It must be hard being William Barr, the White House's pet Attorney General. He must look like the hero comic of some silent film. He's running around from pillar to post, turning off investigations at every turn. Most recently, it appears that the whole Stormy Daniels affair is going to come down to only Michael Cohen in the sneezer. In ordinary times, however, it would be remarkable to find out that the President of the United States was intimately involved in paying off the porn star with whom he was messing around shortly after the birth of his fourth child by his third wife. But these are not ordinary times, and this is not an ordinary president*, and I'm not entirely sure anything ever will be normal again.

On Thursday, in New York, the FBI unsealed a treasure trove of documents related to its investigation of how the president* and Cohen bought off Stormy Daniels in the middle of a presidential campaign. The reason the FBI could do this is because the actual investigation has been brought to an abrupt end. However, there is no question now that the FBI believed that the President* of the United States was involved in paying off a former mistress and, very likely, a lot of people in his inner circle have been lying about it in a variety of law-enforcement forums ever since. From Politico:

From start to finish, Trump was in regular contact with his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, who arranged the payment. In October, Trump was brought in on a conference call with his longtime communications adviser, Hope Hicks, to discuss efforts to purchase and kill Daniels’ story. Over the coming weeks, Trump had numerous phone calls with Cohen as he went back and forth with Daniels’ attorney. And days before the November election, after The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing a similar hush-payment Cohen also made during the campaign to Playboy model Karen McDougal, Cohen texted “he’s pissed,” an apparent reference to Trump.

The president*’s former lawyer finds himself in the news once again. Yana Paskova Getty Images

And Representative Adam Schiff came to the obvious—and utterly frustrating—conclusion. From Alternet:

“The documents unsealed in the SDNY case against Michael Cohen demonstrate that Donald Trump was intimately involved in devising and executing a corrupt scheme to prevent his affair with Stormy Daniels from being revealed in the final weeks of the 2016 election,” Schiff said. “They show that contrary to his public statements for months afterwards seeking to distance himself from the payments that were made to Daniels, and another woman, Karen McDougal, he authorized the illegal payment of hush money, and coordinated doing so with his attorney, Cohen, and his Press Secretary, Hope Hicks.”

He added: “The inescapable conclusion from all of the public materials available now is that there was ample evidence to charge Donald Trump with the same criminal election law violations for which Michael Cohen pled guilty and is now serving time in prison.”

Bill Barr, who has conflicts of interest like you read about—and you can—is worth every dime they're paying him for short-circuiting the various investigations of this heathen president*.

Here. Read it all for yourself because, if you're lucky enough to live to be 100, the great-grandkids aren't going to believe you.

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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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