For those of us who were amazed and (ultimately) appalled as the Great Penis Hunt unfolded in the years 1997 and 1998, seeing Joseph diGenova back on the national stage, this time as a mouthpiece supporting a president being dogged by a special prosecutor, is proof enough that, whatever else we may think of Her, God has a deft hand for the plot twist.

Back 20 years ago, diGenova and his wife, a lawyer named Victoria Toensing, were regulars on the then-nascent political gab circuit. (This was when people like Geraldo Rivera and Charles Grodin had shows, and when Chris Matthews was going completely bananas over the wandering presidential priapus, and when Kellyanne Conway was Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, and when you and I were young, mother.) But diGenova was an all-purpose opinion grinder.

DiGenova and Toensing Getty Images

For example, back in 1997, he thought the only salvation for the Republic was to have Ken Starr indict Bill Clinton for lying about several blowjobs, and for obstructing justice in the case of several blowjobs. In The Wall Street Journal, diGenova wrote:



"Can the president of the United States be indicted? The question is of more than academic concern now. Every day brings fresh revelations of potentially criminal conduct by Bill Clinton, Al Gore and their aides, in matters ranging from Whitewater to Filegate."

For those of you who may have joined American politics already in progress, both Whitewater and Filegate were nothingburgers; even Ken Starr admitted this to the House Judiciary Committee. Now, of course, diGenova is the newest recruit to a legal team that believes that indicting a sitting president is contrary to the rules of the Constitution, the criminal code, and cricket. And, besides, diGenova has bigger fish to fry. From Real Clear Politics:



Everything we have seen from these texts, and from all the facts developing, shows that the FBI and senior DOJ officials conspired to violate the law, and deny Donald Trump his civil rights. The motive would be that they didn't like Donald Trump, they didn't think that he was fit to be president, and they were going to do everything within their power to exonerate Hillary Clinton, and if she lost to frame Donald Trump with a false crime, because they didn't think he should be president.

He is not, as you can plainly see, a crank.

Meanwhile, diGenova’s wife, the aforementioned Ms. Toensing, is working these days at laying a few more whacks into the dead horse that is Uranium One. In the pairs competition, they earlier promoted the notion that the Obama administration was threatening witnesses in the endless Benghazi investigation. You have to give Republicans credit. They are better than a summer music-shed tour at getting the band back together again.

Fifteen years ago, partly at the urging of people whose public careers should have been ended with their involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, President George W. Bush launched his invasion of Iraq, which remains at the top of the list of foreign-policy debacles in American history. Now we have the Whitewater Undead staggering out of the ancient crypts of cable news and back abroad in our politics again. Somebody should ring the green rooms with garlic.

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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