4:51 PM: In the context of all this back and forth, it’s worth remembering that none of it really matters. Trump has said publicly and repeatedly that he fired James Comey because of the Russia probe. It’s all notional reasoning, speculation and BS, because President Trump told us why he did it.
4:42 PM: This is awkward about the supposed DOJ policy.
4:38 PM: This is interesting. Harris is talking about documents prepared prior to becoming Attorney General. So not clear what DOJ lawyers would have to say about it.
4:15 PM: Curious what lawyers make of this. (Actually King’s bringing it up now). But Sessions seems to be asserting the privilege (in effect) for the bad questions and waiving it (on Trump’s behalf) on the easy questions.
4:07 PM: Hmmm. That’s interesting. Burr says NSA Chief Rodgers spent two hours in closed session last night addressing his communications with President Trump.
3:51 PM: Lawyers would likely call this a ‘constructive recusal’.
3:48 PM: Just an observation. So far at least none of the GOP Senators have gone in for the same level of special pleading that a number of them did during the Comey briefing.
3:42 PM: Comey blew it with the July announcement. But the technicalities are important. Comey talked about his recommendation. He didn’t make the decision. Similar, but not the same thing.
3:39 PM: I think we can see pretty clearly that anything that is really key Sessions is placing behind the cloak of executive privilege.
