The worlds he conjures are full of terror and mischief. One of the novellas in his latest book, “Strange Weather,” tells of a gun massacre. Another recounts a bout of inclement weather that sends lethal shards of crystal raining down on unsuspecting residents of Boulder, Colorado.

Joe Hill — a pen name used by Joe Hillstrom King, the son of Stephen King — has an eye for the macabre.

When Hill trained his eye on "Jaws," 40 years after Steven Spielberg's tale of a man-eating great white shark first smashed box-office records in the summer of 1975, the writer saw something that prickled his skin with goose bumps and jolted him from his seat at a movie theater in Newington, New Hampshire.

It wasn't the marauding of the marine antagonist that stupefied him, but rather the fleeting appearance of an extra cast in a crowd scene approximately 54 minutes and 2 seconds into the film. The young woman seemed to have the same visage he had recently seen in a composite sketch of the victim of a grisly murder that has stumped police on the far reaches of Cape Cod for 44 years.

Hill first recorded his hypothesis on his Tumblr page in 2015, writing, "Put on your tin-foil hats and buckle up for a ride to Crazy Town, folks." Now, a reference to his musings in a new podcast, "Inside Jaws," which documents the making of the film that made Spielberg's name, has renewed interest in his theory.

"My thing is writing ghost stories," Hill said in an interview this week with The Washington Post. "I can't tell if this is my imagination just doing the thing that it always does or if there's actually something there."

Authorities wouldn't help settle that question. The detective working on the case, Meredith K. Lobur, didn't return a request for comment on whether "Jaws" features in the ongoing investigation.

One morning in late July, in 1974, a teenage girl was walking her dog along the sandy dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, when she came to a grove of scrub pine trees. In a clearing lay the naked body of a woman, already badly decomposed in the summer heat. She had been between 20 and 40 years old, police estimate, when she was killed by a blow to the left side of her skull. She had auburn hair, tied in a ponytail with a rubber barrette, and pink-painted toenails.

Her corpse, on its side on a green beach blanket, measured about five-and-a-half feet. Her exact height couldn't be determined because her neck had been nearly severed. Her head rested on a pair of Wrangler jeans and a blue bandana, according to police information and press reports at the time. Her hands had been cut off and were missing.

A clue lay in seven gold crowns found on her teeth that revealed what police described as “the New York style” of dentistry, but authorities have never been able to figure out her identity, much less that of her killer. They exhumed her body in 2010 to create a composite sketch, and the Boston Globe has documented tactics ranging from extracting DNA samples to using ground-penetrating radar, from contacting thousands of dentists to fabricating a three-dimensional plaster reconstruction of her face.

Still, she is know only as “Lady in the Dunes.”

Joe Hill, the pen name of Joe Hillstrom King and the elder son of Stephen King, believes the movie "Jaws" might hold a clue to a 1974 cold case. His theory is resurfacing with a podcast, "Inside Jaws," released this summer.

The forensic reconstruction of the victim that appeared in the Globe in 2010 drove the writer Deborah Halber to explore a collection of unsolved cases, as well as citizen efforts to crack them, in her book, “The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America’s Coldest Cases.”

Within months of its publication in 2014, that book wound up in the hands of Hill. He was especially struck by the case of the “Lady in the Dunes” — “the holy grail for amateur sleuths,” he said — and he took to the internet to find out more. On Wikipedia, he became transfixed by the forensic recreation of the victim’s face. The composite sketch, which could be a photograph but for its translucent tinge, portrays a woman with shoulder-length hair, full eyebrows and youthful, well-defined features.

Soon after he finished Halber's account, Hill found himself at a theater with his three sons for a 40th-anniversary screening of "Jaws," his favorite film.

About a third of the way through the film, which was filmed in the summer of 1974, a ferry disembarks at Martha's Vineyard, an island off the southern end of Cape Cod. In the crowd is a woman wearing jeans and a blue bandana.

"I felt I had seen 'Lady of the Dunes,' that her face had come up out of the crowd at me," Hill said, a boyish lilt rising in his voice. "It came and went in a moment, and there was no rewind button."

He wondered: Had an extra in "Jaws" been brutally murdered 100 miles away from the site where the movie was filmed? The woman's build looked similar. There was the blue bandana. "I don't believe she's wearing Wrangler jeans, but presumably a girl owns more than one pair of jeans," Hill said.

"I've heard it said that everyone who was out on Cape Cod in the summer of 1974 appears in the movie "Jaws," Hill said. "I'm sure that's an exaggeration, but there's a nugget of truth. People knew there were movie stars on Martha's Vineyard. The possibility that a person would make a stop on the island and appear in the movie is not unreasonable."

That evening, he looked on his computer to see if he could zero in on the scene. But the screen on his 15-inch MacBook didn't yield a clear enough picture. He let it go for a while, occasionally telling friends about what he had seen.

When he mentioned the theory to an FBI agent he knew socially, he expected the law-enforcement official to tease him. Instead, the agent told him stranger ideas had cracked cold cases and advised him to post about it online. He went back to the scene in question and flipped through one frame at a time. "And there she is," Hill said.

The writer took to Tumblr, acknowledging that his idea was far-fetched but asking readers to consider the possibility that “the young murder victim no one has ever been able to identify has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in a beloved summer classic and they didn’t even know they were looking at her.”

The cold case had already taken on the aura of legend. The best-selling author asks: Why not consider a lead arising from a rollicking tale of murder at sea?

When he brought his theory to the Provincetown Police Department, the detective working on the case told him, "That's an interesting theory,'" Hill recalled. "I took that as a polite way of saying, 'that's pretty crazy and useless.' But another guy who's worked on the case recently said, 'you don't know, odds are long.'"

At the time of production on "Jaws," Hill said, film studios didn't keep the same sort of records on extras that they do now. An inquiry to an archivist at Universal Pictures made several years ago by a writer at Entertainment Weekly was unsuccessful, he said.

But he is optimistic that investigators will solve the case. "I don't think they'll ever quit," he said.

As for whether his hypothesis can help, Hill allowed, "I'm aware that it's probably only an interesting sort of ghost story, a tantalizing 'what if?'

At the same time, he said, calling attention to the hordes of people on Martha's Vineyard that summer can only further the investigation. "There are people alive today who were in that shot in "Jaws" and know they're in that shot."

And no matter how emphatically he tells himself that he was primed to see the "Lady in the Dunes" in "Jaws" because he had just read about her, he can't get over the concurrence of two remarkable events.

"Two astonishing things happened on Cape Cod in the summer of 1974," he said. "One is that Steven Spielberg filmed 'Jaws,' and other is that someone murdered this woman in the dunes outside Provincetown and got away with it. Anything that stirs people's memories could potentially be productive."

Meanwhile, the idea has fascinated not only Hill but his father. "Everyone in my family likes a good bit of weird unsettling Americana," the writer said.

But you don't have to be a teller of horror stories to find the possibility that "Jaws" could bring heat to a cold case alluring, Hill insisted.

“When faced with grotesque, inexplicable tragedies, one of the ways that human beings master their own anxiety and concern is by trying to reduce it to a crossword puzzle, and if you have the right inspiration, you can bring order back to chaos,” he said.

Michael Bliss would like to bury the father he lost when he was 3 years old.

Valerie Lindsay would like the remains of the uncle she never met.

And former Marine Sgt. John Cole hopes the U.S. government identifies the remains of the two men he lost from the fire team he commanded in 1950.

“I could have been in that group,” Cole said of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who were killed during the Korean War and their bodies never recovered. “I could have been in one of that 5,500 they’re still looking for.”

The U.S. Department of Defense says there are 34 Utahns still missing in action from the Korean War. Their families, as well as those Utahns who served on the Korean Peninsula, have been watching the news over the past week hoping their loved ones or comrades are among the remains the North Korean government recently provided to the United States.

None of the families or veterans expects a quick answer. The Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency has spent years explaining their work to them and giving them updates on their individual cases.

“It’s such a long process to identify them,” said Bliss, whose father, Army 1st Lt. Clarence Bliss, of Bountiful, was lost in 1952. “I’m not holding out hope that we’ll find anything out anytime soon.”

Yet Bliss is optimistic he will one day be able to bury his father. He long ago provided a DNA sample that might be used to confirm whether some set of repatriated remains are that of his dad, a forward observer who was scouting enemy positions when the airplane he was aboard vanished.

The remains might also answer questions about what happened to him. His son assumes the plane was shot down, but there was no distress call and no eyewitnesses. Nor was Clarence Bliss, who was 31 and whose wife was pregnant with their second child when he went missing, ever reported as being a prisoner of war.

“It would be nice to give him a burial and have a closure, from that standpoint,” said Michael Bliss, 70, “and have a place that family can go and just kind of honor him.”

Sunny Lee, a Seoul-born resident of Springdale, who helps organize trips to South Korea for former soldiers and their families, said she has been watching the news of the repatriated remains and been speaking with families from across the country, wondering if their loved ones are in any of the caskets that recently landed in Hawaii.

There’s not much families can do right now. She urged any families who have not already done so to try to attend one of the meetings the POW/MIA Accounting Agency holds around the country and submit a DNA sample there.

Lee has known families who went on the “emotional journey” of having their soldier’s remains returned from the Korean Peninsula.

“You cannot imagine that they’ve been waiting six decades," Lee said, “and now finally they are coming home.”

Lindsay believes she knows what happened to her uncle, Army Pfc. Patrick W. Van Dewerker, of Brigham City. Witnesses and Defense Department research, she said, indicate he was taken prisoner while fighting in Taejon (Daejeon), South Korea, on July 20, 1950. Reports showed he was forced to walk in what was called the “Tiger Death March” and died in the cold in North Korea.

The remains have never been returned, Lindsay said. She would like a funeral for Van Dewerker while four of his 14 siblings are still alive.

Some of Van Dewerker’s older brothers served in the military, Lindsay said. “I guess he just considered it his duty."

Cole’s fire team was at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. He doesn’t know the names of the two men he lost.

They mostly called each other by where they were from. Cole was called “Utah.” Cole’s machine gunner, he said, was “New York.” And the two men whose remains have never been recovered were “New Jersey” and “Missouri.”

Now 91, Cole has been one of Utah’s foremost advocates for Korean War veterans, helping raise money for memorials and organizing ceremonies. He sees the personnel still missing in the two Koreas as unfinished business that’s being addressed with the recent return of remains.

“To me, it’s a huge great step toward getting our veterans out of North Korea,” he said.

As of Dec. 31, 2017, the POW/MIA Accounting Agency listed 34 Utahns as still missing from the Korean War.

Rep. Chris Stewart says don’t trust what you see: President Donald Trump fawning over Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint news conference.

Don’t trust what you read: the president’s own tweets about no Russian meddling in our elections. Don’t trust what you hear: the president stating that he doesn’t see why Russia would interfere and trusts Putin when he says they didn’t try to influence our election. Our president is really tough on Putin? I don’t think so.

Rep. Stewart has sold out and has become a big part of the problem in Washington. Time for you to go.

Mike Mitchell, Salt Lake City

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The letter to the editor “Education, not a ban, will reduce the need for abortions” by Jared Buhanan-Decker, published Aug. 3, makes excellent points.

I would go on to add that attempts to ban abortions or make their access more difficult will only impact the poor. Abortions will always be accessible to the rich who can travel to other states, to Canada or to European countries where it is legal and safe.

You would think that conservatives, who are the ones most opposed to abortions, would be opposed to limiting individual freedoms for women. Limiting access to legal abortions forces women to have babies they cannot afford or they are too young to support. This just adds more people, mostly brown and black, who will become poor, users of government services, and fill our prisons.

Yes, education is the answer to reducing poverty and the need for abortions. Conservatives, if they truly are conservative, should understand the concept of spending money now for better education, which will save much more money later. Let’s help people become productive members of society, and taxpayers vs. tax users. This is the moral and also the cost-effective approach!

Mark Rothacher, Salt Lake City

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A case alleging Mitchell Kyle Henderson beat up his first wife — after marrying a second, “spiritual” spouse — is headed toward trial, and television’s most famous polygamist may testify.

Kody Brown, star of the reality show “Sister Wives,” is listed as an expert witness for the defense. A court filing says Brown will testify about the polygamous church he has attended, the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB).

Brown would be countering the testimony of a prosecution witness who will describe the AUB as patriarchal.

Henderson, a longtime friend of Brown, is charged in state court in Provo with six felony counts, including accusations of assault, domestic violence, witness tampering and violation of a protective order.

Each count carries up to five years in prison. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Sept. 11.

Henderson’s lawyer, former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, doesn’t want to have to call Brown as a witness. Shurtleff said he will file a motion asking the judge to ban any references to polygamy from the trial.

Shurtleff, in an interview Tuesday, said polygamy shouldn’t have anything to do with whether the 50-year-old Henderson beat up his wife.

“It’s just meant to inflame the jury,” Shurtleff said. “But if they allow this expert, then I’ll have to call my expert.”

Henderson’s first wife — the woman prosecutors say he assaulted — said Tuesday that polygamy should be a topic at the trial.

“This whole thing is about polygamy and control and abuse,” Nicole Van Tassell Henderson said.

Brown declined to comment Tuesday because the trial is pending.

The case against Kyle Henderson — he goes by his middle name — has been around for two years and has already influenced Utah’s polygamy law. His father-in-law is Utah Sen. Kevin Van Tassell, R-Vernal.

Kyle Henderson entered into a “spiritual marriage” with a second woman in 2012. Records from Henderson’s criminal case suggest it was jealousy that sparked what prosecutors allege were assaults against Nicole Van Tassell Henderson, his legal wife.

On April 10, 2016, the husband believed Van Tassell Henderson was communicating with another man “and attacked her,” according to a probable cause statement.

About six weeks later, Kyle Henderson threw a beer can at her and caused what the statement says was a “hairline fracture” in her arm. On July 5, 2016, she spoke to a neighbor without his permission, the statement adds, and he kicked her.

On the last night of the 2017 Legislature, the Utah Senate was considering a bill, already approved in the House, amending the definition of bigamy and increasing the penalties in some cases. The bill was meant to fix problems a federal judge found with the state’s bigamy statute after Brown and his family filed a lawsuit challenging it in 2011.

To persuade his colleagues to vote for the measure, Van Tassell showed them photos of his bruised daughter, who sat with her father on the Senate floor for part of that night. Van Tassell and prosecutors allege Henderson caused the bruising when he assaulted his wife.

Some of Nicole Van Tassell Henderson’s own children went to the Capitol to speak to lawmakers and tell them their mother concocted the story. Some of those kids are also expected to testify on their father’s behalf at the criminal trial.

At the Capitol in 2017, the children’s story failed to sway enough senators. The bill passed. Gov. Gary Herbert later signed it.

The children’s testimony appears to be what is spurring the motions for expert witnesses at the criminal trial. Prosecutors want to call Kristyn Decker, a former plural wife in the AUB who lobbied for the 2017 bill. She is expected to testify the AUB is patriarchal, and the Henderson children have been conditioned to support their father.

If Decker is allowed to take the stand, Shurtleff wants to rebut what she would say by calling on Brown and Anne Wilde. Wilde is also a former plural wife and has studied polygamy in Utah.

Shurtleff said he also plans to conduct a poll of Utah County residents’ views on plural marriage. If 4th District Judge Christine Johnson permits polygamy to be discussed at trial, Shurtleff said he will be prepared with an expert who will know what questions about plural marriage to ask potential jurors.

But Shurtleff said he would rather keep the focus on how he really believes Nicole Van Tassell Henderson received bruises and scratches. Shurtleff said the children are prepared to testify her mother was bruised when she moved a freezer and that a dog she took to the veterinarian scratched her.

“I’m feeling really good about the case,” Shurtleff said.

Nicole Van Tassell Henderson said it’s her children who have been shifting their stories. That night at the Legislature in 2017, she said, the children told lawmakers she was bruised in a snowmobile accident.

It also won’t be Brown’s first time supporting Kyle Henderson. The two have known each other since joining AUB.

They served missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the same time — Brown in Texas; Kyle Henderson in North Carolina.

By the time they returned to Utah, their parents had joined the AUB. The sons soon followed.

The LDS Church officially abandoned polygamy in 1890 and excommunicates members found practicing it. When LDS leaders held a disciplinary council for Kyle Henderson, his wife said Tuesday, Brown was asked to be a witness in support of his friend. Kyle Henderson was excommunicated anyway.

Van Tassell Henderson worries the jury at the criminal trial will be awestruck by Brown.

“The only reason why anybody would have Kody Brown [testify] is to make it the ‘Kody Brown show,’” Van Tassell Henderson said. “It takes all the focus off of Kyle and [puts it] onto Kody.”

Van Tassell Henderson and her husband have 13 children. The seven youngest are minors living with their father. Van Tassell Henderson said the criminal case has delayed her divorce. The parties are waiting to see if Kyle Henderson is convicted of a domestic violence charge before final custody is awarded.

Shurtleff said prosecutors have offered his client a plea deal, but Kyle Henderson rejected it because it would have required him to plead guilty to domestic violence, which could affect the divorce and custody case.

Kyle Henderson also is charged with two felony counts of extortion or bribery. Prosecutors allege he tried to persuade his wife to change her testimony in the case alleging domestic violence. Shurtleff said Kyle Henderson told his wife only to tell the truth. A separate trial on the extortion and bribery charges is scheduled for Aug. 28 in state court in Provo.

One possible lesson of the many brazen, conspicuous scandals related to President Trump and others in his orbit: The U.S. government has been massively underinvesting in enforcement and prosecution of white-collar crime.

Trumpkins argue that the pileup of charges against onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is a sign that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gone rogue. After all, many of the allegations against Manafort — laundering $30 million in income, submitting false tax returns, lying to banks, failing to register as a foreign agent, obstructing justice — stem from his work in and for Ukraine before 2016. They’re not directly related to his time on the Trump campaign.

Some of Manafort's alleged crimes, as Trump loves to point out, are more than a decade old!

But the right question isn't why Mueller is going after Manafort now. It is: Why didn't someone go after Manafort before? After all, there were just So. Many. Red. Flags.

Not just the wire transfers to buy jackets made from exotic animals but also the decades of work for international thugs and kleptocrats, such as former Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos or former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort is also hardly the only person associated with Trump who has engaged in conspicuously suspicious financial and political activities.

There was the apparent treatment of the Trump Foundation as a personal checkbook, from which Trump used other people's charitable donations to settle his for-profit businesses' legal disputes and to purchase gigantic portraits of himself. The operation of Eric Trump's personal foundation also has raised similar questions of self-dealing, according to Forbes.

Or there's the fishy stock trades by Trump cronies, including Carl Icahn and even the current commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross. Ross shorted the stock of a Kremlin-linked company days after he learned journalists were reporting a potentially negative story about the firm. (Both Icahn and Ross have denied engaging in insider trading.)

Or former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s failure to register as a foreign agent working on behalf of Turkey.

There's a clear reason so many Trump-related figures likely felt free to engage in dodgy behavior in broad daylight: They didn't expect anyone to care. And absent the scrutiny that came with Trump's political success, such activities probably would have gone ignored.

Federal prosecutions of white-collar crime — a category that includes tax, corporate, health-care or securities fraud, among other crimes — are on track this year to reach their lowest level on record. That’s according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), whose data go back to 1986. Prosecutions of crimes related to public corruption are also on pace to set a record low.

Yet we have little reason to believe actual levels of such crimes have decreased. So why has enforcement plummeted? That’s subject to some debate.

The Trump administration has openly prioritized prosecution of other crimes, particularly those related to immigration. But the downward trend in white-collar and official-corruption prosecutions predates the Trump presidency. The Barack Obama administration, you may recall, was often criticized for failing to hold corporations and executives accountable in the wake of the financial crisis.

Some argue that big corporations and the wealthy have become too politically influential. Jesse Eisinger, in his excellent book "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives," blames a culture of risk aversion in the ranks of the Justice Department. Eric H. Holder Jr., an attorney general under Obama, once suggested that corporate consolidation left some firms too big to jail.

But undoubtedly part of the issue is resources.

After 9/11, for instance, terrorism investigations became more of a priority, crowding out available dollars and personnel for white-collar investigations.

Congress' draconian budget cuts for the Internal Revenue Service, likewise, caused audit rates to plummet. According to TRAC data, criminal prosecutions referred by the IRS to the Justice Department are about half their level from just five years ago and are poised to dip to a new low this year.

Astonishingly, this decline in enforcement is now being cited as evidence of innocence. Manafort's lawyer, in his opening statement last week, shamelessly suggested that his client must not be guilty of tax fraud because he'd never been audited.

Likewise, on Fox News, Trump surrogate and former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova objected to Mueller's criminal prosecution of Manafort in part because Manafort "has no criminal record."

Which is, you know, a thing that’s true for every defendant, until they get prosecuted.

In any case, contra such objections, Manafort's prosecution today is less a sign of Mueller's overreach, and more a sign of the rest of our federal government's decades of underperformance.

Catherine Rampell is an opinion columnist at The Washington Post. She frequently covers economics, public policy, politics and culture, with a special emphasis on data-driven journalism. Before joining The Post, she wrote about economics and theater for the New York Times. crampell@washpost.com Twitter, @crampell

Monday’s proceedings in the trial of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort gave a tutorial in the “no honor among thieves” phenomenon. Former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, a cooperating witness, detailed his own wrongdoing, including embezzling funds from Manafort, before testifying to a long list of purported crimes by his former mentor.

The Post reports:

"In his first hour on the witness stand, Gates catalogued years of illegal activity, saying most of his wrongdoing was committed on behalf of his former boss, Paul Manafort, while other crimes were for his own benefit, including the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Gates also made clear that he was testifying against Manafort with the hope of receiving a lesser prison sentence, having pleaded guilty in February as part of a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.

"Manafort's trial in Alexandria, Virginia, is the first to arise out of the Mueller probe and marks a major public test of that investigation's credibility. Mueller's team is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts."

In particular, Gates detailed Manafort's "15 foreign accounts they did not report to the federal government and that they knew [were] illegal" and intentionally misidentifying foreign money wired to the United States as loans. This was allegedly designed to avoid paying taxes.

Gates is a problematic witness, to put it mildly. Boy Scouts usually don’t have eyewitness testimony of serious crimes over an extended period of time. To some extent, the testimony that preceded Gates — vendors from whom Manafort bought hundreds of thousands of dollars in clothes, an accountant who misstated income, etc. — paved the way for Gates to describe the inner workings of Manafort’s operation. Even if the jury doesn’t entirely believe Gates, the mountain of documentary evidence and other witness testimony is staggering.

As a political matter, the trial has several troubling implications for Trump.

First, it paints an ugly picture of the sort of people who sought out Trump and whom Trump vouched for. Honest, upstanding people didn't go to work for Trump; Michael Cohen, Gates and Manafort did. It's no crime to have friends who are accused of crimes, but it does remind us that Trump's stamp of approval is no reflection on the person he's supporting; it's a function of what Trump needs (silence, praise, etc.). Remember Trump decrying the raid on Manafort's house and the special counsel for trying Manafort? Take that as a reflection of Trump's character, not Manafort's.

Second, the notion that this is all a witch hunt — no crimes! nothing to see! — is evaporating before Trump’s eyes. There was more than enough evidence to go after Gates and Manafort. The prosecutors still have to get a favorable verdict, but it is becoming ludicrous to argue that they’ve not been justified in pursuing Trump’s cronies. With a likely conviction in the bag, the gap between the prosecutors' legal acumen and the Trump team’s should be glaring — and, to Trump, frightening.

Third, this is only the first Manafort trial. He'll go on trial later this year (unless he strikes a deal) for other alleged crimes, including witness tampering and failure to register as a foreign agent for a Russian-backed Ukrainian party. That's when we'll hear plenty about Russia. The extent of the relationship between Kremlin-aligned figures and the most senior Trump campaign official during a critical time in the race, including the Republican National Convention, should become clear.

And finally, Trump lawyers' attempts to paint his campaign organization as perfectly normal or, alternatively, as too incompetent to commit crimes look less and less credible as we learn more about these characters. No, normal campaigns don't have a campaign chief with 15 foreign accounts to allegedly evade taxes, just as they don't meet with hostile foreign powers peddling dirt on their political opponents. And a disorganized campaign leaves lots of room for people to do things they shouldn't.

Media pundits love to say that Trump has "redefined" the presidency. Wrong. He only redefines it and our constitutional system if he and his associates escape accountability. If they don't, the guardrails of democracy will have held. Then Trump can be seen as the horrible exception to the rules rather than as the man who shattered the rules.

The effort to reinforce the guardrails begins with Manafort’s trial, which explains why Trump is having a public meltdown.

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a center-right perspective.

Robert Kirby is on vacation. Honestly, it’s hard to tell the difference from when he’s working. Anyway, this is a reprint of a 2006 column.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the services of another faith.

Can’t tell you which one. It’s a new congregation, and members asked me not to drive off potential worshippers by writing about them. Because I wanted to write about them, we compromised.

They let me stay, and I agreed to not mention them by name.

There wasn't much to report. Basically, 50 adults sat silently while one read from the Bible. It was so quiet that when a guy in front scratched his head, everyone looked around to see what all the fuss was about.

Paying attention in church is not my strong suit, so it took a minute to figure out what was wrong. The youngest member of the congregation was 30-something.

I mentioned the absence of children after the services and was told, “Yes, it’s so much more reverent without kids, don’t you think?”

Actually, no. I’m used to havoc in church. Your average Mormon can worship in the middle of a soccer riot. A fair amount of honking and hooting is necessary for me to feel reverent.

The ward I go to sounds like an orphanage on fire. I like it. Some of the other geezers don’t. They say all the noise makes it tough to hear what’s coming from the pulpit. I say, “Yeah.”

Reverence is relevant. When I was kid, though, it meant folding your arms. Primary and Sunday school teachers insisted that the Holy Ghost wouldn’t show up if everyone’s arms weren’t folded.

I’m not sure how that fits into the scheme of an omnipotent God. I tend to believe in one bossy enough to make the Spirit show up whenever he feels like it.

“Bow your heads and fold your arms,” we were told. We sat in class with folded arms. We walked to the chapel with folded arms. We folded our arms to pray.

The practice came in handy. For example, if I hollered “boohoo” too loudly in the middle of testimony meeting and got yanked out of the pew by the Old Man, I could actually fold my arms over my butt on the way out to the car.

Folding our arms had less to do with making us feel reverent than it did in keeping our hands to ourselves. It's almost impossible to pull a girl's hair or force a bug up another kid's nose if your arms are folded.

Eventually, I didn't have to fold my arms to behave myself. I got married. Then all it took was a look.

Apparently, they’re still teaching the folded-arms thing. Last week, I watched an entire line of 5-year-olds follow their teacher down the hall with their arms tucked into the Sunday school straitjacket.

The U.S. Census always has been a vehicle for doing one thing: counting people. It is not for gathering information on individuals.

Now comes a promise from the Trump administration to ask census respondents if they are U.S. citizens. The straw-man argument for asking is to get a more accurate count of how many people can vote. Voter fraud by immigrants is a frequent refrain of the anti-immigration crowd, but it’s one for which there is scant evidence.

The more likely motivation is simply to keep immigrants from answering the door, responding to mailers or otherwise letting any census worker learn anything about them, lest it make its way to someone who can cause trouble. And that includes immigrants who are here legally. Why risk it?

The result is that the equal representation promised by the U.S. Constitution is distorted. In Utah, it could mean as many as 100,000 residents will go uncounted.

Salt Lake City, which has a large share of Utah’s immigrant population, is fighting back. The city is hiring a full-time employee for nothing other than getting the city’s residents to participate in the 2020 census. This new hire will work with aid groups, churches and any other organization that interacts with immigrants to see that the forms get completed. The next census will be the first to rely primarily on online reporting, a particular challenge among households with no Internet.

So much of Salt Lake City’s funding depends on population that the position likely will pay for itself. More important, the city’s residents will be more fairly represented.

In the polarized national immigration debate, Utah has been a notable exception — a red state that welcomes its newcomers and searches for practical solutions. But that attitude is less evident among the state’s congressional delegation, who have said little if anything about adding the citizenship question.

One Utahn in Congress, Rep. Rob Bishop, has been working to increase Utah’s census count, but not among immigrants. Bishop sponsored a bill to count Americans living overseas, a change that would allow Utah to count the Mormon missionaries it sends worldwide.

“We have a chance to make a change that will help real people, and we should do it,” Bishop said when he introduced his bill in March.

If he’s really interested in making sure Utah’s population is counted, Bishop should do the math. LDS Church missionaries sent overseas from Utah are a small fraction compared with the state’s immigrant population.

The census is only for counting, and the citizenship question only makes the count less accurate. Salt Lake City officials know it, and Utah’s members of Congress should, too.

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met privately in Finland last month. But what did they talk about? A new leaked document offers insight. A federal judge ruled in a San Juan County case that deals with the possible future makeup of the county commission in southern Utah. And Salt Lake City newspaper editors say U.S. Rep. Mia Love’s taxpayer-funded mailers are misleading.

Happy Wednesday.

Politico obtained a leaked document that purportedly shows what was discussed between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, last month. Trump surprised many of his supporters and critics when he met Putin without anyone but a pair of translators. Here’s what they discussed, according to the document. [Politico]

Topping the news: A federal judge ruled that San Juan County officials incorrectly removed Democrat Willie Grayeyes, a Navajo activist, from the ballot in his race for county commission. Grayeyes’ name was removed from the ballot when it was alleged he didn’t live in the county boundaries. His name was ordered back on the ballot. Grayeyes is running under newly drawn boundaries that give Navajo tribal members a better chance at a majority on the commission. [Trib] [Fox13]

-> The federal government doesn’t have to release documents outlining the legal reasoning behind President Donald Trump’s decision to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. [Trib]

-> The editors of The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News say U.S. Rep. Mia Love’s government-funded mailers falsely lead readers into believing the newspapers support her during a tough re-election campaign. One of Love’s mailers included a quote attributed to The Tribune that actually came from an opinion piece she wrote in the paper. [Trib] [DNews]

Tweets of the day: From @danpfeiffer: “It seems like the President’s deputy campaign manager testifying under oath about crimes he committed with the President’s campaign manager should be a bigger deal”

-> From @ForecasterEnten: “This election means everything. Just remember that whichever party loses becomes extinct and replaced by the Whigs.”

-> From @petridishes: “i’m sorry but there is no more 2018 sentence than ‘....AND ASBESTOS IS BACK!’”

Happy Birthday: To David Everitt, city manager of Moab and former Salt Lake City chief of staff.

In other news: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking to build a detention facility near Salt Lake City’s immigration court, but none of the three proposed locations are in Utah. [Trib]

-> Ken Peterson, a former Dixie State University music teacher who was fired and then offered his job back, said on Facebook that the agreement he’d have to sign to return to the school is “punitive” and “vindictive.” [Trib]

-> Mike Haddon, who has been running the Utah Corrections Department since director Rollin Cook stepped down in May, was officially appointed as the department’s new director by Gov. Gary Herbert. [Trib]

-> State Senate majority whip Sen. Stuart Adams is the first member of the Senate to formally announce his candidacy in the race to replace current Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, who announced in March he would not seek re-election this year. [Trib] [DNews]

-> Brigham Young University biblical scholar Eric D. Huntsman, who has been concerned about the high number of youth suicides in Utah, gave a rare devotional speech and asked students to create a safe campus environment for LGBTQ Mormons, LDS women and Mormons of color. [Trib]

-> Pat Bagley says there is nothing magical about the GOP’s solutions to health care reform. [Trib]

-> Robert Gehrke spoke with a man who launched a journalistic investigation that found members of the Wasatch County Tourism Advisory Board have been enriching themselves, and Gehrke says community journalists like this fill the gap in local coverage left by withering newsrooms. [Trib]

Nationally: Five states held primary elections Tuesday. Here’s what the results could show as the two major parties line up for a bruising 2018 election year. [WaPost] [CBS] [CNN]

-> On the sixth day of Paul Manafort’s trial, the former Trump campaign chairman’s defense attempted to portray Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy who testified to committing illegal acts with him, as a liar and embezzler who led a “secret life.” [Politico] [WaPost] [CNN]

-> A plan by the Trump administration to punish legal immigrants for receiving food stamps and government benefits could help energize Republican voters ahead of midterm elections. An administration official said the proposal is still a few weeks away from being finalized. [NYTimes]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Send us a note to cornflakes@sltrib.com.

— Connor Richards and Taylor W. Anderson

Twitter.com/crichards1995 and Twitter.com/TaylorWAnderson

One person jumped from a third-floor balcony during a fire that engulfed a Salt Lake City apartment complex early Wednesday.

The jumper suffered minor injuries, said Salt Lake City Fire Capt. Dan Marlowe.

“The civilians I spoke to on scene didn’t know why they jumped. They didn’t seem to be in any apparent danger.”

A second person suffered injuries from smoke inhalation, Marlowe said.

The fire ignited about 2 a.m. in the Seasons at Pebble Creek, an apartment complex at 1616 Snow Queen Place — near 1700 West and 1700 South.

Marlowe said investigators don’t yet know what ignited the fire but that the blaze started in the interior of the top floor then spread to the roof.

“Once it got into the rafter system," Marlowe said, "it just went the length of the complex.”

It took firefighters about 90 minutes to extinguish the blaze. They remained on scene into the daylight hours dousing hot spots.

Twenty-four units had some amount of damage, Marlowe said, displacing about 40 people. The Red Cross is providing temporary shelter for those who were displaced.

Mathematically, Tony Finau could play his way onto the U.S. Ryder Cup team by winning the PGA Championship. Subjectively, he needs to perform well during the first two rounds.

It hardly is a coincidence that Finau is paired Thursday and Friday with U.S. captain Jim Furyk, who will make four picks in September to complete the 12-man American roster for the Ryder Cup. Xander Schauffele, who is also contending for a spot, will play with Furyk and Finau at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis. The PGA of America operates the PGA Championship and sanctions the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

Utah club pros Zach Johnson and Craig Hocknull also are in this week's field, having qualified via top-20 finishes in the PGA Professional Championship in June. Counting Hocknull, who lives in Arizona but spends his summers at Glenwild Golf Club as the director of instruction, Utah has sent seven club pros to the PGA Championship in five years.

Besides hoping to enhance his Ryder Cup credentials, Finau has an opportunity to cap one of the best seasons ever in major tournaments for a Utah resident after top-10 finishes in the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open. Sandy resident Mike Weir’s 2003 showing remains the standard, as he won the Masters, tied for third in the U.S. Open, tied for seventh in the PGA Championship and made the cut in the British Open.

In Finau’s case, advancing to the weekend of the PGA — with Furyk watching every shot for two days — might be enough to give him a trip to the Ryder Cup in Paris in September. Finau is 13th in the U.S. standings, based on the PGA of America’s formula; the top eight players after Sunday receive automatic berths. Furyk’s first three picks will come after the second event of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, ending Sept. 3, and the final selection is due the following week.

Finau and Schauffele are viewed as strong contenders to become captain's picks, along with Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. Johnny Miller (1981) is the only Ryder Cup player who was living in Utah at the time; eight-time contestant Billy Casper moved to Utah shortly after his last appearance in 1975.

Even aside from the Ryder Cup possibilities, Finau is determined to play well in another major. As he said during the British Open, “I feel like my game is built for major championship golf. … I'm getting better every year.”

Johnson, an assistant pro at Davis Park Golf Course, is the subject of some fascination this week in St. Louis because he shares the name of a two-time major winner and Ryder Cup veteran. The Farmington resident was asked to go by “Zach J. Johnson” to distinguish him on the pairings sheet, although there is bound to be some confusion with the two players.

In 2007, when Iowa product Zach Johnson won the Masters, a reader called The Tribune, convinced that the wrong photo had appeared in the newspaper because the pictured golfer was not the Zach Johnson she knew.

The Utahn, who attended Cottonwood High School and Southern Utah University, won the 2013 Siegfried & Jensen Utah Open

Davis Park @PGA Pro Zach Johnson practice round at the @PGAChampionship with caddie Taylor Laybourne (and his cell phone 😂) on the bag.
Video provided by former @UtahGolfAssn Ex Director @IAGABillWalker #UtahGolf pic.twitter.com/lqcVJiw0bw

— Randy Dodson (@RandyatFairways) August 8, 2018

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This week’s appearances by Johnson and Hocknull in the PGA Championship follow Utah Section PGA members Chris Moody in 2017, Tommy Sharp and Joe Summerhays in 2016 and Steve Schneiter and Dustin Volk in 2014.

Jackson, Wyo. • Searchers in northwest Wyoming are looking again for a Utah man who is missing but presumed dead after being suspected of killing his wife, another woman and a 14-year-old girl in Idaho last year.

Authorities believe Mike Bullinger has died in a remote area of the Bridger-Teton National Forest but can only prove it if his remains are found and identified through DNA. They have searched the area before, when a car connected to Bullinger was found at a remote campsite.

Teton County sheriff's Sgt. Todd Stanyon said the search being done Tuesday and Wednesday is considered a follow-up to recover either a body or evidence.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide first reported on the new search.

About 18 members of the sheriff's department and U.S. Marshals Service were searching on foot, focusing on established trails and in the general area where they had looked a year ago, Stanyon said. They were not going too far into the backcountry.

"It's a huge expanse up there, tough terrain," he said.

As an outfitter, Bullinger had knowledge of backcountry survival, but Stanyon said it was "far-fetched" that someone could have survived alone for a year in the remote area.

The bodies of Bullinger’s wife, Cheryl Baker, 56; Nadja Medley, 48; and her 14-year-old daughter, Peyton, were found in June 2017 in a shed outside the couple’s Caldwell, Idaho, home. All three, who were from Ogden, Utah, had been shot.

Bullinger and Baker had just bought the Idaho home the month before, and the couple was moving there from Utah when one of Bullinger’s relatives called police to ask for a welfare check, saying the family had not been heard from for a few days.

Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo. • An Oregon man who was caught on video harassing a bison in Yellowstone National Park was arrested in Glacier National Park in the third disturbance in less than a week at a national park, officials said Friday.

Rangers looking for Raymond Reinke of Pendleton, Oregon, found him causing a disturbance Thursday evening at the historic Many Glacier Hotel in the popular Montana park, the National Park Service said.

He remains jailed pending a hearing next week and has requested a court-appointed attorney. A message left at a phone listing for Reinke in Oregon was not immediately returned.

Reinke, 55, had been cited for drunken and disorderly conduct in a third national park, Grand Teton, last Saturday and was released on $500 bond that required him to follow the law and avoid alcohol.

Yellowstone rangers cited him three days later for not wearing a seat belt and noted that he appeared intoxicated, park officials said. They didn't know of Reinke's bond conditions at the time.

Reinke was later cited after another Yellowstone visitor took video of him walking up to a bison in a roadway congested with stopped cars and waving his arms. The animal charges him a couple of times, but Reinke doesn't appear to get hurt.

Yellowstone officials warn visitors to stay at least 25 yards away from bison, which injure tourists every year who get too close.

After the video gained attention online and Yellowstone rangers learned of Reinke's charges in Grand Teton, an assistant U.S. attorney asked that his bond be revoked. A warrant was issued for Reinke's arrest.

He had told rangers he planned to travel to Glacier National Park. Rangers there were looking for his vehicle when they got a report about two guests arguing and creating a disturbance at Many Glacier Hotel.

Rangers identified one of the guests as Reinke, who was sent back to Yellowstone and appeared in U.S. court Friday.

Flagstaff, Ariz. • A federal appeals court has dismissed a challenge to a law that gives preference to American Indian families in adoptions of Native children.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn't rule on the constitutionality of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act.

Rather, it dismissed the complaint from a Phoenix-based right-leaning think tank, the Goldwater Institute, saying it's moot.

The institute had sought to keep two children with ties to the Gila River and Navajo tribes from being removed from their non-Native foster parents.

Those children since have been adopted.

The law firm Akin Gump represented the tribes. Attorney Don Pongrace says the court's decision is one victory in an ongoing struggle to protect tribal sovereignty.

The Goldwater Institute said Tuesday it will ask the 9th Circuit for a rehearing.

Farmington, N.M. • GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Pearce says if he is elected he will work to prevent the closure of coal-fired power plants in the Four Corners area.

The Daily Times of Farmington, New Mexico, reports the Hobbs Republican told an audience last week he would seek to find potential buyers for the San Juan Generating Station and other coal-fired power plants.

The San Juan Generating Station is primarily owned by the Public Service Company of New Mexico, which has announced plans to shutter the power plant in 2022.

Those plans have local leaders worried about the economic impact of closing the plant, including the loss of jobs and tax revenue.

Pearce, a congressman in New Mexico’s southern district, is facing Democratic Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham in November in the governor’s race.

U.S. Rep. Mia Love will hold open office hours to hear from people in her district for up to 10 minutes at a time on Wednesday.

Her office says in a statement she will meet with small groups at her West Jordan office to hear about the issues they care about.

She will take meetings on a first-come, first-served basis. To participate, people must live in her district, which covers politically mixed Salt Lake City suburbs and north-central regions of Utah.

No appointment is necessary, but people are asked to sign up online at love.house.gov. Office hours begin at 10 a.m.

Love is expected to face a tough re-election challenge this fall from Democratic Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams.

Video: In testimony for the trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Rick Gates admitted Aug. 7 to embezzlement and having an extramarital affair. (Rachel Weiner,Patrick Martin,Melissa Macaya/The Washington Post)

Washington - Robert S. Mueller III’s prosecutors have taken pains not to make Paul Manafort’s trial about President Trump.

When prosecutor Greg Andres on Tuesday asked Rick Gates, his star witness and Manafort's former business partner, where Manafort stayed in New York, Gates said "he had an apartment on Fifth Avenue." Neither mentioned that it was in Trump Tower.

When Andres flashed an exhibit on the screen that had a line about Manafort's Yankees tickets "going to Trump next week," neither man said the future president's name aloud.

And when Andres asked Gates what he did in March 2016, the two men performed some elliptical choreography.

"I went to work on one of the presidential campaigns," Gates said.

Andres asked if Manafort was "also working on one of the presidential campaigns."

"He was."

Perhaps the jurors thought they were talking about the George Pataki campaign?

Ultimately, however, there is no getting around it: This is Manafort's trial, but it reflects on Trump's style and judgment. Trump has described Manafort as a fleeting figure in his campaign, and it's true he couldn't have known the extent of the alleged wrongdoing. Yet the pair's history with unsavory characters was well known, and some of the misbehavior alleged in court occurred during their time working for Trump.

How does this happen? Or, as Manafort wrote upon learning his tax obligation was greater than expected: "WTF?"

Consider: In March 2016, the same month Manafort joined the Trump campaign, first to run the Republican convention and then as campaign chairman and top strategist, Manafort directed Gates to alter their struggling firm's income, adding $6 million in phantom funds so Manafort could qualify for a loan, Gates testified Tuesday afternoon.

In October 2016, after Manafort had been booted from the campaign but Gates was still on board, Manafort sought Gates' help in doctoring another profit-and-loss statement, Gates testified. Manafort magically turned a $600,000 loss into a $3 million profit, he said.

At the same time, according to emails from Manafort to Gates shown at the trial, Manafort successfully pushed Gates to use his position with the campaign to add banker Stephen Calk to Trump's list of economic advisers; Calk's bank loaned Manafort $16 million between July 2016 and January 2017. Manafort also worked to get his lender inauguration tickets.

The jury will decide whether to convict Manafort or whether to accept his claim that the illegal actions were undertaken by his protege, Gates, without his knowledge. Either way, Gates, who has already pleaded guilty, has admitted to a vast array of crooked schemes: fake expense accounts, fake invoices, false tax returns, fake loans, fake profit statements, shell companies and accounts in Cyprus and the Caribbean facilitated by a Cypriot dubbed "Doctor K."

Prosecutors are avoiding the most contentious issue between Trump and Mueller. Under instructions from Judge T.S. Ellis III — who routinely (and sometimes unfairly) reprimands the prosecutors — there is to be no discussion of Russia.

Yet the trial highlights another case of Trump's lax vetting of his aides. Manafort and Gates had been questioned by the FBI in 2014, but they likely wouldn't be where they are today if they hadn't joined Trump's campaign. In that sense, they are like others in Trump's circle — Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, Scott Pruitt, Michael Cohen — who have had trouble withstanding the scrutiny that has come with Trump's rise. Presiding over it all is Trump, who boasts of his immunity to conflicts of interest and refuses to release his tax returns.

Watching Manafort in court Tuesday — surrounded by beefy lawyers who could double as bodyguards — I wondered: What attracts people like Manafort to Trump? And what attracts Trump to people like Manafort?

Perhaps it was the way Manafort threw money around: the $15,000 ostrich coat, the $1 million spent at Alan Couture, the $300,000 at House of Bijan, the seven homes, the $1 million in Oriental rugs.

Or perhaps Trump sensed the gambler in Manafort.

Manafort and Gates had been elaborate with their shell companies and, when their income dried up because their patron in Ukraine was ousted as president, they allegedly employed ever more desperate schemes to hold off collapse.

Then, even as they faked legal documents, according to Gates' testimony, they signed on with the Trump campaign — a move sure to increase scrutiny of them — and not only continued their shenanigans but also tried to exploit their new positions.

It was utterly reckless — precisely the quality that made them a good fit with Trump.

Dana Milbank is a Washington Post columnist. He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics. Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

Los Angeles • The Oscars are adding a new category to honor popular films and promising a brisk three-hour ceremony and a much earlier air date in 2020.

John Bailey, the newly re-elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, says in an email to members Wednesday morning that the Board of Governors met Tuesday night to approve the three major changes. Eligibility requirements for the popular film category will be forthcoming.

Ratings for the 90th Academy Awards fell to an all-time low of 26.5 million viewers, down 19 percent from the previous year and the first time the glitzy awards ceremony had fewer than 30 million viewers since 2008. It also clocked it at nearly 4 hours, making it the longest show in over a decade.

The 2019 ceremony will air Feb. 24, while the 2020 ceremony will move to Feb. 9.

New York • Republican U.S. Rep. Christopher Collins of New York was arrested Wednesday on charges he fed inside information that he gleaned from sitting on the board of a biotechnology company to his son, helping others dodge hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses when bad news came out.

The charges were announced against Collins, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump who is up for re-election in November.

An indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan charges Collins, the congressman's son and the father of the son's fiance with conspiracy, wire fraud and other counts.

Prosecutors say the charges relate to a scheme to gain insider information about Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited, a biotechnology company headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with offices in Auckland, New Zealand.

According to the indictment, the defendants tried to get early word on the results of trials of a drug the company developed to treat multiple sclerosis.

The 68-year-old Collins, a conservative who was first elected in 2014 to represent parts of western New York between Buffalo and Rochester, has denied any wrongdoing. When the House Ethics Committee began investigating the stock trades a year ago, his spokeswoman called it a "partisan witch hunt."

"We will answer the charges filed against Congressman Collins in court and will mount a vigorous defense to clear his good name," his attorneys, Jonathan Barr and Jonathan New, said in a statement Wednesday. "It is notable that even the government does not allege that Congressman Collins traded a single share of Innate Therapeutics stock. We are confident he will be completely vindicated and exonerated."

All three defendants were in federal custody Wednesday and were expected to make their initial court appearance in the afternoon. Prosecutors also planned to hold a news conference.

Collins has a track record of publicly backing Trump, including being one of the first sitting members of Congress to endorse his candidacy. Most recently, Collins called for an end to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into campaign collusion and blaming the Obama Administration for failing to push back on Russia.

"I share President Trump's continued frustration as the left continues to try to nullify the 2016 Presidential election with claims of Russian interference," he said.

Collins ran unopposed in the Republican primary and holds what's largely considered a safe Republican seat in a state that went to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. He's being challenged by Democrat Nate McMurray, a Grand Island, New York, town supervisor.

The congressman was a member of Innate's board of directors and held nearly 17 percent of the stock. When the drug trials failed, the public announcement caused the stock price of Innate to plunge 92 percent.

Prosecutors allege that Collins passed along secrets to his son, Cameron, in June 2017. They say the son traded on the inside information and passed it to a third defendant, Stephen Zarsky. They say Zarsky traded on it and tipped off at least three others.

Prosecutors say the three avoided over $768,000 in losses by trading ahead of the public announcement of the failed drug trials.

The advocacy group Public Citizen filed a request for an investigation of Collins' stock dealings with the Office of Congressional Ethics and the Securities and Exchange Commission in January of 2017.