(Background Music): Tonight’s Episode: The Animal
ACT I
(Phone rings.)
RECEPTIONIST (answering phone): Welcome. This is the FIB.
(Indistinguishable voice speaking on other side of phone)
RECEPTIONIST (again): Did I say FIB again? I gotta stop doing that. I’m sorry. Welcome. So this is the FBI. A Spin-Startin’ Production.
(Indistinguishable voice speaking again on other side of phone)
RECEPTIONIST: Oh, hi Mrs. Strzok! Yes, it’s good to hear your voice — again. What is it, the fourth call this hour? I’ll get Peter for you right away.
RECEPTIONIST (yelling down the hall): Peter! She won’t go away. Your wife again. You’ve gotta pick up the darned phone!
PETER STRZOK (juggling landline phone against his neck, between his leaning head and hunched shoulder, while simultaneously texting feverishly on smartphone): Hi, Lisa! Er, MElissa. Sweety-Pie, is that you, Honey Bunch? I’ve been thinking about you all hour, my Pleasure Plum.
MELISSA HODGMAN (an associate director at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission): Yes, Peter. It’s Valentine’s Day. Are you coming home tonight?
STRZOK: Not tonight, my Rose Petal. Keep the Dow Jones Industrials honest while I’m gone. It’s gonna be another long night at… the FBI!
(FBI theme music in background, as we break for commercial)
ACT II
(Strzok still texting wildly, as we return from commercial. There is no dialogue, as the camera focuses on his smartphone window texts.)
(We see Strzok text:
Lisa, time 4 us 2 save America. Secret plan ready. Team in place. Where shall we begin?)
(LISA PAGE responsive text:
Let’s begin by saving Nu York. Next must save Chicago. trump is a loathsome human….omg he’s an idiot. But Rahms da Bomb. U can do it, U big strong texter!)
RECEPTIONIST: I have a caller on Urgent Tipster Emergency Hot Line 3. Says there are six swarthy men, moustaches, in their 20s, loading rifles and box cutters from their car into their garage in the Englewood area in the South Side of Chicago, while yelling “Allahu Akhbar” or something like that.
AN AUTHORITATIVE VOICE FROM DOWN THE HALL: Just take a message and toss it into the “Akbar Threats” file. We’ll be reviewing those this summer after Mueller gets done with his investigation.
STRZOK (still texting feverishly): Hey, whoever said that — It’s not an “investigation.” It’s a “matter.”
THE AUTHORITATIVE VOICE: If you’d pause your texting long enough to take a breath and be aware of the other world around you, you’d have heard we’re talking about Mueller’s investigation to take down Trump, not the Comey-Lynch-Hillary make-believe thing, The Trump one is not a “matter.” It’s an “investigation.”
STRZOK: Right-o. My bad.
(Strzok returns to texting feverishly, non-stop again:
Geesh, Lisa. It gets SO noisy here sometimes I can’t even hear myself texting 2 U! LOL.)
(Lisa texts back:
ROTFL!)
(Suddenly a burst of noise, as a very tall dapper man enters the room)
SEVERAL VOICES: It’s Jim Comey! It’s Jim Comey!
RECEPTIONIST: I have a caller on Urgent Tipster Emergency Hot Line 6. A woman crying that there is an 18-year-old deranged male teen in Upper Manhattan, foaming at the mouth, holding two guns and a book called “The Audacity of Hope,” and he is screaming: “Where are they? Where are they? I will kill all of them!”
THE AUTHORITATIVE VOICE: Take a message, Kathy. Make two copies. File one under “Dreams for His Father” and the other under “Armed Foaming Teens — Visceral.” Kath, can’t you see that we have something more important going on now? Jim’s back!
STRZOK (while still texting, barely looking up): Hi, Jim. Wassup? Should you really be here? Don’t think so.
COMEY: I sneaked in the back door. I have real problem. I was leaking something this morning to a newspaper, and I think I sent it to the wrong one.
STRZOK: Let me get Andy. I had just thrown out some ideas in his office, like an insurance policy, just in case someone dies before age 40. So he’s still around.
ANDREW McCABE (enters room): Jim, ol’ boy! What’re ya doin’ here? Thought you’re supposed to be collecting pension goodies. (Giggles.) D’ya need to prime us to draft another Hillary Exoneration Letter just in case Sessions starts that investigation of the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton cash, the $500,000 speaking fee-for-plutonium? If so, wouldn’t worry about it. Peter here is great with the pen — whenever we are able to get that danged phone out of his hands. So no worries with Justice. Besides, Sessions won’t be starting any investigations soon anyway.
COMEY: Why not?
McCABE: Because — and this is top-secret, Jim, no one outside the Bureau knows this yet — but we actually have an FBI detail scouring the country for Sessions. His wife called. He’s been missing for the past eight months. No one knows where he is.
COMEY: Well, anyway, this is serious. Lordy, this is horribly serious. I was leaking something top-secret about POTUS to the New York Times. And then I realized: Lordy, when I forwarded it, I clicked the wrong link. I link-leaked wrong.
McCABE: It happens. It’s nothing. We can cover it up. Do you know who you sent it to?
COMEY: I don’t know how this happened, Andy, but I was working off a list of newspapers we use, and I sent it by accident to… Pravda!
(FBI theme music in background, as we break for commercial)
ACT III
COMEY: I accidentally leaked it to Pravda.
(Christopher Wray rushes in, having overheard)
WRAY: I heard that, Jim. You really shouldn’t be here, y’know. But whaddya mean? You leaked something vital to Bruce Ohr’s wife?
COMEY (gulping): No. To the other Pravda. The real Pravda.
McCABE: Oh, ya mean the Washington Post? They’re OK, Jim. They helped Jill a bunch when the Clintons and McAuliffe backed her for that election she lost. They’re very agreeable. If we tell them it’s about “national security,” they’ll let it go. We have great friends in that Fact Checker Pinocchio department. You know what they say at Wapo: “Democracy dies in darkness, but Democrats do pretty good there.”
COMEY: No, I mean the other Other Pravda — the one in Russia.
STRZOK (suddenly stops texting, joining in): Ya mean you leaked something to the Dossier Guy? That’s OK. There’s no there there.
(Side conversation starts)
VOICE 1: Who is “Dossie A.”? Everyone at the Bureau keeps talking about some woman named “Dossie A.” I never heard of her till last year. Now that’s all I hear in this place — Dossie A. this, Dossie A. that.
VOICE 2: It’s not a person, moron. It’s a code word for some opioid drug that I think the higher-ups have stashed around here that they get to pass around. So they keep going to the main supplier, saying “Pssst. Can you pass the dossy-ay? I need some dossy-ay. Find the dossy-ay.” It’s not a woman’s name, and it’s not a word. There’s no such word like that. How old are you, 60? Did anyone ever use that word before two years ago, before the opioids started flowing? No one ever said it until they got the supplier. Now all you hear all day is “Where’s the dsy-ay? It’s in the dossy-ay.” It’s all code for a controlled substance. I think they just legalized putting dossy-ays into cookies in California.
COMEY: No, this is worse. I didn’t send the leak to Christopher Steele. It somehow got clicked to forward to Vladimir Putin’s newspaper. I accidentally sent it to the Pravda in Russia. Y’know what this means?
WRAY: Gross Negligence?
STRZOK: No, Mr. Director. The election of Donald Trump was “gross negligence.” This is something we call “extreme carelessness.” Like, when Huma Abedin married Anthony Weiner, thinking that she was going to become First Lady of New York City. Extreme carelessness.
COMEY: Well, this is much more horrible than that. I was watching that tape of that mental case in Los Angeles. What’s her name, that Congresswoman who Jedgar would have thrown into a nut house?
WRAY: What, the nut with the cowboy hat?
COMEY: No, no. The other one. Oh yeah, Maxine Waters. That’s the name. Well, anyway, I wanted to make it look like Crazy Trump finally had gotten himself impeachable, so she could run with that ball. So I fabricated a “Tweet” to make it look like Crazy Trump, in one of those temper-tantrum tweeting storms he always does, had just disclosed America’s top-secret nuclear codes —
(Everyone starts laughing hysterically. Some outright guffaws.)
COMEY (continuing, not laughing): — so I tweeted in one of the Bureau’s Trump Tweet Templates, making it look like he was daring Kim Jong-Un of North Korea: “Hey, U kimche-flavored marshmallow! Our nuclear codes are more secret than yours! And mine are bigger! MAGA!” And then…
(Laughter in the room is hysterical. Sound of several Urgent Tipster Emergency Hot Line phones ringing in background, unanswered. But Comey not laughing.)
COMEY: … and then I included in the tweet a “Top Secret Nuclear Code” that I made up.
WRAY: You what?
COMEY: Lordy, I just made it up. I went to that stack of 33,000 missing Hillary emails that the Bureau gave me as a Going-Away gift at my Retirement Party, and I just aggregated some numbers and letters at random: Sidney Blumenthal’s phone number. The number of Bill’s confirmed rapes. The initials of each woman that the Bureau has confirmed he sexually abused when he was in office. I multiplied it by the number of times Hillary attended a yoga class, which left the number the same. I added Hillary’s meditation mantra, some Sanskrit word: “feeldaboyn.” I threw in the number of times that Susan Rice said something in public where she made a fool of herself. So I needed another piece of paper. I added the number of days that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid had filibuster-proof, veto-proof unobstructed control of Government but still did not attempt to fix immigration. I was going to multiply by the number of emails that dealt with Chelsea’s wedding, but that would have meant that all the other numbers and letters had been pointless in aggregating. And then I added an even 300,000 for the amount that Obama got discounted when he got that house from his buddy, the crook Tony Rezko, and another 300,000 for that “salary” at that fake job in Illinois they made up for Michelle Obama at that hospital as a round-about bribe to Barack. And finally I threw in the number of times that Sally Yates and Samantha Powers had people unmasked by the FISA court. All together, it was a huge string of digits and letters.
WRAY: Seriously, Jim, you should not have done all that, but I think I speak for all of us when I congratulate your great ingenuity and initiative. Really, a shame that we lost a dissimilator like you. Anyway, I don’t see why you are so agitated. We can fix this.
COMEY: Mr. Director, here’s why this is so terrible. I just double-checked. It turns out THAT IS our nuclear codes! I just sent America’s top-secret nuclear codes to Putin’s newspaper. Lordy, don’t you see what that means?
STRZOK: That Lisa, Andy, and I don’t need our secret insurance plan anymore because Trump is gonna be impeached?
McCABE: No, dummies. It means Jim here just ended up colluding with the Russians!
(FBI theme music in background. Strzok starts texting wildly in frenzy as a TV reporter on CNN appears on the Main Office TV, reporting a shooting)
ACT IV
(Everyone in office staring at large TV screen, as CNN REPORTER speaks)
CNN REPORTER: There was a stabbing just now in Columbus Circle in mid-Manhattan. Witnesses tell me that an 18-year-old deranged male teen, foaming at the mouth, holding two guns and a book called “The Audacity of Hope” while screaming “Where are they? Where are they? I will kill all of them!” went berserk. After bashing at the statute of Christopher Columbus with his guns, shouting “Conqueror! Conqueror! Long Live De Blasio!” he grabbed a knife and started stabbing people.
(Strzok texting wildly:
Lisa, I love you. I love you. I love you. Hillary should have won 100,000,000 – 0. Trump is such an idiot.)
McCABE (ignoring the TV): Not all is lost, Jim. First, you do have to get out of here. ASAP. Then we can get Ohr’s wife to use the ol’ GPS — y’know, her office buddies — and put us together again with Christopher Steele. He’s got the connections with Putin to get his hands on that leak you sent to the Washington Post — uh, I mean Pravda. Then Peter can edit and rewrite the email just a bit and encrypt it with our forging technology to make it look like someone else sent it.
COMEY: Lordy, I hope you can get it back and do this. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that. I felt it was very important to get it out. It was like feeding seagulls at the beach. Lordy, I hope you can get it back. I don’t want to be the only person in Washington who actually did collude with the Russians!
McCABE: Sure we can fix this. It’s like implementing an insurance policy I once structured. Then we go to the FISA court with Peter’s new edited version, and we get them to give us a warrant to tap — Uh, who should we tap?
COMEY: Kushner? Better yet — let’s tap John Kelly.
STRZOK: You can’t just get a FISA surveillance of an American. C’mon, guys, that’s not how it’s done. Remember what Susan Rice showed us, that trick that she and Samantha Powers came up with at National Security? Ya gotta first get authorization to surveil someone else, a foreigner, who talks to the American you want to tap. Like Manafort’s Russian custom-tailor. Then, when they have their first interaction, you get to unmask the American. So, look, why don’t we just use it to tap this Russian guy my wife has been investigating who invests in Vodka futures on the New York exchange?
McCABE: No kidding? You have a wife? You’re still married? What about whatsername? The one married to Joe Scarborough?
WRAY: You’re mixing them up, Andy. Strzok’s mistress is married to Joe Burrow, not Scarborough. Scarborough is married to the one with the bleeding plastic surgery.
STRZOK: Hey, look, guys. It’s no fun having a secret texting relationship with your own wife. C’mon, Andy, she’d be texting me all day with things to pick up at the grocery, dry cleaner, and drug store. I was meant for greater things — to save America.
McCABE: OK, fine. The Vodka guy is fine. But what’s the point of surveilling a Russian if we can’t unmask an American Republican we want to destroy?
(In the background, the TV screen changes to MSNBC, where there is a flashing sign indicating “Breaking News.”)
STRZOK: My wife has been monitoring this Vodka Guy’s activities anyway. Why not?
MSNBC REPORTER: There was a massive terror attack just now in the South Side of Chicago. Six swarthy men, all with moustaches, all in their 20s, showed up with rifles and box cutters in the Englewood area, while yelling “Allahu Akhbar” or something like that, and started a rampage.
(Comey hustles out of office. McCabe returns to filling out paperwork on his desk. We see a page titled “Application for Early Retirement Bonus.” Checks off a box titled “Please donate $2 to Terry McAuliffe Slush Fund.” Wray leaves the room, muttering the word “Animals!” under his breath.)
(As the FBI closing theme music starts playing in the background, starting softly but crescendoing louder, we see Strzok return to texting:
Lisa, my darling, Secret Plan now operational. FISA 2 issue warrant 2 surveil Russian Vodka guy. Will unmask Melissa. She will B gone B4 summer. Nothing in our way. Soon can text U non-stop 4ever. Did U get the bleach-bit?)
