Bonus Sample: Swamp Creatures 3: The Pirate Palace
Our main character this week is the six-degrees of authoritarians—more like one or two degrees, in fact. He’s made millions playing footsie with most of the blood-thirsty kleptocrats of the last half-century. He embodies the corrupt and anti-democratic deep state history of Donald Trump’s inner circle, reaching back through the decades and across the globe.
Julian’s colorful storytelling series seeks to contextualize the Trump era and where we find ourselves now, based on the swamp creatures who worked for, enabled, and to some extent groomed him for the role.
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The throngs of commoners winding their way through the abandoned presidential estate were orderly, respectful even.
They heeded the instructions from a small number of militiamen stationed around the enormous 350 acre property who served almost as docents to what some visitors started to refer to as a museum of corruption.
as they snapped selfies in front of the rare bird estuary and took turns teeing off on the golf course after passing by the helicopter pad, tennis courts, the church, the boxing gym, and shooting range, as well as the old-world style, white statues, and elaborate fountains, the koi and duck pond, all connected by well-manicured, landscaped gardens and picturesque pathways.
These ordinary people wound their way past the goat and pig farm and the greenhouses to then gaze upon the former president's 70 classic cars organized in a hanger-sized garage as a kind of history of Soviet automobile manufacturing.
They wandered in awe through the palace's opulent rooms, gazing up at the elaborate chandeliers, looking down from the landing on the exquisite marble floors and magnificent furniture, the custom pool table, the huge dining room.
They traipsed through extravagantly appointed sitting rooms and bedrooms, glanced into fancy bathrooms with gold fixtures, and then emerged out through the back doors of the palace and headed down to the restaurant.
It's a ship, actually.
A pirate ship.
Okay, a replica of a pirate ship docked in a man-made lake on an estate that looks like a cross between a theme park and the kind of landmark national monument or public museum we in the West would take the kids to on a Sunday.
You know, like the Getty Center in LA or Kew Gardens in London.
Back to the ship.
Inside the replica of the pirate ship docked behind the palace in a man-made lake, the president had installed a special restaurant dining hall.
The irony appears to be lost on him though, given that this enormous and extravagant property was all built and maintained with money stolen from the people.
Which people, I hear you asking?
the people of Ukraine.
Viktor Yanukovych was president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014.
was president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014.
He had previously served as Prime Minister and had suffered controversy over earlier criminal convictions for robbery and assault that saw him serve prison time between the ages of 17 and 20.
In 2004, Yanukovych actually very narrowly won the presidential election as the candidate of the Party of Regions, widely thought of as a pro-Putin party.
But both domestic and international outcry Over massive corruption in that 2004 election, over voter intimidation and election interference, resulted in the Ukrainian Supreme Court annulling the election.
In the ensuing internationally monitored runoff election, his opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, won by a wide margin.
Now, why this matters to us today is that the corruption and electoral fraud was protested at times by up to a million Ukrainians taking the streets in freezing weather in what came to be called the Orange Revolution.
It was a bloodless civil action that demanded democracy.
And prior to the initial rigged election, Yushchenko suffered a mysterious but now sadly familiar dioxin poisoning that almost killed him and left his face disfigured.
Yushchenko was the hero of the Orange Revolution and ran on policies around democratic freedoms and integration with the EU and NATO as opposed to Yanukovych's pro-Russian platform.
But, sadly, Yushchenko's presidency would be marred by internal conflicts, struggles with accusations of corruption, and the Orange Revolution would fizzle in 2010, with Yanukovych then finally getting himself into power.
This time, in an election assessed by observers as actually being free and fair.
The rebooted Yanukovych presidency would in turn end in a culmination of another set of protests.
These 2014 Euromaidan protests were sparked by that president deciding not to follow the path overwhelmingly accepted by the Ukrainian parliament into closer political and economic ties with the EU, opting instead to stay loyal to Russia.
Protesters were also demanding a return to the Orange Revolution's constitutional structure that prevented presidential abuses of power.
This time, the protests led to a draconian crackdown, violence, torture, and the killing of protesters by police.
As the chaos reached its climax, Yanukovych fled, in secret, to Russia.
The parliament then voted unanimously to reinstate the 2004 constitution and remove Yanukovych from office.
He would eventually be convicted in Ukraine of high treason.
It was after all of this that he fled and the crowds I described earlier descended upon Yanukovych's palace to see for themselves if the rumors of the spoils of his corruption were true.
But perhaps even more important, these events also marked the beginnings of Russia's overt aggression.
