Just when you’re getting ready to wrap it up for the holidays and take some time off from anything Donald Trump-related, up pops another story to remind you what sort of man is occupying the Oval Office. On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers reached an agreement with the New York attorney general, Barbara Underwood, to shut down the Donald J. Trump Foundation, an entity that officially had charitable status but was perhaps best known for its purchase of a life-size portrait of Donald J. Trump—or, possibly, for the seven dollars it donated to the Boy Scouts of America, in 1989.

According to David Fahrenthold, the Washington Post journalist who won a Pulitzer for his dogged and devastating reporting about the foundation during the 2016 Presidential campaign, the seven bucks was used to pay the Boy Scouts registration fee for Donald Trump, Jr., who was then eleven years old. The portrait cost considerably more: Trump agreed to pay twenty thousand dollars for it during a 2007 fund-raiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort, in Florida, but it was the foundation that ended up footing the bill.

At least this money went to a reputable charity. Fahrenthold procured a copy of a 2007 check from the foundation for twenty thousand dollars that was made out to “CHILDRENS PLACE AT HOME SAFE,” an organization in South Florida that provides shelter and care to victims of child abuse and domestic violence. But some of the foundation’s cash didn’t go to charities at all. It went to entities and persons that Trump knew or owed money to. In a statement announcing the agreement to close the foundation, Underwood said that her office had found a “shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation—including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”

To be sure, the Trump Organization and Trump himself contest this characterization. In a statement, Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump’s business, said the foundation had given away about nineteen million dollars over the years, of which about eight and a quarter million was donated personally by Trump. (The rest came from other donors.) And, in a Twitter screed on Wednesday, Trump tore into Underwood, her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, and New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, pointing out that they are all “Dems” and saying, “Will never be treated fairly by these people—a total double standard of ‘justice.’ ”

The hollowness of Trump’s protests was illuminated by what he didn’t say. In a lawsuit that Underwood’s office filed in June against the Trump Foundation and its board of directors, the attorney general sought restitution of $2.8 million and additional penalties. Despite the agreement to shutter the foundation, this case is ongoing. If Trump really believes that he has been mistreated, he could fight it in court. And, indeed, such a trial might well be instructive.

It would give the President the opportunity to explain, for instance, how, on September 9, 2013, the Trump Foundation issued a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to And Justice for All, a political organization dedicated to the reëlection of Pam Bondi, the Republican attorney general of Florida, who later endorsed Trump’s Presidential bid, and how subsequently the foundation said, on its 2013 tax return, that the money had gone to a Kansas charity called Justice for All.

If Trump went to court, he could also clear up why, in the spring of 2007, the foundation paid a hundred thousand dollars to a South Florida charity, the Fisher House Foundation, to settle a lawsuit between Mar-a-Lago and the town of Palm Beach over alleged violations of building regulations. The legal petition filed by Underwood’s office in June contains a copy of a handwritten note in which Trump ordered Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, to draw a hundred thousand dollars from the Trump Foundation rather than the Mar-a-Lago business or his personal bank account. Thus, Trump caused the foundation to use “its charitable assets to benefit another organization that he controlled, which constituted improper self-dealing,” the petitions said.

As Fahrenthold’s reports showed more than two years ago, these weren’t isolated instances. In February, 2012, the Trump Foundation paid a hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars to a charitable foundation controlled by Martin B. Greenberg, a golfer who aced a par three at Trump National Golf Club, in Bedminster, New Jersey, during a hole-in-one contest. Greenberg was subsequently denied the million-dollar prize, and he sued. The attorney general’s petition explains how the Trump Foundation settled Greenberg’s lawsuit on behalf of the for-profit Trump National. Then, rather than asking the golf club or Trump himself to put up the money, the foundation organized a charity auction for a lifetime membership at a Trump golf club, saying that the proceeds would “benefit the Donald J. Trump Foundation.” But, in fact, the money raised—$157,250—went to settle Greenberg’s case.

Who arranged this clever scheme? According to the attorney general, the contract between the foundation and the charity-auction Web site that hosted the auction “was signed by then-attorney for Mr. Trump Michael Cohen on behalf of the Foundation.”

I could go on, but you get the picture. The operation of the Trump Foundation reflected the character of the man it was named after: it was disorganized, cavalier with the truth, lacking in substance, and dedicated primarily to the interests of Donald J. Trump. Under the supervision of Underwood’s office, the foundation will soon sell its remaining assets and distribute the proceeds to proper charities. Then it will be no more.

At least for now, however, its founder will go on. The final word goes to my colleague Jeffrey Toobin, who tweeted this message shortly after Underwood announced the agreement to shutter the foundation: “State of play: @realDonaldTrump is unfit to run a charity in New York State but fit to control nuclear weapons that could destroy the world several times over.” Happy holidays!