29
Friday, January 29, 2021, 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
The Attorney General came into the Cabinet Room and sat down at his accustomed chair near the center. He had pride of place next to the chair where the President might have sat, if he ever attended these meetings.
Normally the Secretary of State would be sitting there, as the highest-ranking official of the government below the President and Vice President. There was no Secretary of State, however, since the previous one had decamped to write a book praising the President. A license to print money, thought the AG.
The Attorney General, however, was practically the only official here who had actually been confirmed by the Senate, so he had arrogated to himself the semi-premier position, and almost no one was left who was sufficiently acquainted with protocol to form an objection.
Few even of the Acting Cabinet Secretaries were in attendance, because nearly all of them had resigned at the end of the President’s first term. The President had not gotten around to nominating successors, because, as he often said, “I’m the only one who matters. We don’t even need these guys.”
In other times, the AG might have taken that as an offense against his amour-propre. But in these decidedly nonstandard times, from this President, the implied insult barely registered. In fact, he welcomed the President’s absence, and the other principals’ as well. This state of affairs allowed him a great deal of latitude to run things as he saw fit.
It also allowed him to speak far more openly than would normally be possible among his “peers,” none of whom he actually considered his peer. During his previous stint as Attorney General, under a previous Republican president, he had felt constrained by the jostling of numerous substantial personalities, each determined to pursue his or her fully-formed agenda and to monopolize as much of the air-time available in these meetings as possible.
Now, thankfully, the room was almost devoid of substantive expertise. Occasionally someone who was known to have a strong connection to the President attended; then he had to be wary, as well as cunning. But even then, those people inevitably had little or no expertise in government; they still required his 50 years of bureaucratic experience, and usually, they deferred to it, especially when they did not quite understand a point of order he raised, or a widely known fact about how government ran. In return for their grudging deference, he ordinarily tactfully refrained from openly pointing out the immense disparity in experience and knowledge between them and him.
Not only was the room devoid of expertise; not only was it almost devoid of cabinet secretaries, or their acting counterparts; it was almost devoid of people, period. The “principals” being absent, the real principals came to the fore. They were: himself; the President’s son-in-law, whom the AG deeply despised as a ridiculous dilettante, but whom he, like almost literally everyone else in this administration, pretended to respect in order not to alienate the President; Maxfield King, literal mercenary and rumored would-be Secretary of State; the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, who under a normal administration would not be allowed within a mile of any sort of cabinet meeting, but who in this administration was allowed to speak and act as befit his actual political status and significance; the crafty, amoral Senate Majority Leader; and the Speaker of the House, who also would not have been able to attend such a meeting in any other administration (this last whom the AG detested as a ridiculous clod, but who, like some others in the room, could not be openly derided as he deserved, lest business be disrupted).
Also attending was a well-known billionaire and major donor to Republican causes, who ran a network of other billionaires and drew a lot of water within the party thereby. He did not even bother to hide his status anymore by sitting in a chair along the wall; he was bellied right up to the table.
The Vice President had every right to attend a meeting such as this one, but for reasons at which the AG could only guess (avoidance of fingerprints on policy was his leading hypothesis), the VP only attended the full Cabinet meetings chaired by the President. Those meetings were known informally among the senior staff as “the Gluteus Gatherings,” because each attendee was expected to heap fulsome praise on the President, on live television, for the privilege of being able to work under him in this most glorious of administrations. The Vice President went last at these meetings, and always reverently thanked God Almighty for the blessing of being chosen by His Instrument on Earth to serve the American people through the President. The years that had gone by had not lessened the obsequiousness of these praises, poured all over the jaw-jutting, arms-folded, frowning President.
Secretly, the AG wondered what might happen if some Cordelia might actually say the truth to this Lear at one of these meetings, on camera. He might have begun, “Frankly, Mr. President, you are the luckiest son of a bitch alive to have my services. Without them, you would be even more completely, flailingly adrift in your job, for which you are manifestly unfit, than you already are. You should get on all fours on the banquet table and kiss my ass in the East Room every day of your life, because without me, we would probably all be radioactive ash – or worse, out of office.”
He would never say anything like these words, because he had certain desires that only this President was ever likely to fulfill. But thinking them certainly helped to put a grim smile on his face. He had had some moments of real anxiety when the President came down with the virus; if he had not beaten it, the AG’s hopes for further advancement would have died then and there.
The official White House photographer now stuck his head in the door. The AG said loudly, “We will not have need of your services today, sir.”
The chastened photographer withdrew from the opening and closed the door.
“All right, this meeting of the Special Executive Committee of the Cabinet will come to order,” the Attorney General. “We are here to do an after-action report, if you will, for the late election and the Inauguration, and then to set some direction for the second term.”
He paused, then continued.
“We have with us today the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.”
Both nodded.
“We have the Acting Secretary of Defense, and… who’s this?”
The Acting Secretary, whom the AG was a bit surprised to see, since most of his peers had cleared out before the Inauguration, cleared his throat and spoke hoarsely. “This is Larry. I think most of you know him. He is in the running to take my place for the remainder of the second term.”
“Greetings, Larry. Next, we have the President’s son-in-law, representing his interests.”
The dilettante nodded.
“We also are graced with the presence of Mr. Maxfield King, whom I understand the President is considering for a cabinet position.”
Max nodded without looking at him.
“Then there is Mr. Richards, the head of the Republican National Committee, who is here to report on the Inauguration, which the RNC had a lot to do with organizing.”
“Pleased to be here,” Mr. Richards said.
“Finally, we have Mr. Brent, a very important and very generous donor to causes that are dear to all of our hearts.”
“Charmed,” the VID said in a Texas twang.
“Our first order of business is the Inauguration, a review of the finances, and then a review of some domestic security issues going forward.”
The conversation began with a quick review by the Chairman of the RNC of the expenses associated with the Inauguration, which had been borne by corporate sponsors who now naturally felt entitled to ask for certain things in return in the way of “access.” Once this was quickly dispatched, the VID led a segue into a related discussion: the legislative and executive priorities for the new administration.
By the end of it, with the assent of the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, there was agreement that pretty much every restriction on oil drilling in the nation would be substantially eased; a suspension of virtually all environmental regulations that had accompanied the previous year’s virus bailout bills would be indefinitely extended; a new, strict nationwide voter ID law had been agreed upon; an executive branch reorganization plan was approved to cut headcount by some 30 percent and relocate many more departments, especially those devoted to gathering statistics, into the hinterlands; every U.S. Attorney had been fired, with pliant, President-supporting replacements approved by the Senate Majority Leader; a path toward withdrawal from NATO and the United Nations was agreed upon; legislation to expand the Supreme Court to 15 members was tentatively approved; the “temporary” halt to immigration from the previous year was extended indefinitely; a working group to discuss the creation of new states from currently safely Republican ones was created; the final steps in the imminent shutdown of public television and National Public Radio – with the exception of children’s television and a few nature shows, which would be sold to media groups with friendly connections to the administration – were detailed and applauded; it was agreed that the National Weather Service would be privatized and handed off to a reliable Republican donor to “monetize”; the U.S. Postal Service would be privatized; new federal restrictions on abortion were agreed upon in order to force a Supreme Court challenge that might finally sweep away Roe v. Wade “for good and all,” as one participant put it; subsidies to cities for transportation and schools would be zeroed out; protections for LGBTQ people in the military would be revoked, and federal recognition of gay marriage, it was agreed, would be rescinded; and the management of the National Park Service would be privatized, and extraction allowed on virtually all of its lands.
“Well, that’s a good start, gentlemen,” the VID said as he finished this part of the meeting. “I would hope you are approaching finality on your plans for the privatization of Medicare and Social Security. I had wanted to end these programs outright, before we did anything else, but I know that could endanger your entire program, given the continuing economic unpleasantness.”
“You know that we remain committed to that goal,” the Senate Majority Leader said. “During this transition period, of course, we will need to step carefully and do things in a certain order, in order to smooth the way toward our ultimate objectives, which you have named. Toward that end, I believe our brother the General here has some ideas to lessen any objections some of our socialist enemies might present to these actions, by putting them back on their heels.”
“I do indeed,” said the Attorney General. “Ordinarily I would pass around my proposal in paper form, but, as with the bold initiatives already discussed, I think it wisest that we merely discuss them verbally.
“First off, we have not taken full advantage of the emergency powers granted to the executive in a time such as this one. The Framers naturally assumed that, in time of war, pestilence, or other emergency, that the executive should be able to avail itself of extraordinary powers to meet the demands of the time.”
He looked around him; there were fewer lawyers in this crowd than he had been accustomed to see in his fifty years of government service, and no Constitutional scholars at all. Little chance of being contradicted by any in this crowd.
“We have, to date, used these powers almost not at all. This is a testament to the restraint and the often-ignored patient and sensible nature of our President.”
He looked around again to see if there was even a hint of a sardonic smile on any face. Sometimes he would say these self-evidently nonsensical things simply to flush the unreliable out into the open. No takers today. Perhaps this term would be different.
“But make no mistake about it, gentlemen.”
He looked around room to verify that yes, they were all men.
“We are under attack. Unrelenting attack. By the forces of the atheistic socialist left. And we need new weapons to fight back on this asymmetric battlefield. So, I have consulted with Mr. Maxfield King, a noted security expert who has done yeoman work for us in this area, as to what further steps we may have to take to put down what is now almost an open rebellion in this country.”
Max nodded grimly. The AG continued.
“We have seen openly seditious leftist groups gaining strength, supported by the Democrat party. They have been unable to win elections because their decadent hedonistic communist expropriationist philosophy has failed to capture the imagination of real Americans.
And because we were lucky with the President getting the virus, but mainly because we will do literally anything to make sure Democrats never win, he thought.
“So, they whine about ‘vote suppression,’ ‘Russian hacking,’ alleged abuses of social media, and the like. They have been seeking to destroy the legitimate power of the executive branch ever since Watergate. And it is time we stood up to them.
“So I have initiated a secret effort, outside of the FBI, whose employees clearly cannot be trusted, to bring these groups to heel. We have employed a subsidiary of King Global Services, headed by Mr. Maxfield King here, to pursue this effort on our behalf.”
“Is there any coordination with state or local law enforcement?” the VID asked. “Because some of them pardners – the county sheriffs especially – can be a mite territorial. And many of our network’s biggest supporters are of the opinion that county sheriffs are the only government officials that have any legitimate power over them.”
“I’ll take this one, if I may,” Maxfield King said to the AG.
The Attorney General nodded.
“You see,” said King, “that does not turn out to be much of a problem, because these groups do not tend to reside in any area of the country where those concerns are widely shared. They tend to be concentrated in your major metropolitan centers.”
“What plots or threats have you uncovered to this point?” the President’s son-in-law asked.
Murmurs of alarm followed this statement.
“We are efforting this as we speak,” Max finished.
“The Department of Justice is investigating several suspects already,” the AG said, taking back control of the meeting. “We have witnesses now who can link the Russia Hoax, the Impeachment Hoax, the Special Counsel, members of the Deep State, the entire Inspectors General corps, several Okomo-appointed judges, the 2016 and 2020 Democrat presidential candidates, and even former PresidentOkomo to these groups.”
More murmuring.
The AG continued. “It will take some time for us to firmly establish the ties between these entities. In the meantime, however, you should know that we will not desist from our efforts to bring every one of these malefactors to justice, as well as to ensure that no further terrorist activities take place on our soil.”
“Shouldn’t you already be moving on these terrorists, since you know they intend harm to America?” the Acting Secretary of Defense asked.
“I will have to ask you to trust me on this one,” the AG responded. “We have infiltrated these groups rather thoroughly. We need to make sure that our case is airtight. Be assured that should there be any imminent threat of violence against this country, we will have the means to stop it.”
“How soon can we expect arrests in this case?” the President’s son-in-law asked, a bit peremptorily, the AG thought. He has gotten uppity since taking a larger role while his father-in-law was ill, the AG thought. He needs to be slapped down.
“That too is not knowable until we have fully plumbed the depths of this conspiracy,” the AG said. “I would simply say, soon.”
He looked around the room. He could see that his words had had the desired impact. If I can just keep this up for another year or so, I will be Chief Justice, he thought.
“Well, gentlemen, I think that will do it for now,” the AG said. “As long as our partners in the legislative branch can follow through on the proposals we discussed earlier, then we will have taken a giant leap toward restoring the Founders’ vision of a truly limited government devoted to protecting freedom and free enterprise. I thank you, and in closing, I will say, though history will not report what we did here today, because of our forbidding of recording devices or note-taking, that what we have accomplished here ranks this meeting as among the most consequential in the history of this country. You can all collect your devices outside the door. Mr. Richards? Mr. King, and you” – he beckoned to the President’s son-in-law – “and you, Mr. Chairman” – he pointed to the RNC chairman – “I believe we still have some trifling matters to discuss.”
The four identified parties stood and waited for the crowd to exit the room, then took seats closer to the AG.
“Mr. Chairman, I believe that there is an unresolved account payable on the books of the RNC for medallions, is there not?” the AG asked the RNC chairman.
“Mr. Attorney General,” the RNC chair began. “There is a dispute over the payment for those medallions. We were given to understand that the RNC was merely doing a favor to the MK organization, acting as a pass-through entity to the individual state and local chapters, who would then be responsible for payment, if any, to MK.”
“That’s not what our understanding was,” the President’s son-in-law said. “More to the point, that’s not what the President’s understanding was. I believe his exact words were ‘You tell that RNC chairman guy that I want my fucking money.’”
The RNC chairman visibly shrank in his chair. Eventually he spoke.
“We just don’t have that kind of cash lying around,” he said pleadingly. “Many of our state and local parties simply have not come through with the amounts we expected. It’s been a difficult time, what with recounts threatened and extra moneys laid out for campaigns on line to encourage people – Democrats – not to show up at the polls due to the virus. We had gotten used to getting large sums and more cyber assistance from our, uh, friends to the east. But the expected moneys never arrived in the amounts we had expected. I was not made aware that they might fail to assist us to the extent they did in the last presidential cycle.”
“I understand you have a tough job,” Max said. “But that’s why you were chosen for it. You need to squeeze these people.”
“I suppose we could threaten the doctors who gave out the virus testing certificates,” the President’s son-in-law said.
What a moron, the AG thought to himself. He cut in swiftly.
“If we did that, of course, they would go to the lying press and expose the entire affair,” he said. “It is true,” he continued, rubbing his double chin, “that our friends in Russia were less forthcoming with campaign support than expected in this cycle. I can only speculate that the heat on the National Gun Organization this time around from the Lying Press and certain more socialist state prosecutors was too great to allow them to be as astoundingly bold a conduit for Russian campaign donations to the Republican party as they had been in 2016. And the collapse of oil demand last year affected the Russians’ ability to engage in this kind of activity worldwide. Still, a debt is a debt.”
“And a bank account balance is a bank account balance,” the RNC chair said, mournfully. “My understanding was that our efforts to mass-distribute these certificates of immunity and medallions to Republican voters in swing states was something that was in and of itself of great value to the President and all Republican candidates, and would therefore not be subject to repayment. In addition, these services would, under normal campaign finance rules, be regarded as a campaign contribution of something of value.”
“But the medallions themselves were also items of value, items that cost our organization, which, as you know, but must never reveal, on pain of severe contractual penalties, is part-owned by the President, a large amount to create and ship to you,” the President’s son-in-law said.
The RNC chairman simply raised both hands in the air in a despairing way.
“Perhaps I can butt in here,” the VID said.
The others looked over at him.
“How much we talkin’ about here?” the VID asked.
“Well, we shipped 15 million of these pre-approved certificates and medallions to the RNC to distribute as they saw fit in swing states,” the President’s son-in-law said.
“What’s that worth to ya?”
“Well, normally the entire process could be up to $200 each.”
“Yeah, but that’s if you actually got a real doctor and had him examine these people. You did nothing of the sort, am I right?”
The President’s son-in-law got red in the face and began to stammer.
“The President – we had an understanding – he’s going to expect – ”
“Well, I don’t know what he expects, but those thangs got him re-elected, am I right?”
“That’s – that’s – irrelevant – ”
“I beg to differ. Besides, you’re throwin’ around your daddy-in-law’s name an awful lot, son.”
“I’m merely – representing his interests – which are legitimate and in no way, in no way – ”
“Yeah, yeah, we know all that. But they’re kinda your interests too, ain’t they? I mean, you got a stake in this MK thing that’s the same as your wife’s dad, from what I hear.”
The President’s son-in-law grew even redder in the face. “That’s – I don’t know where you got that information – that is unequivocably –”
“Where I went to college, A&M, they pronounced that word ‘unequivocally.’ But hell, I didn’t have my daddy buy me a Harvard degree, so I guess I’m just some shitkicker. But you listen to me, son. Don’t kid a kidder. You and your ex-con father and your father-in-law are all billionaires, right?”
“I fail – I fail –”
“Yes, you do. Over and over. You failed to refinance your failing white elephant downtown building until your father-in-law put you in a position to use this country’s foreign policy blatantly to save your own ass by putting some oil sheiks over a barrel until they rescued you. You failed as a newspaper publisher. Shit, you failed to bring us peace in the Middle East, but so did everyone since Jimmy Carter. You failed to stop this virus from killing – what? – a hundred thousand? two hundred thousand? – more than the official death totals put out by HHS? You even failed to keep the President from getting it. You failed to reopen the economy without the worst downturn in American history. So now you got this sweetheart deal to manufacture these fraudulent ‘MK’ medallions to assure everyone that the wearer – always a Republican – is free from the virus. Now he –” here he pointed to Max King – “he is K. And you –” here he pointed straight at the President’s son- in-law – “you, you’re ‘M,’ am I right?”
The President’s son-in-law sat in miserable silence, a patina of sweat on his pale face.
“So, the way I see it, you’ve been handed a license to print money from these fake medallions and doctors’ certificates. And you are bitching because you aren’t going to get paid what a real doctor would get paid if he actually was certifying the health of the bearer of the medallion. On top of that, you and your daddy-in-law both claim to be billionaires. Now I don’t see any real billionaire kicking up a fuss over a small amount like what we’re talking about here. It cost you what, $2 a pop to print up these certificates and medallions? Don’t even bother answering that one, I already know. It cost you $2.38 for each one. You say you distributed 15 million of them. I happen to know it was 11 million. That comes to $26,180,000. Now, you’ll want a markup on them, and shit, they did win us the election, so I’m willing to be generous on that. You can have $30 million for ’em. I’m overpaying you, boy, but that’s because I like you. It ain’t three billion, like you wanted to beat out of our friend here, but hey, you and your daddy and your daddy- in-law are all billionaires, so why should any of you give a shit about that kind of chump change, am I right?”
Silence and schadenfreude hung over the room. The President’s son-in-law got up, shuffled some papers, and pushed back from the table.
“Now do I make the check out to your father-in-law, or Max here, or to you?”
“MK Holdings International,” Max whispered.
The President’s son-in-law turned back as if about to say something.
“Well?” the VID said. “You got something to say?”
The President’s son-in-law turned back toward the door and stalked off.
“I’ll come by your office in a bit,” Max said after him as he disappeared out the door.
The remaining parties to the meeting sat in communal, unexpressed joy.
“I was of course being hyperbolic when I spoke of a check,” the VID said to the RNC chair. “I will get my lawyers to work on how we can make you whole for the check you will write to MK Holdings as soon as I get back.”
“Thank you for your generosity,” the RNC chair said to the VID.
“You,” the VID said, pointing to the RNC chair as he got up, “are very welcome. Now I got a Gulfstream to catch. Texas won’t frack itself.”
The others got up to acknowledge his leaving. He put his cowboy hat on and picked up his briefcase, saluted the Attorney General, shook Max’s hand, and walked out the door.
“Did you have a cell phone, sir?” a staffer with a box full of phones asked him just outside the door.
“Never carry one,” he said. He tipped his cowboy hat to the administrative assistants seated in the hall and walked away toward the exit.
“Jesus,” Max whispered to the AG. “That was… that was well done.”
“Indeed,” the AG said. “True power addressing pretend power.”
“But he was a little hard on our boy there. I’ll go and try to smooth his feathers,” Max said. “Avoid any nasty comeuppance.”
“It is certainly refreshing to hear someone speak in Washington who simply does not have to give a damn about the niceties,” the AG said.
“Some day I intend to be at that level,” Max said.
“I hear you want SecState,” the AG said. “That position would seem to require a certain level of diplomacy, by definition.”
“Sure. But that’s not the last stop, I hope,” Max said.
The AG inclined his round, horn-rimmed, owlish face at Max.
I’d better keep a watch on this one, he thought to himself. Fully-formed agenda.
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian