Ty Cobb is a White House attorney. He was hired in July and has been of interest to the public thus far mostly because he has a distinctive mustache and is named Ty Cobb, like the baseball player, to whom he is apparently distantly related. Now, however, he’s also notable for writing a comically disjointed but heartfelt late-night email about Russia to the owner of a noodle restaurant who had been harassing him via unsolicited messages about fellatio.

Business Insider broke this classic story of unlikely friendship between mustache lawyer and noodle fellatio man*:

The exchange on Tuesday night was with Jeff Jetton, the owner of a popular ramen restaurant in Washington, DC, who has made himself known to reporters by digging into Trump’s alleged ties to Russia … Cobb, a partner at Hogan Lovells, responded to Jetton’s obscenity-laden emails using his official White House email account.

Jetton sent Slate his email exchange with Cobb (really). Here’s the kind of thing Jetton was writing to the attorney before their conversation turned serious:

At what point will you stop fondling the Don’s balls and say no, out of curiosity?

Also:

Have fun choking Trump’s nutsack. Douche.

And:

I wish you nothing but joy when his hairy testicles get caught up in your throat.

For some reason—boredom, perhaps—Cobb responded to one of the non-obscene sections of the emails, in which Jetton asked him how he personally justified working for a figure like Trump. They went back and forth a while; here’s one of Cobb’s responses:

Can say assertively the more adults in the room will be better. Me and Kelly among others. Over and out



Another:

All deserve a defense. Particularly with phony allegations and fake news. I am on’t be here for long but will be I my piece against bullshit Russian bullshit that hurts us now and is totally political limiting Russian cooperation against NK. This shit is real and real time. Got to go: Best, Ty



Typos aside, the gist here is comprehensible: Every American deserves a defense, including Donald Trump, and Cobb believes that he’s helping the country by providing a stable presence in the White House and dealing with what he believes to be an overblown scandal that’s harming American interests. Also, “bullshit Russian bullshit” is a great phrase. Ty Cobb for president?

*Correction, Sept. 6, 2017, at 4:20 p.m.: This post originally stated that Mother Jones broke the Cobb-Jetton story; in fact, Business Insider was the first site to publish a piece about their exchange.

Cobb’s interlocutor was, improbably, the owner of a Washington noodle shop called Toki. This restauranteur, Jeff Jetton, has been something of a mixer or an amateur investigator in the Russia scandal. On his own initiative, he has reached out to players in the controversy—including Carter Page and Sergei Millian —and published interviews with them on a pop-culture blog called Brightest Young Things. Brightest Young Things.