How To Tell a Mobster From a Mere Tyrant

Here's what a mob boss does: He swings his dick.

That telephone call to Zelensky?

Dick-swinging.

"I need a little favor." Get me dirt. I just need enough to destroy my rival.

Our very own American mob boss had been softening up the Ukrainians for months. Well before the impeachment call, Trump had called to congratulate Zelensky on his election, while also tasking him in the same breath with certain "investigations into corruption." Zelensky knew exactly what he was talking about.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, had told mob Consigliere Guiliani that he thought Joe Biden's son Hunter, who sat on the board of directors of Ukraine's largest gas company for five years, might have benefitted from graft. Guiliani ran with that, and both he and Trump started rattling cages: "Somebody needs to investigate Biden, because sure as there's a nose on your face, Joe Biden during his tenure as vice president had pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a previous Prosecutor General because that prosecutor was pursuing the corruption of Hunter Biden." That's the mob story.

That's a false story. The owner of the big gas company had come under scrutiny for possible abuse of power and unlawful enrichment, "but Hunter Biden was never accused of any wrongdoing in the investigation" (Michael Birnbaum et al.). Lutsenko, the Guiliani-enabler who may have started the whole Ukrainian fiasco by blabbing a bunch of bullshit to Guiliani, in an interview just today admitted that Hunter Biden had not run afoul of any laws in Ukraine. 

Don't you love irony: In point of fact, Joe Biden had sought the ouster of that previous Prosecutor General for "not sufficiently pursuing corruption cases."

A mob boss labels a whistle-blower “almost a spy,” waxxing nostalgic for the good old days when you could just take 'em out and hang 'em.

To the mobster, a spy is a rat, a turncoat, a traitor ripe for rubbing out. To the mere tyrant, a spy might be a person who at least deserves some respect as an acknowledged adversary, even as you march him out to be shot. A mob boss feels no respect for anyone outside the family.