North Korea releases footage of President Trump saluting North Korean General.

Before we get caught up in today’s cacophony of news, I wanted to direct your attention to this open letter to DHS Secretary Nielsen and Attorney General Sessions organized by Physicians for Human Rights. It’s signed by a crazy long number of physicians and other experts. But I’m publishing this link to it because it collects together a wealth of clinical evidence for the permanent mental health, cognitive and other damage caused by traumatic events like separation of children from parents. Most of us realize this is morally wrong. It’s wrong in policy terms. We can imagine because we’re human, the emotional pain involved. But there’s a lot of evidence that these actions do serious and permanent damage to the children who are separated from their parents. Having experienced a very different kind of traumatic event as a child this resonates with me because I know how these events can impact and ramify through the decades of adult life. Here’s the letter.

Most of the commentary I hear is whether 95% of the IG Report fails to vindicate Trump or 97%. Good Lord. Everything we know so far has a clear message. James Comey made major mistakes and those mistakes dramatically damaged Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Democrats have been saying this for two years. They said it in July. They screamed it in October. They are totally vindicated. It may not have been political bias per se (I don’t believe it was) but James Comey probably did more than any other single individual to make Donald Trump President. Irony! Sad! Hillary’s vindicated. Democratic partisans are vindicated. She was wronged, cheated, mistreated. She has a very legitimate beef. That is overwhelmingly the verdict of all the information we’ve heard so far from the IG Report.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 …