EXCEPT THAT EVERYONE IS FREDO:

The most shocking-but-not-surprising aspect of James Comey's account of meeting Donald Trump is the ease with which he drew upon his experience prosecuting organized crime. Meeting Trump, he told George Stephanopoulos, "I had a flashback to my days investigating the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra." Trump's leadership style eerily tracked that of the mob bosses he had studied. "There's an expression in the Mafia -- there's a distinction between a friend of yours and a friend of ours. A friend of yours is someone on the outside of the family, a friend of ours, an 'amica nostra' is the way they talked about it in Sicilian, is part of the Family, capital F."

It is a pure coincidence, but a revealing one, that Comey's story has come out at the exact same time that Michael Cohen has emerged as a first-tier, and perhaps pivotal, figure in the prosecution of Trumpworld. Cohen has called himself Trump's consigliere and is the most palpably moblike character in Trump's orbit. The severe legal risks he poses to Trump help recenter the story as a mafialike drama that owes as much to The Sopranos and The Americans. Organized crime is somewhere between a metaphor for the ethos that Trump has imposed upon his world and a literal description of the way his business operates. The investigation of Cohen, in particular, will reveal just where along that continuum the truth lies.

One of the ways in which Trump's business closely resembles organized crime is that, because it relies so heavily on morally and legally dubious business ventures, its human-resource strategy de-emphasizes qualifications and relies heavily on loyalty. Or, to put it differently, a person's willingness to engage in, and keep one's mouth shut about, Trump's dubious activities is the most important qualification. This explains why Trump is not known for hiring bright young minds from leading business schools and relies so heavily on his children, as a mafia boss would. It also explains why he retained the legal (or quasi-legal) services of Michael Cohen, a graduate of the worst law school in the United States.

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