The first trial to come out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe starts tomorrow in the Eastern District of Virginia. There will be a day or two of jury selection, and then the trial itself will get underway.

Covering the trial from a courtroom in which electronics are banned will present an interesting set of challenges for reporters, including our own. Tierney Sneed and Caitlin MacNeal have a plan that will involve a hotel room, a deli, a pay phone, and some all-out sprints. Caitlin explains it here (Prime access).

Rudy Giuliani just went on Fox News and explained that actually he was denying that the pre-planning meeting took place. The walk back is just as convoluted as the original claims. So I’m going to just show you the video of what he said. Read More

Rudy Giuliani made two TV appearances this morning, one on Fox and one on CNN. Both are pretty convoluted and a bit hard to follow. So they’ve led to various interpretations. But there’s what I believe is one pretty big admission that is at least very new to me and I think a pretty big problem for Trump and Giuliani.

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, one of the oddities of Giuliani’s rolling defense of Trump in response to Cohen’s accusations is this: Giuliani says that the meeting where Trump allegedly learned about the Russia meeting never happened and he (Giuliani) has talked to the participants and they agree it never happened and Trump didn’t attend the meeting or know about the Russian offer. Now, there’s sort of a problem here. Cohen never said just what meeting he was referring to. And how can you be a witness to a meeting that never happened about what was said in that meeting? Read More