Unless

There’s always new dirt. The avalanche of dirt outpaces our ability to keep track of it.

Exactly one year ago this week, Donald Trump threatened to impose “harsh measures” on the state of Colorado unless it agreed to release election denier Tina Peters from prison several years before her sentence runs its course. The degree to which the president was serious is still coming into focus.

The New York Times reported late last week, for example, that as Trump publicly condemned the Rocky Mountain State for incarcerating a convicted felon, the White House organized an urgent “brainstorm call” with five federal agencies, with the goal of exploring ways to curtail federal support to Colorado. The meeting, evidently, was a success — at least as far as the administration was concerned.

That’s…not how this is supposed to work. It’s just unabashed racketeering. “Cut her loose or you’ll have Johnny Filth on your tail for the rest of your life, which may be short.”

The [day after the “brainstorm call”] the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy, whose representatives were invited to the brainstorm, announced they were canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for Colorado projects.

State officials say the email, which was revealed in a federal court hearing on Tuesday, is the clearest evidence yet that the Trump administration marshaled government resources to retaliate against Colorado over its use of mail-in ballots and its conviction of Ms. Peters, a county clerk who was found guilty in a plot to tamper with voting machines after the 2020 election.

So we’re not allowed to prosecute election fraud now if it’s Trump who benefits from the fraud.

The Times summarized late last year, “Miffed at Colorado’s votes against him in three successive elections and furious at its refusal to free Tina Peters, a convicted election denier and ardent Trump supporter, Mr. Trump has opened an assault against the Democratic-run state. His administration has cut off transportation money, relocated the military’s Space Command, vowed to dismantle a leading climate and weather research center and rejected disaster relief for rural counties hammered by floods and wildfires.”

That last one is particularly nice. No disaster relief for you because this one crook went to prison.

A few months later, the Republican administration also took steps to dismantle a renowned science lab in Colorado, which also appeared to be an extension of an aggressive retaliation scheme.

But while the pattern is not new, what is new is the newly disclosed document: We’re now aware of an email, sent by White House special assistant Emily Underwood just days after the president published a series of messages related to Peters, which reinforces rather obvious suspicions that the administration’s campaign against Colorado was not a mere coincidence: Team Trump set out to punish the state, and then took a variety of steps to execute that plan.

They’ll be arresting and torturing people’s children next.