From the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, we could see that his intention was to surround himself with people who were loyal only to him. Family members, business partners, and old friends all got favorable treatment, so long as they complied with his every whim.

It’s one thing, however, to simply appoint your daughter as an “advisor” to your office. That’s a largely meaningless position, no matter how important she thinks she is.

It is another thing entirely to hire three people from your golf resort to help make decisions about the future of a government program.

That’s exactly what Trump did in 2017, when he asked Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, and attorney Marc Sherman to act as “unofficial advisors” on veterans’ affairs. The three were all dues-paying members of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, which he frequently referred to as the “Winter White House.”

Reports had surfaced earlier this year that the men had enjoyed unprecedented access to VA officials with any actual oversight from Congress. The White House claimed in 2017 that they were simply asked to come on board so that Trump could have “outside views” for the government’s 10th-largest agency.

But a September report from the House Oversight Committee — now under Democratic control, unlike during the Trump era — found that the three had “violated the law and sought to exert improper influence over government officials to further their own personal interests.”

Now, in response to a lawsuit, the VA is finally admitting that the men “had what appears to be unusually pervasive access to certain senior political officials in the department, and these private citizens apparently sought to exert influence with respect to certain government initiatives.”

VA officials still have not conceded that there was anything illegal that went on, but said that “even the appearance of these individuals’ access to the VA during the previous administration may have been concerning to the public.”

It was more than a little concerning. It was cronyism in its most blatant form.

Christo Aivalis explains this all quite well: