This is quite a crew of miscreants we have running things these days. If they'd planned the Great Train Robbery, they’d have left the money behind and taken the coal from the engine. If they’d burgled the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, they’d have left the Rembrandt and made off with the fire extinguishers and the Men’s Room sign.

Take it away, NBC News.

President Donald Trump's personal attorney used his Trump Organization email while arranging to transfer money into an account at a Manhattan bank before he wired $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence. The lawyer, Michael Cohen, also regularly used the same email account during 2016 negotiations with the actress — whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford — before she signed a nondisclosure agreement, a source familiar with the discussions told NBC News. And Clifford's attorney at the time addressed correspondence to Cohen in his capacity at the Trump Organization and as "Special Counsel to Donald J. Trump," the source said.

Remind me not to hire this guy to set up my money-laundering operation in the Caymans. Or to help me with my parking tickets, for all that.

In a statement last month, Cohen said he used his "personal funds to facilitate a payment" to Clifford, who says she had an intimate relationship with Trump a decade ago. "Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly," Cohen said in that statement. But an email uncovered in the last 24 hours and provided to NBC News by Clifford's current attorney, Michael Avenatti, shows First Republic Bank and Cohen communicated about the money using his Trump company email address, not his personal gmail account.

If the Benny Hill theme is running through your head right now, you’re not alone.

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That Cohen is the bozo in this little dunk-tank exercise is an occasion for unmistakable schadenfreude. Cohen was the most prominent faux tough-guy in an entourage full of them. Now, it turns out the big-time Manhattan mouthpiece has managed to bungle himself into legal jeopardy regarding a scandal involving the president*’s canoodling with an adult-film actress. If the Republic is saved just because the people trying to steal it are dumb, I’ll take it.

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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