Thread by @doctorow

If Trump and his cadre of mustache-twirling villains have a saving grace, it's that they lack administrative competence. A con-artist succeeds by running across the river on the backs of alligators, moving so quick that none of them can take a leg.

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A competent villain plays the long game, gets into the minutiae, buries the con in the fine-print. Their superpower isn't their fast-thinking gab, it's their ability to both endure and inflict boredom while they make out like bandits.

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But while trumpites like @stevenmnuchin1 are just gabby muggers, others, like his protege Justin Muzinich, are champions in the dull, detail oriented mass ripoffs.

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Which is why Muzinich is in charge of trillions in bailout money, and why that money has made him and his family of plutes incalculably richer.

propublica.org/article/this-t…

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Muzinich is a second-generation plute, the son of a junk-bond king whose family firm, Muzinich & Co, has been a massive beneficiary of the bailout, because, for the first time ever, at Muzinich's insistence, the Fed has used its bailout money to buy up junk bonds.

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What's more, Muzinich never divested himself of $60m+ worth of shares in the family business. Instead, he parked them with Daddy, in a legal fiction that maintains the pretence of divestiture but still allows Muzinich to get the share back the day he leaves the Trump admin.

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This isn't Muzinich's first rodeo: he was the point person on the #TaxScam, where it was his job to reject the commonsense advice of the Treasury's tax expert and then perform surprise when their predictions came true.

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For example, when government experts warned Muzinich that creating massive tax-loopholes for C corporations would induce large firms to restructure as C corps, he pooh-poohed the prediction as absurd.

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Today, the largest private equity funds in America - Ares, Blackstone and KKR - have restructured as C corps, avoiding billions in taxes.

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Despite all this, Muzinich is beloved of both establishment Democrats and Republicans, because he talks like them. He is attuned to fine details, capable of discussing nuance without drifting off in bored reverie. He's not a clown.

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But "seriousness" is not a substitute for virtue. Indeed, long after the gator-dashing short con experts in the White House have had a leg gnawed off, people like Muzinich will be luxuriating in their bunkers, bathing in the money they stole.

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Thank goodness for the forensic, explanatory skills of @propublica's @justinelliot, @lydiadepillis and @RobertFaturechi - their service in tracking down and laying out the long con is the first step on the long road to banishing these sociopaths to society's outer reaches.

eof/