Oh, mercy, it seems like The Girl With The Faraway Eyes may have discovered that running for president is not like an ATM after all.

The Daily Beast has learned that federal investigators are now interviewing former Bachmann campaign staffers nationwide about alleged intentional campaign-finance violations. The investigators are working on behalf of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which probes reported improprieties by House members and their staffs and then can refer cases to the House Ethics Committee. "I have been interviewed by investigators," says Peter Waldron, a former Bachmann staffer who's embroiled in his own fight with his former boss, involving his allegations of pay-to-play politics and improper payments by the campaign-making him one of several members of Bachmann's inner circle who've fallen out with the woman they once hoped would become commander in chief. While he was careful to avoid specifics in regard to the investigating body, Waldron said that "investigators came [and] interviewed me and are interviewing other staff members across the country." Two other former staffers confirmed the existence of the investigation this weekend, and on Monday Bachmann's campaign counsel, William McGinley, of the high-powered firm Patton Boggs, confirmed that the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) was looking into the congresswoman's presidential campaign last year.

Ever since the 2012 Iowa straw poll, when Bachmann stormed to victory by being the candidate best able to bus old white people efficiently from one part of Iowa to another, there have been rumors that, internally, the Bachmann campaign was a five-alarmer in Shanghai, and that was before Ed Rollins, bless his perpetually treacherous heart, began telling anyone within earshot what a freak show he'd signed up with. Now, though, it seems that the campaign was more than a disorganized mess. It also was a paradise for thieves and bounders. I mean, Lord above, there doesn't seem now to be a law-enforcement agency, large or small, with which the deceased campaign isn't still tangled up.

Bills are piling up in an Iowa court case, Heki v. Bachmann, filed by another former Bachmann staffer,Barb Heki. That suit alleges that onetime state campaign chairman and state Senator Sorenson stole from her-and then used with the candidate's knowledge-an email list of Christian homeschool families in Iowa. Heki's accusation has been backed by a sworn affidavit by former campaign staffer Eric Woolson, who had also been named in the suit, though charges against him were dropped after he submitted his affidavit...Separately, the Urbandale Police Department in Iowa has conducted its own investigation into the theft of that list, and the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee had been probing the actions of Sorenson for allegedly taking "under-the-table payments" from her campaign, according to Waldron, the former Bachmann staffer who filed the initial complaint. In awritten response to the committee, Sorenson has "vehemently denied any wrongdoing as alleged." (That investigation has been put on hold until the criminal investigation is complete.) Ironically, when Sorenson defected to Ron Paul's campaign days before the Iowa caucus, Bachmann herself publically [sic] charged that the influential state senator had told her that he'd been "offered a large amount of money" to shift his allegiance.

To hell with the congressional ethics committee, once the Urbandale Police Department gets on your tail, there's nowhere you can run. Some day, historians are going to look back on the 2012 Republican presidential campaign and think that we made it all up.

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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