Here is a plot for a spy thriller: The House built of lies
Imagine a foreign adversarial country controlled by a combination dictator and mob boss wants to undermine its chief rival, a country that has opposed it for over 200 years and inflicted the ultimate insults of first saving it from an invasion in the last century and then ruining its economy when it tried to keep up an arms race it didn’t have the resources to win.
Out of the ashes of the economic collapse a man emerges from the leadership of the secret police and along with his cronies take over the economic engines of the country. This man has many useful idiots within his grasp. One of them, a person who, after he double crossed the U.S. banks, and organized crime syndicate in the north east, turned to the oligarchs of the former spy master for financial aid and as a fringe benefit, protection from the U.S. mob.
The spy master has a brilliant idea, suppose he disrupts the foundation upon which the U.S. government is built: its presidential election. He realizes he has just the tool at hand. He tells the useful idiot that he can build the biggest most beautiful, magnificent structure in the capital city with his name in massive letters across the top of the building. All he must do is run for President of the U.S.A. The massive influence peddling, disinformation producing agencies of the spy master are told to put the peddle to the metal and surprise, surprise we have a winner.
In addition to being a useful idiot, this tool is a narcissist of megalomaniacal proportions and this strokes his ego to the point of organism. He thinks “wow, I get the full attention of the media 24X7 and I don’t have to pay a penny!” His organized crime family points out all the ways he can make money when he has the keys to the U.S. government bank vaults and control of who gets the lucrative contracts. He thinks “I do 4 or perhaps 8 years as POTUS and if I play it right and keep baffling them with bull-sh*t, I may never have to leave office. Imagine "Emperor T" in big letters held up by that stupid statue in the Hudson and another draped from the golden gate bridge. Then I move the seat of government from the dump in Washington to my much more impressive properties, the stupids pay for all of it and the rubes won’t know what hit them!”
The spy master doesn’t believe that the U.S. intelligence agencies, the military industrial complex along with the super-patriots and the religious fanatics who have been staunch foes would allow this idiot to become POTUS.
He forgot that no one ever went broke under estimating the intelligence of the U.S. people.
However he knows a gift horse when he sees one and he sets out to ride this ass into the ground before the people of the U.S. realize what’s happening.
Then along comes the glacial-speed U.S. Justice system and a turn in electoral fortunes. It happens that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, (AKA RICO) fits the idiot’s House of lies to a tee. This federal law provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil actions for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization, the family business of the useful idiot is a good example. It takes a while but within a few years the entire family business of the useful idiot is nothing but dust and debts.
But then this is fiction and we all know the truth is stranger than fiction.
JJH