What did Donald Trump do today?

He nominated still yet another of his personal criminal defense attorneys to a top DOJ post.

Today, Trump announced that he was nominating James M. McDonald as the next US Attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York. McDonald is currently a member of Trump's legal defense team trying to appeal his conviction in the New York state fraud case. He was found guilty of 34 felonies relating to his attempt to launder an illegal in-kind hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress he had a brief sexual encounter with shortly after the birth of his youngest son.

Trump may be the only president in history to have personal criminal defense lawyers on retainer at the time he took office. Prior to Trump, no incoming president had ever been indicted on state or federal felony charges, much less convicted. 

McDonald joins a long list of Trump defense attorneys who are being put in sensitive positions in the DOJ and the federal bench. Trump's first attorney general, Pam Bondi, was part of his impeachment defense team. His current nominee for that position, Todd Blanche, defended Trump and other people in Trump's circle after they were indicted for their roles in the conspiracy to keep Trump in office after 2020. (Blanche is also the person Trump trusted to "interview" Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted child sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, after which Maxwell received an upgrade to a minimum-security federal "resort" prison.) Trump appointed yet another of his criminal lawyers, Emil Bove, to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Matthew Schwartz, another lawyer on his criminal appeals team, was nominated by Trump as a judge on the Second Circuit. Trump named D. John Sauer, who secured for him a Supreme Court ruling making him all but invulnerable to criminal prosecution for crimes committed while in office, his first Solicitor General.

Trump hasn't really made any secret as to why he only seems to trust lawyers who have a track record of shielding him from prosecution. He was infuriated when both of his Attorneys General from his first term eventually reached a point where they refused to act as his personal lawyer: Jefferson Sessions, when evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election became undeniable, and William Barr, when Trump was in the throes of trying to attempt a coup to toss out 2020 election.

When Sessions appointed a special prosecutor, Trump reportedly wailed, "Where's my Roy Cohn?!" That was a reference to Trump's disgraced former lawyer and notorious political dirty trickster Roy Cohn, who died in 1986. Trump publicly distanced himself from Cohn when it was revealed that Cohn, a closeted gay man, was dying of AIDS—but publicly praised him for his "loyalty" above all else. 

Trump replaced sessions with Barr, a political brawler who showed none of Sessions' respect for the traditional separation of legal and political matters. But when Barr told reporters that there was no evidence of voter fraud (or at least none against Trump), which by then had become undeniable, Trump was so enraged he threw his lunch plate at the wall.

McDonald, if confirmed, would have prosecutorial jurisdiction over the city in which the Trump Organization is based. He would also be responsible for prosecuting, or choosing not to prosecut, white-collar crimes like corporate fraud and insider trading committed there.

Why does this matter?

• The Justice Department is supposed to serve the interests of the people of the United States, not Donald Trump personally. 

• A president who wasn't afraid his crimes, past or present, would catch up to him probably wouldn't be so worried about "loyalty" from prosecutors.