conniver

He calls McConnell “the most destructive force in American democracy,” a conniver at personal destruction and a night porter furiously intent on making the rich richer.

But Lincoln’s bumbling successor, Andrew Johnson, brought the conniver back out.

“They didn’t mean well. The older one is an unpleasant conniver like her mother and the younger one is a simpleton. It never entered their heads to mean well.”

“How many moral lapses had I committed? How many ethical breaches had I fallen into? . . . Like many another financial conniver, I was in a short-term mode.”

Also, as the title indicates, the film involves a sordid crime, and features a completely reprehensible key player, an unscrupulous conniver and womanizer who seems, at least on paper, impossible to tolerate.