As someone else said, I thought I was going to see The Onion as the source or a “/sarc” tag on this story.
Even if the allegations are true — and let's be honest, there is a history of problems with banking operations in the Vatican, and Italian politics and finance are not exactly the most up-and-up in the world — this shows incredible political stupidity. What president in his right mind would do something like this in an election year? It would be comparable to the governor of Michigan opening a corruption probe of General Motors and the UAW at the same time half a year before his re-election date.
There are some things you just don't do.
In fact, this is so politically idiotic that I seriously wonder if it's something that was done by a career staff member who is politically tone-deaf, and if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama decided they couldn't stand in the way of a senior staff recommendation because if they tried to postpone or delay things, once they got involved, the whole mess would blow sky high.
Those of us outside the beltway sometimes assume that presidents have huge control of the levers of government. That is not necessarily the case. Just as the career civil service people pretty much run the Department of Defense's day-to-day operations, most Washington bureaucracies operate largely autonomously of whoever happens to be in the White House, and people at the cabinet secretary level sometimes find out very late in the process what their career staff have been doing.
What president in his right mind would do something like this in an election year?
Yes indeed
What President would?
I think in the end the question is: Has the government crossed that sacred line in the sand and violated something we all hold so dear we will not back away from?
And if so
What do you want to do?