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The News & Observer gets in right in Under the Dome this morning about the latest troubles of Rep. Stephen LaRoque, who has hired noted Raleigh lawyer Joe Cheshire to represent him.

LaRoque made loans to two fellow legislators, put relatives and close associates on the board of directors, paid himself up to $195,000 a year, made a $200,000 loan from the nonprofits to his for-profit company and didn’t report that to the IRS, according to records uncovered by N.C. Policy Watch.

As the N&O reports, the issues raised in the investigation by Policy Watch’s Sarah Ovaska  are not merely ”claims” or “allegations”  or a just a “media account” of a politician,” as Cheshire put it in his letter to House Speaker Thom Tillis.

They are simply facts about LaRoque’s practices running a federally funded nonprofit that are available in public documents that are footnoted in Ovaska’s original story and in followups like this one about the $200,000 loan the nonprofit made to LaRoque’s business and his failure to report it.