
scours the bottom not to clean but in search of low life sufficient
to meet his purpose.
He promised us “only the best people,” top-tier
CEO's and businessmen, only the highly qualified and, like Disgustus
himself, the brightest. In tRUMPspeak, of course, that meant
he would soon be jerking from the deep, and throwing upon the decks
of the ship of state, the lowest forms of life.
Exhibit One: Michael Cohen.
Cohen, of course, is the man Disgustus set upon as a
replacement for the equally smarmy, but clearly more able, Roy Cohn.
Men of the same stripe and material but of different quality. Cohn
graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School.(2) Cohn
graduated from Cooley Law School. From this one can mark the
trajectory, if not the tragedy, of Donald J. Trump.
Cooley Law School is a diploma mill, whose greatest alumnus are former Michigan one term senator Spencer Abraham and the fat toad John Engler, once governor of the great state. It is not known for it's academic excellence. Indeed, “(I)n 2017, Cooley was sanctioned by the American Bar Association's for violating the ABA requirement that schools only admit students who appear capable of earning a Juris Doctor degree and passing a bar exam. During the 2016-2017 application cycle, the school admitted 86% of applicants, the highest of any ABA-approved law school. The entering fall 2017 class had a median GPA of 2.94 and median LSAT of 142 (18th percentile of test takers). The 25th percentile GPA of enrolled students was 2.59 and the 25th percentile LSAT of enrolled students was 139 (11th percentile of test takers), both lowest of any ABA-approved law school outside of Puerto Rico. That same year, the school was ranked the "worst" law school in the country by law website Above the Law, referring to a list of the "bottom 10 least selective law schools in the U.S. (excluding Puerto Rico)". (3)
So
bad is its reputation that it sought affiliation with Michigan State
University. MSU rejected the overture, despite Cooley being located
in the same city and there being no other law school in central,
western or northern Michigan. Cooley eventually joined the sprawling
campuses of Western Michigan University, an institution willing to
risk its reputation. No, this is as far from the Ivy League as the
Marianna Trench is from the surface of the ocean; or the Dead Sea
from sea level.
Armed
with these credentials, Cohen then “Worked
with a series of small firms that defended clients accused of
particpiation in various medical malpractice scams, phoney auto
accident cons, and the like that were familiar to Russian Mafia
swindels in the eighties and nineties. One of his first jobs after
law school was working for a persnal injury lawyer named Melvyn J.
Estrin, who pleaded guilty to bribing insurance adjusters to inflate
damage estimates. He subsequently drew up incorporation papers for a
number of dubious medical practices and medical billing companies,
one of which had filed nearly three hundred lawsuits.”(4)
Then there are the Russian connections. A boyhood friend of Felix Sater (5), “Cohen married Ukraine-born Laura Shusterman in 1994. Laura Shusterman's father, Fima Shusterman, left Soviet Ukraine for New York in 1975. Cohen has a daughter, Samantha, and a son, Jake. Cohen's wife, according to the Wall Street Journal, is implicated in potential criminal activity, and Cohen's father-in-law is the one who introduced him to Trump according to a Trump biographer. Cohen's uncle is a doctor who treated members of the Lucchese crime family. The uncle owned "El Caribe Country Club," known to be frequented by individuals associated with the Russian mafia: Evsei Agron, Marat Balagula, and Boris Nayfeld.
With
our Caesar Disgustus, the Russians are always trolling the depths.
Prior to joining tRUMP, Cohen distinguished himself in business by partnering “in the taxi business with "taxi king" Simon Garber. As of 2017, Cohen was estimated to own at least 34 taxi medallions through 17 limited liability companies (LLCs). Until April 2017, another "taxi king", disbarred attorney and convicted felon Gene Freidman, managed the medallions still held by Cohen; this arrangement ended after the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission decided not to renew Freidman's licenses. Between April and June 2017, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance filed seven tax warrants against Cohen and his wife for $37,434 in unpaid taxi taxes due to the MTA.” (7)
Ethics,
it appears, was not taught at Cooley Law.
Cohen
and his father-in-law “registered
more than fifteen [taxi]
companies—Sir
Michael Hacking Corp., Lady Lauring Hacking Corp., Smoochie Cab
Corporation—and ended up working with Simon Garber and Evgeny
Freidman, two Soviet-born NewYork taxi barons, who managed Cohen's
fleet. By 2003, he claimed he controlled a fleet of two hundred
cabs. Before the advent of Uber and similar services, taxi
medallions sometimes sold for more than $1 million.
'“Cohen
associated himself with the most reckless and greedy players in the
industry,' said Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the Taxi
Workers Alliance, a group that represents cabdrivers. 'They have
similtaneously worked to inflate the value of their medallions and
rip off their drivers...'”
“Meanwhile, Cohen assembled a mini real estate empire of his own, part of which involved his and his family's buying up numerous Trump apartment unit, with his Ukrainian father-in-law buying at least four units and Cohen five. According to Rolling Stone, during a five year period, Cohen and people close to him bought 17.3 million in Trump properties.” (8)
This,
of course, got the attention of our Caesar Disgustus as tRUMP,
complimenting Cohen on his business acumen—as a pilot fish feeding
in the wake of the great shark's feeding frenzy—hired Cohen and
brought him into the tRUMP organization as executive vice president.
Cohen, working in the same building as his old friend Felix Stater,
now found himself at the same level as the tRUMP larvae, Ivanka,
Donald Jr., and Eric. (9)
This
is how our Disgustus finds talent. This is how our Disgustus,
scouring the depths, finds the bottom feeders. Disgustus has never
learned that there are reasons crustaceans seek the depths, for they
do not fare well in broad daylight and recoil in the kleig lights.
“An'
Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach
and imprison.
____________
- Unger, Craig. House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. Dutton. Penguin Random House. Copyright 2018. Page 163
- Ibid. Page 162.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cohen_(lawyer)
- Ibid
- Op. Cit. Page 164-65
- Ibid. Page 165.
No comments:
Post a Comment