CLOUD OF SUSPICION? WHAT CLOUD OF SUSPICION?

There's so much going on today that you might have missed this:

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi hasn’t gone Washington. At least not yet.

But her schedule this week in D.C. gives the first tangible signs that she might eventually leave office early to work for President Trump. She pushed a children’s initiative with the Trump administration on Monday, moderates a “Women’s Empowerment” panel Wednesday with the president and first lady and is expected to take a role in helping combat the nation’s opiate-addiction crisis.

Bondi for months has been rumored to be considering a job with Trump, but she has steadfastly refused comment. But she became slightly more vocal Monday after bringing fellow Floridians and former football greats Tony Dungy and Derrick Brooks to Washington to meet with Trump, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.

“I am working on some special projects with the White House,” Bondi, whose term expires in 2019, told POLITICO Florida on Monday without elaborating more.

As you probably know, in 2013 a group connected to Bondi's reelection campaign, And Justice for All, received a $25,000 contribution from the Donald J. Trump Foundation shortly after Bondi's office decided not to join a New York State lawsuit against Trump University. Politifact concluded that this wasn't a quid pro quo, but the only basis for that conclusion seems to have been the word of a Bondy political ally, who insisted that she asked for the contribution before she was aware of allegations against Trump U.

Bondi ... referri[ed] all questions to Marc Reichelderfer, a political consultant who worked for her most re-election effort.

Reichelderfer told AP that Bondi spoke with Trump "several weeks" before her office publicly announced it was deliberating whether to join a lawsuit proposed by New York's Democratic attorney general. Reichelfelder said that Bondi was unaware of dozens of consumer complaints received by her office about Trump's real-estate seminars at the time she requested the donation.

"The process took at least several weeks, from the time they spoke to the time they received the contribution," Reichelderfer told AP.

We have only Reicheldfelder's word on the timing of all this, and we have only his word that she was unaware of the allegations until just before she decided not to join the lawsuit. But she's skated on this, and that's good enough for the Trumpers.

If she does "take a role in helping combat the nation’s opiate-addiction crisis," she'll apparently be working under another shady character who's inexplicably unindicted:

President Trump plans to announce later this week that he has picked the New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to head up a drug commission devoted to the opioid abuse problem....

It's the Trump way, I guess.