All of these things hit between three and five o'clock Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday.

Taking the side of a foreign despot who murdered and dismembered an American resident journalist, a clearly impeachable offense, and another story about the deeply corrupt hack whom you intend to use to obstruct justice in the biggest way possible. You have to admit, that's a helluva two hours right there. From the Times:

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.



The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.



The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. It took on additional significance in recent weeks when Mr. McGahn left the White House and Mr. Trump appointed a relatively inexperienced political loyalist, Matthew G. Whitaker, as the acting attorney general.



Here's the thing. If we're still following the Constitution, as soon as the president* finished asking the question, he was guilty of a high crime and liable to impeachment and removal from office. It doesn't matter that it never happened, or that McGahn talked him out of it. Given his position, the very suggestion by the president* that the Justice Department behave as his personal Praetorian Guard is an obstruction of justice and an abuse of power. McGahn should've walked that conversation over to Robert Mueller's place as soon as he left the Oval Office. However, he didn't, and the Times leaves us with this little land mine deep in the story.



It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further.

It is? We're "unclear" whether the president* actually acted on this notion, compounding his felonies, and we're "unclear" whether investigations of Clinton and Comey might be underway right now. That's one fcklord of a cliffhanger right there, NYT.

Perhaps more than any president since Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Trump has been accused of trying to exploit his authority over law enforcement. Witnesses have told the special counsel’s investigators about how Mr. Trump tried to end an investigation into an aide, install loyalists to oversee the inquiry into his campaign and fire Mr. Mueller.

If everybody does his or her job the right way, they're going to have to bring the copies of the indictments up the Potomac by barge.

Meanwhile, the White House continues to insist that the Mueller investigation should be put into the grasping hands of Matt Whitaker who, as an old cop reporter once put it to me, apparently wears rubber pockets so he can steal soup. He's already been tied to a scam that cheated veterans, and to a sham company that promised to patent time travel, as well as toilets for men with big dicks. Now, the Washington Post tells us that Whitaker's rise to legal prominence was fueled by dark money that he didn't even have to con out of people.

Whitaker’s 2017 pay from the charity—more than $500,000 for the first nine months, or half the charity’s receipts for the year, according to tax filings — and the group’s earlier, dormant incarnation have not been previously reported by media. Whitaker did not respond to requests for interviews. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to answer detailed questions about his involvement in FACT, referring a reporter to the charity. A FACT spokesman who provided a statement on the condition that his name not be used declined to disclose the source of its funding. “Like nearly all non-profit organizations — including those with similarly stated missions—FACT does not and is not required to release its donor information,” the statement said. “This protects free speech rights of all of these groups’ supporters as outlined in the First Amendment.”

Matthew Whitaker Getty Images

(An aside: remember the whole IRS nothingburger? The performance outrage by conservative activists who claimed that the jackbooted IRS was treading heavily on their First Amendment right to lie people out of their money? This is what it all was about—a protection racket for phony "charity" and "public service" organizations that really engage in dark-money political activism.)

Whitaker was a natural for this kind of thing.

When the nonprofit was launched in 2012, Whitaker was a former U.S. attorney with a modest legal practice in Iowa that paid him $79,000 that year, according to a later disclosure he filed for a failed Senate bid. He also had several local side businesses, including a day-care center and a trailer manufacturer.

Then, along came the Wingnut Welfare Fairy to touch him with her wand.

The Post determined from other tax filings that the money came from DonorsTrust, a large nonprofit organization that wealthy contributors have used to anonymously give millions to conservative nonprofits in recent years. The president of DonorsTrust, Lawson Bader, declined to identify the source of the funding contributed to FACT through his organization. FACT launched its advocacy efforts shortly after Whitaker took over, describing itself in a news release as a “new watchdog group.” On its website and in tax filings in 2014, FACT said that its mission was “to educate the public about unethical conduct on the part of public officials by publicizing these actions through media outlets throughout the country” and through its own website. The new three-member board now comprised Whitaker, Whitaker’s former law partner and a conservative activist, Neil Corkery, who is involved in operating or funding multiple conservative charities. Whitaker’s former partner, William Gustoff, did not return calls for comment. Corkery did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.

And thank you once again, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The IRS prohibits charities from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, for or against candidates. The prohibition is rarely enforced.

Ah, well.

Again, all of this came to light in one two-hour period on one Tuesday of a holiday week. A corrupt president*, already impeachable by any reasonable standard, simultaneously tries to put a bobo in at the Department of Justice and gives us a "maybe yes, maybe no" on the atrocity murder of a journalist, a crime very likely committed at the order of a barbaric foreign satrap with whom the president* has god alone knows how many business ties. Two hours on a Tuesday. So much is falling down.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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