The NRA has responded five days late to the Russian money story with a non-denial denial from an “outside lawyer.”
Yesterday, on behalf of the President, Sarah Sanders released a statement outlining the “four pillars” of his immigration plan. Read More
From an ex-DOJ prosecutor whose insights I often seek, responding to a question I asked about this Prime Nugget item from yesterday.
Your layman’s sense is right: “this tells me that Mueller’s interest may not suggest he thinks these other events are indictable crimes in themselves. He may think they are evidence of a pattern which could strengthen a criminal case about the two earlier incidents we knew about – the Flynn request and Comey’s ouster.”
The Times’ Maggie Haberman pressed Sarah Sanders today on how the President is defining “collusion” these days.
Interesting new standard for “collusion” Sanders sets forth here. Seems to be. Collusion would mean that Trump won *because of Russian interference*. Sort of a no harm no foul defense. pic.twitter.com/3fRKcezgiL
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 24, 2018
I’ve been watching rightwing media since the late 80s. I’ve been doing it professionally for two decades. Very little surprises me. But last night on a tip I checked out a series of segments on Fox claiming new evidence of a anti-Trump “secret society” at the FBI plotting to overthrow the Trump administration. Read More
From Alice Ollstein’s feature this morning, this little nugget. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) defended his support for Alex Azar to head up HHS (his Senate confirmation is expected today) in light of Azar’s comments on reproductive rights issues: “Trust me, I have enough faith that the good women who work at HHS can bring some common sense to him in his thought process.” [emphasis mine]
Over the course of today there was a rush of nugget-sized revelations about the Trump/Russia investigation. Overnight there was news that FBI Director Christopher Wray had threatened to resign. Then we learned that Jeff Sessions had sat for an extended interview with Robert Mueller’s investigators. A bit later we learned that James Comey was interviewed last year. None of these revelations was that big in itself. But there were enough of them (including others not mentioned here) that we put together a round up of these little pops of information just to help keep track. By the end of the day though the different nuggets began to fit together, not as a scattershot of discrete revelations but several parts of a unified whole. Read More
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As I argued below, being in the minority is difficult. You have no power. Fights take a long time. The worst thing Democrats can do is fall into the old pattern of garment-rending and self-flagellation. But let’s look at a poll result just released about who gets the blame. It’s highly revealing on a number of levels. Read More
Meet Brandon Griesemer, the 19 year old Michigan man who I referred to in the post below. He lives in suburban Detroit and made a series of calls to CNN headquarters in Atlanta threatening mass murder as payback for “fake news.” “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down. Fuck you, fuckin’ ni****rs.”
Here are the key passages from the FBI affidavit tied to his arrest. Read More