Lawyers represent many different clients. There’s a limit on how much we can infer from these relationships. But it is striking how many lawyers with extremely close ties to the Trump family, often longtime lawyers for President Trump himself, are also currently representing various foreign interests who the Special Counsel is now investigating in its probe. What I’m about to describe involves a slightly different set of people. But it is similar and to me quite notable. It comes from this new blockbuster Times article revealing offers of help from a group of Gulf princes which Donald Trump, Jr. apparently eagerly embraced. Read More

First of all, this is not a criticism of Pete Williams, one of best network news reporters out there. It’s more a broader comment about how we deal with mass atrocity gun violence, how we think about its causes. A few moments ago, Pete Williams was on air on MSNBC providing the latest details of the shooting in Texas and the accused shooter, who is now in custody. Williams provided these latest details, including the suspect’s name and the fact that initial looks at his social media profiles show no evidence of connections to extremist groups, either foreign or domestic. Then he said that because there is no evidence of an extremist ideology, “why this happened, of course, remains a huge mystery.” Read More

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to call off next month’s presidential summit in Singapore with President Trump over scheduled US-ROK military exercises which Kim had appeared earlier to say would not be an obstacle to the summit. Now the US seems to have given way and indeed scrapped the exercises. Read More

Rudy Giuliani went on a bender this morning on CNN for nearly an hour: the key takeaways.

With Vice President Mike Pence telling us that “In the interest of the country, I think it’s time to wrap it up” I thought some perspective was in order. (Click through for full sized image.)

Under the Trump administration, the State Department took veteran career officials who were working on key issues like closing Gitmo and resettling refugees, and reassigned them to process FOIA requests.

Democrats have been asking questions about the reassignments for months. And now, Alice Ollstein reports exclusively, the State Department IG office has said it’s investigating the issue.

In bracing act of symbolism, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani car-doored an unsuspecting pedicab driver when getting out of his SUV today in New York City.

Our Senior Political Correspondent Cameron Joseph has been keeping a close eye on the primaries, and is taking readers’ questions about them. His latest column is here (Prime access), and takes a look at races that could serve as a test of whether Democratic voters are in a moderate or progressive mood this year.

There were a lot of questions raised by Trump supporters yesterday about when President Trump referred to people as “animals.” The argument is that he wasn’t referring to immigrants or even undocumented immigrants in general. He was supposedly referring to hardened MS-13 gang members. That’s not true. The comment comes in an interchange with a county sheriff in which the sheriff complains about how the state laws in California have made it harder for her department to work with ICE. I went back and grabbed the longer exchange so people can watch for themselves.

The exchange is with Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims … Read More

This afternoon in Los Angeles Michael Avenatti’s former law partner sued Avenatti for breach of contract and failure to pay $2 million as part of an earlier settlement. Here’s our report with the lawsuit itself