For all the political scandals this country deals with, it pales with what is happening in Argentina.

I’ll give the Cliff Notes version.

Back in 1994, there was a bombing of the 1994 bombing of the Argentina Israelite Mutual Association, a Jewish Community Center located in Buenos Aires.  85 people were killed and hundreds were wounded.  Following the 1994 AMIA bombing, a series of federal and international investigations were launched, though the case remains officially unresolved.

Albert Nisman had spent more than ten years investigating the case, and he had long believed that the Iranian government and agents of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, were behind it.

But in recent years, he had also become concerned that Argentinian government had conspired to shield Iran and Hezbollah from justice.  Specifically, he accused Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and Argentina’s foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the 1994 bombing so that Argentina could secure access to Iranian oil.

Nisman was supposed to provide details before Congress about his accusations against Mrs. Kirchner on January 19.  But on January 18, Nisman was found dead in his apartment.  The cause of death was a shot to the head, fired from a .22-calibre pistol that the prosecutor had borrowed from his assistant the day before. Nisman told his assistant that an Argentine spy had warned him that his life was in danger. The two main doors to the apartment were locked, and several bodyguards had been standing watch outside. Analysis of a third passageway, a small nook used to gain access to the apartment’s air-conditioning unit, revealed a footprint and a smudge, but nothing more. The door to the bathroom, where Nisman was found, was locked from the inside.

The news rocked Argentina.  Hours after news of Nisman’s death broke, protesters took to the streets with signs that read, “Yo soy Nisman,” to express their anger over his death; many accused the government of orchestrating it. The government, meanwhile, did little to dispel the suspicion. The next day, President Kirchner posted a rambling message on Facebook, which read, in part, “Suicide provokes … first: stupefaction, and then questions. What is it that brought a person to the terrible decision to end his life?”

Four days later, she was less philosophical. Nisman’s death “was not a suicide,” President Kirchner wrote on her Web site. “They used [Nisman] while he was alive, then they needed him dead.” The “they” in this case could have included government critics who wanted to frame the President; a rogue faction of the Argentine intelligence apparatus; the Central Intelligence Agency; or the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The President’s public pronouncements are often soaked in paranoia. But in this case, the government’s line—that Nisman was manipulated, then discarded, by elements of the intelligence community intent on discrediting Kirchner—traded on widely held doubts about Nisman’s independence as an investigator.

Today, a 26-page document was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment.  It included arrest warrants for both President Kirchner and Foreign Minister Timerman.

There has been all kinds of little strange wrinkles here and there.  For example, the government’s erratic response to Nisman’s death was made worse in subsequent days. The journalist who first reported the death, Damian Pachter, left Argentina for Israel last Saturday, claiming that his life was in danger. Inscrutably, the government posted Pachter’s flight information to its Twitter account, and said that it was trying to protect the journalist. At this point, it’s an open question whether this behavior is a sign of guilt or mere haplessness.

In any event, it is outright bizarre.  Like House of Cards.