The government has recovered 731 pages of encrypted text messages from the devices seized from Michael Cohen – from WhatsApp and Signal. They’ve also reassembled 16 pages of documents from inside Cohen’s paper shredder. (Paper Shredder best practices fail.) They’re still working on one of the Blackberries they seized.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer, apparently felt it was necessary to explicitly reassure Paul Manafort that a pardon could be in the cards for him after he was sent to jail today.
Sometimes it is important to step back and see the larger picture. On Fox News this morning, President Trump called the former leadership of the FBI “scum.” The former deputy director of the FBI, a longterm target of the President, has already been fired and seems to be in legitimate danger of being charged with crimes. Peter Strzok, the former high-ranking FBI Counter-Intelligence agent with the texts, is now likely to be fired, according to press reports this morning. Last night on Sean Hannity’s show, the President’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that to “redeem” themselves Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions had one week to jail Strzok. Read More
Tierney Sneed reports in from the federal courthouse in D.C. where a judge is considering whether to revoke former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s bail, amid allegations he tampered with witnesses in special counsel Robert Mueller’s pending criminal case against him.
The hearing is in recess while the judge apparently contemplates her ruling on whether to move Manafort from house arrest to jail.
More as soon as we have it from Tierney …
Soon after the Charlottesville white nationalist rally, a man in Indiana posed online as an alt-right activist, and told other activists he was going to go to an upcoming alt-right rally and start shooting attendees. He said it would be a “false flag” operation that would discredit the left. The goal seems to have been to scare people away from the rally.
The man took no steps to put his plan into action. But now he’s facing federal charges that could send him to prison for several years. Some experts in extremism tell TPM’s Allegra Kirkland that doesn’t make much sense — especially when actual white nationalists who have carried out actual violence aren’t being charged.
President Trump: “Hey, he is the head of a country and I mean he is the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.” Video.
This evening on Sean Hannity’s program Rudy Giuliani demanded that Robert Mueller suspend his investigation and then said that Sessions and Rosenstein had one day to “redeem” themselves by ending Mueller’s probe and jailing FBI agent Peter Strzok. This is the President’s lead lawyer. Read More
Remarkable discussion today from Jeff Sessions and Sarah Sanders explaining why the Bible supports aggressive enforcement of the administration’s family separation policy. Read More
I’ve just been doing an initial read-through of the portion of the report about the decision to send the October 2016 “Comey Letter” to Congress. It’s like watching a 4x Slo-Mo video of a horrible car accident. It gets worse and worse. You know what’s coming. It’s endless and yet you know how it ends.
There’s a lot of fancy explanations and discussions. But by the end, it all comes down to just ignoring longstanding DOJ guidelines and precedent that you make every effort to avoid election-influencing actions on the heels of an election. You’re not supposed to do that. They came out with various arguments about how this case was an exception and they should do it. And they did it. Or rather, James Comey did it. It ends up really being that simple. It was a huge mistake. And the IG says as much. Read More
Another point perhaps lost in the welter of news coming out today is this. The New York State Attorney General’s suit against the Trump Foundation, President Trump, and his children contains substantial evidence that Trump and his family violated numerous federal laws. These are laws which are often dealt with as civil offenses, fines, etc. But here they seem sufficiently egregious and systematic that I think there would be solid arguments for criminal prosecution. (I’d be curious what people with relevant legal experience make of that question.) Read More