There may be moments in the day when you start feeling optimistic about the country again, secure in the knowledge that the modern Republican Party isn't putting absolutely everything up for sale, and that things like our national credibility are still things on which it's impossible to put a price.

Stop doing that immediately.

Colum Lynch at Foreign Policy has some great reporting about how some of the GOP's stars in Washington are managing to help subcontract corruption in Guatemala on behalf of President Jimmy Morales—who, it appears, would steal someone's gray-haired granny and sell her for parts—and his immediate family. Things got so crooked under President Jimmy that the United Nations put together a delightfully named commission to run the corruption down—the U.N. International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala. (We could use a commission against impunity in this country, I'll tell you.)

This commission did some fine work; among other things, it's credited with slowing down the flow of both immigrants and drugs from Guatemala into the United States, which is something that the big, beautiful stupid wall is supposed to do. However, it also was getting a little too close to President Jimmy and his family. From FP:

When Morales announced plans in early January to terminate the U.N. commission’s mandate, giving its investigators 24 hours to shut their office, the U.S. response was limited to a mild statement of concern about corruption in Guatemala from the U.S. Embassy. It didn’t even mention the U.N. commission.

Jimmy Morales ORLANDO ESTRADA Getty Images

The speculation is that President Jimmy is being rewarded by this administration* because he was one of the first foreign leaders to endorse the decision to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. This appears to make no sense—what in hell did President Jimmy have to lose?—until you remember that, among his other less-than-admirable qualities, President Jimmy is also a Bible-banger of the first order, and those folks want the embassy in Jerusalem because they believe it will hasten the day when Jesus comes back as an action-hero and starts disemboweling people on the plains of Megiddo.

One thing that happened was that Guatemala’s conservative president, himself an evangelical Christian, has succeeded in shattering the political consensus, forging alliances with a coalition of U.S. conservatives. That coalition includes Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. envoy Nikki Haley, Sen. Marco Rubio, evangelical Christians, and conservative think tanks and pundits who share antipathy toward the United Nations and a preference for friendly sovereign states to be able to act as they please.

“We have seen a breakdown of the bipartisan consensus on the issue of anti-corruption and democratic governance,” said Eric Olson of the Seattle International Foundation, which funds anti-poverty programs throughout Central America. “If you can prove you’re going to be loyal on something—in this case moving the embassy to Jerusalem or not backing China’s claims on Taiwan—[the United States] may go light on corruption.”

The commission took its dangerous work seriously. It even is partly responsible for President Jimmy's rise to power, the commission having helped send the previous president and vice president up the river on corruption charges. Those prosecutors were hung somewhat out to dry by President Jimmy's shutdown of the commission's work.

Ivanka Trump and Steven Mnuchin at the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem MENAHEM KAHANA Getty Images

And he has found new friends in Washington, too.

As Morales has sought to hamstring the commission that is investigating him, he has gotten political cover from Capitol Hill, political appointees in the State Department, and the White House. Last March, Haley, then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, traveled to Guatemala City as part of a Central American friendship tour to glad-hand countries that stood with the United States in a U.N. vote denouncing the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Haley said the visit was aimed at promoting the fight against corruption, human trafficking, and the drug trade. She publicly underlined U.S. support for the U.N. commission and advised Morales in a face-to-face meeting that it was “in his best interest” to cooperate.

But privately, in a meeting that included Velásquez and Guatemala’s then-attorney general, Haley dressed down the U.S. ambassador, Luis Arreaga, for publicly supporting the U.N. commission, according to three diplomatic sources briefed on the exchange. Haley was particularly irked that Arreaga had appeared at a press conference with Velásquez the month before. In photos from the event, each held a bumper sticker reading “I love CICIG” in Spanish.

Read the whole thing. It's an appalling mess that seems destined to leave President Jimmy in office because a U.S. Embassy got moved half a world away. Before he was president, President Jimmy was a TV comic. Democracies should stop electing people like that.

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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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