Rich Lowry, Editor of The National Review, has a guest opinion piece in the Times today, the gist of which is that Republicans are right to be “paranoid” about the search of the President’s Florida estate. We hear about Democratic criticisms of the Whitewater investigation, James Comey’s mishandling of the Hillary’s emails affair, etc. etc. All par for the course. But what I wanted to note is the central role of the Russia probe. It now serves as the baseless investigation, the hoax, the prosecutorial abuse that justifies everything from the Trumpian right that comes later.

This is no surprise from Trump himself: If Trump doesn’t like something, it’s a hoax. But here we see Trump’s relative success defining it as such not only for almost everyone on the right side of the political spectrum but in much of the journalistic world and even among many Democrats.

TPM Reader BB has his own take on JD Vance’s struggles in Ohio …

I am not the long-time resident of Ohio that RJ is, but I live outside of Cincinnati, and one thing that has been striking to me (and might explain the Senate Leadership Fund ad buy) is the degree to which Vance just disappeared from the airwaves after the primary. I have seen constant ads from Tim Ryan, both talking about himself (working class Ohioan, agreed with Trump on trade, not about parties… basically what you would expect from a smart Democrat trying to win in Ohio) and bashing on Vance (elite snobbish fake from San Francisco, does not care about Ohioans just his political career, etc.). Only within the last couple of weeks have I seen a single TV ad from Vance, basically his wife talking about what a nice guy he is and how she hopes Ohio will give him a chance, which is invariably followed by several Ryan ads with cops and military vets talking about how much Vance sucks. It has just been a remarkably one-sided affair. I assume that at least part of the problem is a lack of money on Vance’s part, though it is odd that I have not seen ads from outside groups, either. Maybe overconfidence on their part?

TPM Reader RJ gives us some background to understand how the Ohio Senate race is unfolding. I don’t know if RJ was prompted by this news. But Republicans now seem to believe – rightly, I think – that they run a very real chance of losing that seat and have ordered in what amounts to TV carpet bombing of the race.

Jack Goldsmith was kind enough to engage with my reply to his piece on potential criminal investigations of Donald Trump. Here’s his reply to mine. I’m going to take some time to work through the points Goldsmith makes. But I will try to address them in another post that I’ll publish soon. One immediate thought I had on a cursory read was that Goldsmith rightly makes a distinction between potential crimes committed while a person is president and things that come after. But it seems to me that one of the key complexities and unique dangers of Trump is that he is not allowing us that neat distinction. Much of his wrongdoing is continuous from one phase to the next. Indeed, in the last couple days he has grown increasingly explicit in threatening to retaliate against Garland, Biden, et al., in a hypothetical future term as President. In any case, more soon.

We’ve known that Wisconsin would be a key Senate battleground this year. But until just recently we didn’t know who the Democratic nominee was. Now we know it’s Democrat Mandela Barnes, who had essentially cleared the field by the time of the primary vote. A new Marquette Law poll just came out — this is Charles Franklin’s poll, which is the premium in-state poll. It shows Barnes up by seven points over Johnson 51%-44%. In June the same poll found a 46%-44% race. That difference is likely a mix of shifting electoral landscape and Barnes consolidating potential supporters after the primary ended.

I do not count Johnson out. He’s won two straight elections he was not expected to win, both against former Sen. Russ Feingold. He’s a canny and able politician. But unless this poll is a significant outlier Wisconsin looks like the strong pick up opportunity Democrats were hoping for. For an incumbent to be running behind a challenger who has crossed the 50% threshold is a perilous place to be.

The Times has a story disclosing the fact that investigators have interviewed both Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and his Deputy Patrick Philbin in their classified documents inquiry. That’s not surprising. The two were also originally tasked with liaising with the National Archives on Trump’s behalf. But it does clarify one thing. If Trump had really had the “standing order” about documents he took home automatically becoming declassified, such an order would certainly have gone through the Counsel’s office. Obviously that never happened and we can infer that investigators know that as a fact directly from these two men.

A new poll shows Val Demmings leading Marco Rubio by 4 percentage points. (University of North Florida, Demings 48%, Rubio 44%.) I suspect that this poll is an outlier. But it is actually on trend, with a group of recent polls showing a relatively close race. It’s the first independent poll of the race in a month and the first real known-quantity poll since the beginning of 2022. Given the rightward drift of Florida, I would not be getting my hopes up that this is a Democratic pick up. But it is a strong indication that this is a seat Republicans will have to fight to hold on to. Indeed, I suspect some of retrenchment from races in Arizona and Pennsylvania we mentioned yesterday is to defend seats like these.

The articles that make you feel the best are the ones to be most skeptical of. But with that said, this article in The Guardian certainly brought a smile to my face and satisfied a need for a schadenfreude fix. A federal judge will now decide whether to release some portions of the affidavit in support of the search of Mar-a-Lago. There’s the warrant and the inventory, both of which the target gets to see. It’s the affidavit that lays out why are we doing this; why is it important; what larger schemes are we investigating that requires us to go into this home and look for stuff.

The Times is reporting that Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg is nearing a plea deal with prosecutors in Manhattan. But the deal apparently does not include cooperating with the broader investigation into Donald Trump and his business. With a guilty plea and time served Weisselberg will likely spend roughly three months in jail.

Fascinating report here from the Times’ Shane Goldmacher. The national GOP — meaning the top DC party committees and leadership PACs — appears to be significantly ramping back support for Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters in Arizona and even Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. Here’s the Times story and here’s Goldmacher’s Twitter thread, which I at least found easier to follow.

These stories are always a bit hard to interpret and everyone wants to jump forward with tendentious interpretations. Basically the top Senate party committee canceled a bunch of ad buy reservations in these states. Some of it is an effort to redeploy spending to less regulated parts of the campaign finance ecosystem, away from joint campaigns and hybrid spends. Some of these spending channels require the campaign to put up a minimum percentage of the spend in hard money. But the campaigns themselves are struggling financially. So they can’t afford their part.