But he has reportedly taken a keen interest in confirming one official: his pick for . . . IRS chief counsel?

It’s not difficult to surmise a very self-serving reason for that. And other recent Trump appointments only reinforce the possibility that his motives aren’t entirely pure here.

The New York Times reported Thursday night that Trump pushed to put the IRS nomination of Michael J. Desmond on the fast track. Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos write that Trump asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in early February to take it up even before taking up Trump’s attorney general nomination of William P. Barr. That’s remarkable, given the gravity of the office Barr was being nominated to and his now-much-discussed role in overseeing the end of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation.

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The effort is problematic for a number of reasons. One is that Democrats at the time had been telegraphing a push to use an obscure federal law to force the IRS to share Trump’s long-hidden tax returns. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) previewed that battle shortly after Democrats won back the House in November. And given the law’s obscurity, there will almost definitely be a protracted legal battle that would involve the IRS chief counsel.

Another reason, as the Times notes, is that Desmond has personal ties to Trump:

In July, when Mr. Desmond was first being considered by the Senate Finance Committee, Bloomberg reported that he had briefly advised the Trump Organization on tax issues before Mr. Trump took office. James Wilkinson, a spokesman for Mr. Desmond, told Bloomberg that Mr. Desmond had helped with “a discrete reporting matter for a subsidiary company that was resolved with no tax impact.” In private practice, Mr. Desmond worked for a time alongside William Nelson and Sheri Dillon, who currently serve as tax counsels to the Trump Organization.

Adding to the intrigue is a fast-emerging pattern of Trump installing people who have publicly taken his side on some issues of very serious interest — and often very personal interest — to Trump.

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I’m not the first to note or assemble these examples and make the point that perhaps Trump is trying to install people to do his bidding — or suggest that some of these people may have been auditioning for these jobs with their public comments. Nor would it be unusual for a president to install like-minded people in positions of power.

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But these are all issues in which Trump has a very vested personal interest. Barr has gone on to characterize the Mueller report in a way that allowed Trump to claim total exoneration and has made Mueller’s team uncomfortable. Trump’s public pressure on the Fed not to raise interest rates is out of line with how presidents usually talk about the Fed, and he clearly views it as hurting his political stock. Trump rather obviously doesn’t want to release his tax returns.