Newly elected Utah Attorney General John Swallow is entangled in a corrupt tale of influence peddling and potential bribery that should alarm every Utahn.

An investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune, first reported late Friday, details allegations by wealthy Utah businessman Jeremy Johnson about how he enlisted the help of Swallow — through Richard M. Rawle, owner of the Provo-based payday-loan company Check City — to buy the influence of Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid, for $600,000, could take the heat off Johnson that was being applied by the Federal Trade Commission in a fraud investigation. (See the full Tribune article at UtahSwallow.notlong.com.)

The allegations against Swallow have sufficient legs, even now before every detail has been uncovered, to justify his immediate resignation. His reputation is now seriously tainted, and that is an impossible thing to overcome for an attorney general.

Emails and secret recordings put Swallow in the thick of a possible bribery conspiracy. While Swallow denies doing anything technically illegal (which may or may not be true), it is clear that there is a substantial appearance of wrongdoing. That appearance alone is sufficient to cause any gentleman or statesman, let alone a state’s chief law enforcement officer, to step down for the good of the people.

From long, sad experience, we know that initial reports of this nature virtually always reveal the tip of an iceberg. Public officials caught in shady dealings always deny and deny and deny. And then with each successive public revelation they tend to get squeezed out of office.

Please spare us the pain, Mr. Swallow, and get out now. You can’t be trusted.

Check City, which has operations in Reid’s home state of Nevada, donated generously to Reid’s 2010 political campaign (and narrow victory), as well as to Swallow’s campaigns for Congress, the Tribune reported. Swallow even served as Check City’s legal counsel and legislative lobbyist until he joined the Utah Attorney General’s office four years ago.

Johnson alleges that the price for Reid’s intervention started at $2 million but came down to $600,00 because his company, I Works, was doing badly.

The Tribune reported that in September 2010, “Swallow sent an email to Johnson with the subject line ‘Mtg. with Harry Reid’s contact.’ ” The email’s body included this: “Richard [Rawle] is traveling to LV tomorrow and will be able to contact this person, who he has a very good relationship with. He needs a brief narrative of what is going on and what you want to happen. I don’t know the cost, but it probably won’t be cheap.”

How can Swallow weasel out of his own words? He now claims he was trying to set up legal lobbying on Johnson’s behalf, but who would know?

After Johnson went to jail briefly and got out on bail, he met with Swallow at Krispy Kreme doughnuts in Orem and secretly recorded the conversation, the Tribune reported. That conversation included troubling statements from Swallow. While Swallow “insists during the meeting that he did nothing wrong ‘criminally,’ he also admits that ‘politically — politically, I go whoa,’ ” the Tribune reported. After more discussion about the email mentioning Reid, Swallow is quoted as saying “No wonder they’re after me” and “I’m really vulnerable.”

None of this passes the smell test. No attorney general should be anywhere near this sort of transaction. Even if Swallow were honestly seeking congressional action through legal lobbyists, it’s still wrong. A prosecutor shouldn’t be playing in that arena — nowhere even near it.

The Salt Lake Tribune deserves the highest praise for revealing sleaze to the people of Utah. It has done credit to itself as a watchdog of government, and the people of this state should be grateful.

We suspect that other corrupt influence peddling may have been practiced — or is even now being practiced — in our state. It needs to be rooted out. Unfortunately, it is difficult to detect.

Whether Swallow is guilty or not of a crime is really beside the point. By his own words he is close to a crime — an affair that calls his character into question — and that is more than enough to disqualify him from office. Resignation isn’t easy, but it’s best for Utah.

If there is any silver lining in all this, it might be that Harry Reid, one of the more twisted characters in the U.S. Senate, is finally uncovered as well for what he is.