Obstruction of Justice? Of Course, Yawn.

Up here in the Great White North, we're dampening our dainties over whether the prime minister strong armed a former justice minister to intercede on behalf of a Quebec company with a rich history of corruption at home and abroad. When Canadians get into navel gazing we sometimes lose sight of what's happening elsewhere. For example, the United States.

A gaggle of New York Times reporters, i.e. Haberman et al, have an eye-opening report on how Trump has tried to undermine the New York Southern District prosecutors on the "hush money" scandal.

As federal prosecutors in Manhattan gathered evidence late last year about President Trump’s role in silencing women with hush payments during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called Matthew G. Whitaker, his newly installed attorney general, with a question. He asked whether Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and a Trump ally, could be put in charge of the widening investigation, according to several American officials with direct knowledge of the call.

Mr. Whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to “jump on a grenade” for the president, knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation. The president soon soured on Mr. Whitaker, as he often does with his aides, and complained about his inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s many legal problems go away.

...An examination by The New York Times reveals the extent of an even more sustained, more secretive assault by Mr. Trump on the machinery of federal law enforcement. Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Mr. Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.

It's a long article but well worth the read if only to refresh one's appreciation for the depth of Trump's corruption. We can only hope that Robert Mueller and other federal prosecutors are just sitting on a stack of soon-to-be unsealed indictments.