In other words, a White House that initially insisted it had nothing to hide was, in fact, hiding something. It then claimed that it didn’t intend to do what it clearly intended to do, based on the fact that it didn’t get away with doing it. Next, it compounded the prevarication by admitting to its intentions, and insisting there was nothing wrong with them. And, finally, it reverted to denying those intentions altogether.

What kind of fool is Mulvaney, to take the rest of us for such fools?

Mulvaney’s Inspector Clouseau routine follows a week of disclosures about the extent to which U.S. policy toward Ukraine became the province of Rudy Giuliani to the exclusion of the State Department and National Security Council. Giuliani, in turn, was paid $500,000 by the company of a shady business associate who was helping him dig for political dirt in Ukraine. That associate and his partner were recently pulled from a flight on one-way tickets and arrested on charges of campaign-finance violations connected to the ouster of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. No wonder John Bolton described this shadow foreign policy as a “drug deal.”

Donald Trump’s inveterate defenders insist that the president is entitled to conduct foreign policy any way he wants, and delegate authority to whomever he pleases. That just isn’t true.

No president has the right, ever, to use the powers of his office to enrich himself, which is what Trump appears to be doing by designating his Florida golf resort as the site of the next G7 meeting. No president has the automatic right to impound congressionally appropriated funds, above all for nakedly political ends. No president may delegate foreign policy to anyone who abuses that trust for personal profit. No president should derail the career of a foreign-service officer because she would not violate the trust of her office to enable his political vendettas.

And no president should lie so wantonly about his public conduct or enlist the officers of government in the concealment of that conduct. This has been the story of the Trump administration from its first day.