Last night, a court ordered Oklahoma state Attorney General (and Trump EPA nominee) Scott Pruitt to release thousands of emails from the time he was acting in ways that appeared deeply corrupted by the oil industry. Those emails have been illegally withheld for two years. District Court Judge Aletia Timmons gave Pruitt until Tuesday to release the emails and records of state meetings.

The Senate has scheduled Pruitt’s nomination hearing for tomorrow — Friday — a few days before the email release. The Republican leadership have decided there is no good reason to delay that hearing.

New York Times reporter Eric Lipton earned a 2015 Pulitzer prize for his reporting that detailed the unsavory connection between AG Pruitt and the coal, gas and oil industries. As early as 2014, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a watchdog group, had filed a request for the state records from that period. The Oklahoma law is clear — even the AG is required to release the records — but they simply haven’t. For more than two years. They’ve offered no reason for their failure to comply with the court-ordered disclosure other than “It’s hard.”

The obvious speculation is that the emails include compromising communications, although we won’t really know until they’re released.

Given the strong possibility of corruption and disgrace, a delay would have been be an obvious step. Under any other administration. These are not those times.

Remember: the test is whether they choose party or country.