CIRCLE OF FRIENDS: Matthew Perry’s personal assistant gave him his last shot of ketamine before the actor passed out and drowned in his hot tub, according to court documents revealed with the announcement of charges against five people in connection with the “Friends” actor’s death.

   The five people charged are two doctors, the personal assistant, a street dealer, and a dealer known as “the Ketamine Queen.”

  The charges say that the personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, gave the actor several ketamine injections on the actor’s last day. Iwamasa, the street dealer, Eric Fleming, and a doctor named Mark Chavez have already made plea deals.

  Ketamine is an anesthetic. Perry wrote a memoir and hit the talk circuit about his downfall with addiction and getting clean, but he fell off the wagon. When the two doctors heard that Perry was in the market for ketamine, one texted the other saying, “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”

 US Atty. Martin Estrada charged that the doctors sold 20 vials of ketamine to Perry for $55,000 in cash. The ketamine Queen is accused of selling about 50 vials of the drug to the actor for $11,000. The street price is about $25 a dose.

ORANGE ALERT!!: Donald Trump held a long and rambling press conference yesterday at his New Jersey golf resort, so long and rambling that CNN cut away until he began to answer reporters’ questions. He went 45 minutes before taking questions, then rambled on with answers, some of them 10 minutes long.

  Trump repeated his now standard complaints that the country will collapse and go communist if Kamala Harris is elected. He said, “She destroys everything she touches and if she wins your finances and your country will never recover. You’re never going to recover.” 

   He told some new lies. He stated as a fact that mortgage rates under the Biden/Harris administration have hit 10 percent. They’re high, but never 10 percent. Today the average mortgage is 7 percent.

  He claimed that Kamala Karris has given social security numbers to three million illegal immigrants. Non-citizens cannot get Social Security numbers.

  He claimed to be the victim of crooked Democratic prosecutors and judges. “They want to put me in prison. Me! It’s never happened before in the history of our country. It’s happened in third world countries.”

  Asked about the wisdom of insulting Harris rather than talking about real issues, Trump said, “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks.” He said, “I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence and I think she’ll be a terrible president.” 

  Speaking of his criminal troubles, Trump appealed to the New York judge in his criminal fraud conviction for a delay in his September 18^th sentencing until after the November election. Sentencing had already been postponed once.   

IT’S POLITICAL: Vice President Kamala Harris this morning revealed a populist economic agenda, including a $6,000 tax credit for a newborn child. She gives details in a speech tonight.

  Harris and Joe Biden made their first joint appearance in Maryland yesterday since Biden the President dropped out of the race for re-election. They celebrated the negotiation of lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

  The Biden administration reached a deal with the drug companies on prices for 10 drugs that would go into effect in 2026. Among them are drugs for diabetes, heart disease, blood cancer, and autoimmune conditions. But the Biden/Harris appearance, although listed as a White House event, had the atmosphere of a campaign rally.

  Gracefully taking the role of lame duck, Biden told the laughing crowd, “I served in the Senate for 270 years.” He said that when he was first elected to the Senate he was criticized for being “too damn young” at age 29 and now he is seen as “too damn old.”

  In vice presidential politics, Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz agreed to debate October 1^st on CBS. Vance is continuing his claim that Walz has been misleading about his 24 years of service in the national Guard. “This is not about disparaging anybody’s services, including Tim Walz,” Vance said yesterday. “This is about disparaging the dishonesty and asking Kamala Harris why are you showing such poor judgement by standing by a guy who insulted our veterans and lied about his service.” 

THE RUSSIA HOUSE: Russia sentenced a Russian-American ballerina to 12 years in prison for donating about $52 to a charity benefitting Ukraine.

  The court in the city of Yekaterinburg said the money donated by Ksenia Karelina, 32, a citizen of both countries, was “subsequently used to purchase tactical medicine, equipment, weapons and ammunition” for Ukraine. Karelina, who lives in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty.

  A spokeswoman for the charity, Razom for Ukraine, told The NY Times that “We are a New York-based nonprofit providing humanitarian aid and assistance to Ukraine. We do not provide weapons to Ukraine’s military.”

  An interesting question is how Russian authorities even knew that Karelina had donated the money. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Actress Gena Rowlands, who starred in the 1974 “A Woman Under the Influence” opposite Peter Falk, has died at age 94. She often worked as she did in that film under the direction of her husband, John Cassavetes.

  In “Woman,” Rowlands played a woman who breaks down and ends up in an institution. Film critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that that Rowlands was “so touchingly vulnerable to every kind of influence around her that we don’t want to tap her because she might fall apart.” — Peter Marshall, an actor, singer, and comedian who hosted “The Hollywood Squares” from 1966 until 1981, has died at age 98.

THE SPIN RACK: The rules change tomorrow for how homes are bought and sold. Traditionally the seller pays agent commissions but that’s becoming negotiable and buyers may have to share the cost. 

BELOW THE FOLD: An estimated half-million people hold tickets for Taylor Swift’s London concert series. Donald Trump would probably say his crowds are bigger.

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