This isn’t new news, not a new revelation. But with more and more voluminous information coming in daily, it is worth revisiting the point. Whether or not the President obstructed justice recently isn’t a factual question. That one is 100% clear. It’s really a legal and constitutional one.

Here’s what I mean. Read More

We’ve discussed it many times. Most of us realize it: one of the great ironies, and perhaps tragedies of the “gun control” debate is that it has been backed into such limited and incremental policy prescriptions that those prescriptions can be reasonably derided by “gun rights” advocates as barely worth the trouble or hardly of any use. We know that no one restriction would prevent every needless tragedy. But together, a number of them, interweaving and compounding each other, would prevent or limit many massacres and bloodbaths. More importantly, this whole logic is not one we apply to any other problem of criminality or public health. Our entire counter-terrorism policy is based on no silver bullets but a series of traversable but still consequential obstacles, the aim of which is to disrupt, make more complicated or reveal conspiracies. We have collectively made it mainly too difficult to hatch plots to commandeer airliners or even effectively communicate to plan major operations at all. So radicals are reduced to largely ineffectual (but still often deadly) DIY kitchenware based bombs and trucks. That’s a good thing. Read More

Following the devastating shooting yesterday in Parkland, Florida, we wanted to re-run Reed Richardson’s thoughtful deep dive into the history of the AR-15 (Prime access), the weapon that was allegedly used to kill 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and wound 14 more. Richardson details the gun’s origins in the early days of the Vietnam War, and traces its history as it becomes a favorite among American gun enthusiasts — and perpetrators of mass shootings. Read More

I’d have lost an office pool on which scandal would finally rouse the GOP Congress to do some oversight of the Trump administration.

As you may have seen last night, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s purported longtime personal lawyer, conceded that he did pay adult actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 election. But there’s a catch. It was his money! Or so Cohen says. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed him. “I am Mr. Trump’s longtime special counsel and I have proudly served in that role for more than a decade,” said Cohen in a statement released yesterday. “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford. Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage. I will always protect Mr. Trump … Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly. The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.” Read More

It turns out the Maine GOP got into the Nunes fake GOP news site racket even before Devin Nunes did. Check out our story.

Some Prime members are continuing to have issues logging into the site. We are aware of the issue and working as rapidly as we can to solve it. We made one fix today which has minimized but not fixed the problem. Our team worked late into the evening tonight on a permanent fix and will be back at it in the morning. Please know: We are aware of the issue. This is affecting a small number of readers and a smaller number after this evening. But if it’s affecting you I know it’s very annoying. Fixing it is our top priority. I will continue to update you here in the Editors’ Blog. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Only hours ago a gaggle of white supremacist on the 4Chan message board site were spinning up conspiracy theories about “secret sperm” in the Obama portrait unveiled yesterday. A short time later Sean Hannity had embraced the claim and was spreading the word on Twitter.

When the domestic violence history that top White House staffers already knew about went public Rob Porter was on the cusp of getting a big promotion.

We’re going to bring you some more details about this shortly. But the White House’s position on the Porter background check was that it was an on-going process, so in key ways out of their hands. FBI Director Christopher Wray just confirmed that that is not true – that the check was mainly completed last year and that the file was officially closed in January, before any of the scandal broke. Here’s Dana Bash explaining.

Trump's handpicked FBI Director flatly contradicts White House story on Porter background check. Dana Bash explains. pic.twitter.com/N2g3lnSD2T

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 13, 2018

As Bash notes, it was on the calendar that Wray would be testifying in a public setting. So all but certain he’d be asked about this and presumably wouldn’t lie, in an easily impeachable fashion, on their behalf.