THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 5/25/17

Head’s Up: Unless everything goes crazy next week, I may take the week off. We’ll see. Just be warned.

QUICK HITS ON THE TRUMP/RUSSIA/OBSTRUCTION/IMPEACHMENT STORY: I don’t want to spend the whole newsletter on this, so here’s a brief update on developments. (And yes, I saw the Kushner story but I don’t think it’s that big -- the FBI things that Kushner has relevant information but has not identified him as a “target”, i.e., a criminal suspect.)

1. Nut Job: On Friday, the Times reported another bombshell story: that, in that fateful Oval Office discussion with Russian officials, Trump told them he had fired Comey because he was a “nut job” and because Trump “faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Again, this is not a smoke situation. This is additional clear evidence of the fire itself: a sitting president firing an FBI director in the middle of his 10-year term to shut down an FBI investigation into the president and his associates.
2. Something to Note about Comey: Comey has said that he will testify before an open session of Congress sometime after Memorial Day. Brian Beutler and former DOJ spokesman Matt Miller made a really interesting point about that testimony on Beutler’s podcast, Primary Concerns, this week. Comey will be meeting with Robert Mueller first, to make sure he’s not giving out information that Mueller wants private for his investigation. Miller explained how we should interpret the testimony: “If Mueller is only focused on 2016 collusion, financial crimes, whatever else, then he may have no problem with Comey going up and testifying and talking about all of his interactions with Trump. But if Mueller sits down with Comey . . . and Mueller asks him not to testify and Mueller decides he doesn’t want to turn those memos over to Congress, I think that’s a pretty clear sign that Mueller’s interested in looking at obstruction of justice, and he doesn’t want Trump to know what’s in those memos and he doesn’t want White House staffers to know what’s in those memos, because he wants to put them all in front of a grand jury and ask them what they saw, and not have the benefit of knowing what Comey’s side of the story is.” Beutler pointed out the “irony” “that the less explosive Comey’s public testimony is . . . the worse the news is for Trump.” (The whole episode is an interesting and insightful discussion that I recommend!)
3. Coates and Rogers: The Washington Post turned up more “fire” evidence on Monday that shows what seems pretty clearly a crime by Trump, even if there was no collusion with the Russians in interfering in the election. Sometime after March 20, when Comey confirmed under oath that the FBI was investigating links between Russian attempts to interfere in the election and the Trump campaign, Trump himself approached the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, “urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election. Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate.” And once again, there are receipts: “Trump’s conversation with Rogers was documented contemporaneously in an internal memo written by a senior NSA official.” An intelligence source says that Trump was asking these officials -- who he appointed -- to lie to the American public: ‘“The problem wasn’t so much asking them to issue statements, it was asking them to issue false statements about an ongoing investigation,’ a former senior intelligence official said of the request to Coats.” This is yet more direct evidence of the president attempting to interfere directly in an ongoing FBI investigation, by getting high-ranking intelligence officials to lie about what was going on and potentially strongarm the FBI into shutting down their work. THIS IS INSANE. (This is hardly the first time we’ve seen Trump do this. Recall that he successfully got the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, along with other officials, to call the press and (falsely) push back on stories about Trump/Russia connections -- a story that, in any other era, would have been a huge scandal.)
4. Spies: The Times reported that, last summer, American spies intercepted conversations between Russian spies in which the Russians talked about recruiting and/or influencing Trump people, specifically Manafort and Flynn.
5. Brennan testimony: John Brennan, who led the CIA until early this year, testified before Congress on Tuesday about the CIA’s increasing alarm over the last year of suspicious contacts between Russian governmental officials and Trump associates. When he left his post in January, he said, “I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons involved in the campaign or not to work on their behalf.” Unsurprisingly but incredibly dispiritingly (at this stage, given what we know), Republicans in the House continued to try to run interference for Trump rather than, you know, actually get to the bottom of what happened. Renowned idiot Trey Gowdy tried to lock Brennan into a statement that there was “no evidence” of collusion between Trump folks and the Russians, and “beclown[ed] himself,” as Brian Buetler puts it, by prompting Brennan to give “the most detailed account yet of why the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign in the first place.”
6. More Flynn: “A senior lawmaker said on Monday that Mr. Flynn misled Pentagon investigators about how he was paid for the Moscow trip. He also failed to disclose the source of that income on a security form he was required to complete before joining the White House, according to congressional investigators.”
7. Sessions: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not disclose meetings he had last year with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance, the Justice Department told CNN Wednesday. . . . The new information from the Justice Department is the latest example of Sessions failing to disclose contacts he had with Russian officials. He has come under withering criticism from Democrats following revelations that he did not disclose the same contacts with Kislyak during his Senate confirmation hearings earlier this year.” That means that Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn, and Jeff Sessions all hid meetings with Russians on their security clearance applications. Which is a weird thing.

GOOD NEWS: SUPREME COURT HANDS VOTING RIGHTS ADVOCATES A MAJOR WIN: With one of the strangest majority coalitions in memory -- Kagan wrote the opinion, and JUSTICE THOMAS provided the fifth vote, with Kennedy, Roberts, and Alito in dissent -- the Supreme Court on Monday held two of North Carolina’s districts constitute unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The state defended the maps in part by saying they were meant to disadvantage Democrats, not black people. What made the case interesting is how the Court would treat partisan gerrymandering, which has traditionally been held to be constitutionally, where race is so closely linked to party, especially in the South. Kagan’s opinion does not address this question head on, but election scholar Rick Hasen thinks there are some major “bombshells” buried in the footnotes, which suggest that “the sorting of voters on the grounds of their race remains suspect even if race is meant to function as a proxy for other (including political) characteristics.” He continues: “Holy cow this is a big deal. It means that race and party are not really discrete categories and that discriminating on the basis of party in places of conjoined polarization is equivalent, at least sometimes, to making race the predominant factor in redistricting. This will lead to many more successful racial gerrymandering cases in the American South and elsewhere.” (Not all experts agree with this analysis.) Note that the Court faces an explicit partisan gerrymander case coming out of Wisconsin, among other cases percolating in the lower courts.

GOOD NEWS: APPEALS COURT BLOCKS TRAVEL BAN 2.0: Today, the Fourth Circuit upheld the nationwide injunction against Trump’s second attempt at the travel ban. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Gregory, is 83 pages, so I haven’t read it yet, but it’s opening paragraph is fist-pump worthy, so I’m pasting it here:

The question for this Court, distilled to its essential form, is whether the Constitution, as the Supreme Court declared in Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 120 (1866), remains “a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace.” And if so, whether it protects Plaintiffs’ right to challenge an Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination. Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles—that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another. Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation. Therefore, for the reasons that follow, we affirm in substantial part the district court’s issuance of a nationwide preliminary injunction as to Section 2(c) of the challenged Executive Order.

BOOM. Now, the White House has indicated it will appeal to the Supreme Court. But I don’t quite understand how the issue isn’t moot. The order was by its terms temporary, meant to give the administration 90 days to “conduct a worldwide review” to figure out what new security measures were needed. The order was signed 80 days ago. I was thinking that they wanted/needed to appeal to challenge constraints on the President’s authority under the immigration laws, but the majority opinion only found in favor of the plaintiffs on the Constitutional question (ie, religious discrimination); it did not address the question of whether the order violated the Immigration and Nationality Act. Is there any way the Supreme Court rejects the appeal as moot? (Orion, I’m looking at you for an answer here.) (Everyone else, meet Orion!)

SHOCKER -- AHCA REMAINS TERRIBLE AND CRUEL: Yesterday, the CBO made it official: Trumpcare 2.0, which the House passed a few weeks ago, is an almost cartoonishly evil bill that will result in millions of Americans getting kicked off health insurance so that rich people can get a gigantic tax break. The CBO reported that 14 million will lose their health insurance NEXT YEAR. “In 2026, an estimated 51 million people under age 65 would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.” The CBO also found that premiums would rise by 20% next year, though after that, they start to lower as the old and sick are kicked out of the insurance pools. Sarah Kliff explains that the bill “would hit the poor and elderly especially hard; a low-income 64-year-old Obamacare enrollee would see her premiums rise between 700 and 800 percent.” The report also inflicts a fatal blow to the GOP’s claim that the new bill protects those with preexisting conditions. The CBO unequivocally states that, in states that apply for the waivers from community rating and essential health benefit rules, the sick will be priced out of the insurance market:

People who are less healthy (including those with preexisting or newly acquired medical conditions) would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive nongroup health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all — despite the additional funding that would be available under H.R. 1628 to help reduce premiums. As a result, the nongroup markets in those states would become unstable for people with higher-than-average expected health care costs.

The CBO’s charts show that the only “winners” under this plan are young, healthy, wealthy people: For example, a 21-year-old earning $68,000 (but also not in employer coverage, so a freelancer or something) would see his premium slashed from $5,000 to $1250. So bully for all 122 people who fit this category! Kliff: “There isn't any magic to how the Republican bill cuts premiums. There is not a secret plan in here to lower the price of doctor visits or get people to use less health care. There is a plan to make health insurance so expensive for people who are sick and people who are old that they can no longer afford it.”

Also, Chait reminds us that employer-based coverage (what most Americans have) is not immune from drastic effects of this bill: “The Republican plan would give states a waiver from Obamacare’s insurance regulations, which require that plans cover essential benefits and prevent them from putting lifetime caps on a person’s costs. And employers who shop for insurance can select a plan from any state. That means if even a single state takes the waivers, then every employer buying insurance could purchase plans that subject their employees to the kinds of price discrimination that Republicans want to impose on the individual market.”

You guys, there is a very, very real chance that the Senate could pass something similar to this bill. At the very least, Republican Senators are not pushing back on the drastic Medicaid cuts in the House bill, which account for most of the coverage losses. The Senate is writing their own bill in secret, with no hearings and no input from actuaries or other experts. That means that we must exert all our pressure on them -- and NOW, during this week’s recess. This is our chance to scare the Republicans into backing down. The Russia/Obstruction story is important, but we will win on issues that make a difference in people’s lives, and health care is at the top of that list. Flood your senator’s office will calls, letters, faxes, and SHOW UP to their district offices.

TRUMP REALLY, REALLY LOVES DICTATORS AND TELLING THEM OUR SECRETS: This week, the Philippines circulated a transcript of a call last month between Trump and the Philippines’ murderous president Duterte, which was published by The Intercept. In the call, Trump praised Duterte’s work on the “drug problem,” which has involved the “extrajudicial killing” (also known as murder) of more than 7,000 people. Trump offered unequivocal and fulsome praise: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.” Holy shit, you guys. Trump slobbered all over this dictator: “You are a good man,” “Keep up the good work,” “You are doing an amazing job.” He practically begged him to come visit him in the Oval Office. Trump also seemed to reveal the location of two American nuclear submarines near North Korea, information that we usually, you know, like to keep to ourselves. Trump’s fawning praise of Duterte, Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, even Kim Jong Un stands in sharp contrast to his scolding of our allies today during a NATO meeting, including threatening to end car imports from the “very, very bad” Germany. This. Is. Not. Normal.

Chart of the Week: A striking visualization of AHCA’s decimation of every ounce of progress we’ve made on reducing the numbers of uninsured.

Denver Shout-out: Denver has thought of a smart approach to try to prevent deportations of immigrants convicted of low-level offenses: “The city’s solution? Simply take a bunch of those relatively petty offenses and reduce the maximum penalty to less than 365 days. Just like that, the move takes the crimes (and their perpetrators) off the radar of immigration authorities.”

Must Read of the Week (it’s short): Josh Barro on the GOP’s revolting and juvenile “masculinity.”

Fun Video of the Week (it’s short): The Late Show compares Obama-era and Trump-era scandals.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 5/18/17

I am starting this at 9:18 pm tonight, which means it will have to be less link-heavy and detailed than normal. Because oh my god, there is just TOO MUCH going on and it is nearly impossible to keep track of it all while also maintaining a full-time job and, occasionally, eating, sleeping, and making eye contact with other human beings. Needless to say, there are likely a gazillion typos.

TIMELINE RECAP OF THE WEEK OF TRUMP: Even by 2017 standards, this week was bananas. As Alexandra Petri put it in her truly brilliant column this week, “Merely watching this, you are now 600 years old. (Have you written this before? Hundreds of years have passed since Tuesday. You have no memory of the Time Before.) It is as though all of your involuntary muscle functions now require conscious effort.”

Monday: We started the week off with a bang. First, at the press conference, Sean Spicer refused to actually deny that Trump records conversations in the Oval Office or other parts of the White House. Then during what has become the Witching Hour, we got our first Major Bombshell of the week: Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian ambassador and foreign secretary while boasting of his access to the “best intelligence” during a highly unusual Oval Office meeting last week. This was described as revealing “more information than we have shared with our own allies.” After scrambling for a few hours, the White House finally sent out National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to make a lawyerly statement from the White House lawn (taking no questions) saying that the story “as reported” is false and that Trump never revealed any “sources or methods.” But of course, that’s not what the Washington Post report alleged. Trump apparently revealed details about an ISIS plot and, most damagingly, included the name of the city where the intelligence was gathered. “The identification of the location was seen as particularly problematic, officials said, because Russia could use that detail to help identify the U.S. ally or intelligence capability involved. Officials said the capability could be useful for other purposes, possibly providing intelligence on Russia’s presence in Syria. Moscow would be keenly interested in identifying that source and perhaps disrupting it.” This is a HUGE deal. But to the surprise of exactly no one left alive today, congressional Republicans largely shrugged it off, saying that Trump has the right to “declassify” any information and share it with anyone he wants, at any time. (Chait wrote a great column about why, since so much the president can do is technically legal, impeachment is the only actual check.)

Tuesday: After McMaster and another aide had spent Monday night calling the reporting “false,” Trump predictably sawed off the branch they had crawled out on, tweeting out that he had in fact shared information with the Russians but that he had an “absolute right” to do it and it was no big deal. McMaster, appearing before the press, had to switch tactics, against denying a report that wasn’t made but this time saying that the disclosure was “wholly appropriate” and then seeming to insist that Trump was too much of an idiot to have done any harm: “[T]he president wasn’t even aware where this information came from.” Then news broke that Israeli intelligence was the source of the highly secret information Trump had spilled to Russia -- which happens to be the #1 supporter of Syria, one of Israel’s most committed foes. The Wall Street Journal has since reported that the Israeli source has been “described by multiple U.S. officials as the most valuable source of information on external plotting by Islamic State. . . . All the officials agreed that the president’s impromptu revelation had shaken career intelligence officers’ confidence in Mr. Trump’s ability to keep secrets and exacerbated long-standing tensions between him and the intelligence community.” Israeli officials described Trump’s breach as their “worst fears confirmed.”

We chewed on that stuff for a few hours before 5:00 rolled around, and boy howdy, was it a doozy this time: The New York Times reported that Trump had personally asked then-FBI Director James Comey to shut down the investigation into Michael Flynn, and that Comey had recorded his thoughts about the request in a contemporaneous memo. The memo “was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation.” It is pretty hard to come up with a clearer example of obstruction of justice. Trump even seemed to have the requisite “corrupt” intent, when he asked the others present for the meeting to leave the room before making the request of Comey. Setting aside any possible coordination with Russia’s hacking of the election, the threat contained in the memo is itself the serious crime, the smoking gun. Also, many people have said that maybe there’s not enough evidence to prove a criminal charge of obstruction of justice, but remember that impeachment is a political event for political offenses: As I understand the impeachment proceeding to work, the Senate would not be required to find that the exact elements of a criminal statute had been met in order to convict. (If anyone knows how the mechanics of an impeachment trial works -- who lays out the charges, who spells out the “jury” instructions, etc -- please fill me in!) (Also, can you believe that was only two days ago??) Brian Beutler, commenting on Trump’s threat last week to disclose “tapes” of his conversations with Comey, writes how Trump has sealed his own fate: “But even if Trump has recordings of his conversations with Comey, and they vindicate Trump—as he coyly suggests in his tweet—it is small solace because he will have recorded himself using his power to fire Comey as leverage to discourage an FBI investigation. That is, he will have gathered evidence against himself, documenting his attempt to obstruct justice.”

Wednesday: Wednesday’s 5pm Witching Hour was just Too Much. Bullet points are necessary to recap what we learned:

• That Flynn and Manafort are the formal “subjects” of criminal investigations by the FBI and multiple subpoenas
• That Trump and his associates had at least 18 separate contacts with Russian officials during the last months of the 2016 campaign
• That Flynn appears to have personally intervened to stop an action against ISIS that Turkey opposed, after being paid by Turkey. (This one is bananas and has gotten almost no attention.)
• That the Trump transition knew Flynn was under investigation (for secretly working as an agent for Turkey) before hiring him as National Security Advisor. This one warrants a bit more of a discussion. Apparently Flynn told now-White House counsel Don McGahn (who, we can all agree, is truly terrible at his job) about this investigation on January 4, but was hired anyway. Recall that Pence was the head of the transition. Now recall that in March, after Flynn was fired, Pence went on TV and said explicitly that he first learned from news reports that day that Flynn had been an agent for Turkey. It’s pretty hard to believe Pence, the head of the transition, was never aware of Flynn’s revelation. But that’s what he wants us to think: It seems obvious that tonight’s NBC story, about how he has been kept out of the loop and in ignorance, comes straight from him.  
• That GOP leadership talked (joked?) in a private meeting last summer that Trump was getting paid by Russia -- a meeting someone surreptitiously recorded and gave to the Washington Post. When asked about the comments, a spokesman for Paul Ryan flat out denied that they had ever been made. When the reporter then said that they were on tape, the spokesman immediately segued into claiming they were just “joking.” Chait has a good piece showing why we should take the “joke” at its word.
• And, oh yeah, that Acting AG Rosenstein finally named former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special prosecutor to lead a broad investigation into Russian interference in the election and any cooperation or collusion with Trump associates. Under the order, Mueller can only be fired by Rosenstein for cause, and is given broad deference to run the investigation the way he sees fit. This is truly excellent news -- even as it has given hacks in Congress like Lindsey Graham an excuse to say that Congress should get out of the way and get back to (I shit you not) investigating Hillary Clinton.

Thursday: Today we learned that Trump, after firing Flynn, reached out to him even knowing he was under investigation to tell him to “stay strong.” We also learned that Trump repeatedly pressed Comey to publicly declare that he was not under investigation, and that Comey became increasingly uncomfortable with Trump’s efforts to improperly contact him or influence him, forcing Comey to try to explain that the White House should not be contacting him directly. Benjamin Wittes discloses tonight that, in March, Comey (a friend of his) “described at least two incidents which he regarded as efforts on the part of the President personally to compromise him or implicate him with either shows of closeness or actual chumminess with the President.”

There’s probably more but I’m exhausted and moving on.

UNDER-THE-RADAR STORIES OF THE WEEK: A few very short summaries of stories you may have missed:

Travel Ban in Court: A 3-judge panel the 9th Circuit heard argument this week on Trump’s travel ban, as the DOJ tries to overturn the injunction of the second travel ban put in place by the Hawaii district court. (This follows last week’s argument, also about the second ban, before the full 13-member 4th Circuit.) Dahlia Lithwick recaps: “Looming over the entire argument yet again were Donald Trump’s endlessly damaging statements, tweets, and threats to the legitimacy of the 9th Circuit itself. As such, the Justice Department was forced to do battle not simply with the panel, the possibility that the executive order violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and with the angry state of Hawaii, but also with Donald Trump’s unwavering belief that nothing he says will matter to a court.” Bottom line: The court seemed skeptical of the ban, but also looked for a way to rule more narrowly than the State of Hawaii may have wanted.

Trump Hires an Actual Fascist: Yesterday, reports circulated that Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke would be taking a high position at the Department of Homeland Security. Please read this on why Clarke is so dangerous and insane and terrifying.

State Department Condemns Chechnyan Gays to Die: Chechnya is in the middle of a nightmarish campaign to torture and kill gays throughout the country. Buzzfeed reports that the United States is refusing to grant visas to those fleeing the torture. "We were informed there was no political will,” said the spokesperson, who asked her name be withheld because of security concerns. “They’re not going to provide visas. They’re going to support us in other ways, but not with visas."

House May Have to Vote Again on AHCA: “House Speaker Paul Ryan hasn’t yet sent the bill to the Senate because there’s a chance that parts of it may need to be redone, depending on how the Congressional Budget Office estimates its effects. House leaders want to make sure the bill conforms with Senate rules for reconciliation, a mechanism that allows Senate Republicans to pass the bill with a simple majority.” Hahahahahahaha.

White House Aims to End Student Loan Forgiveness, Other Crucial Education Funding: “Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.” Recall that the GOP health care bill’s slashing of Medicaid would have dire consequences for special education programs that are funded directly through Medicaid and allow schools to pay for things like physical therapists, feeding tubes, and vision and hearing screenings.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 5/11/17

Holy Shit, Guys. Holy Shit.

This week is all about Comey. I had intended to write about other things, like James Clapper and Sally Yates’ pretty big deal congressional testimony, but this story just ballooned and is enormous. Also, I started writing this on Wednesday; it is unbelievable how much had to be changed in the last 24 hours. Below, I try to sort out exactly what happened, and tell the story of the shifting narratives behind what happened. I also tried to highlight some of the best commentary I’ve seen. I end with non-Comey-related endorsements, and they are good. And fun. For reals. You really should click those links. Please. For me. I like to know that this newsletter brings some laughs/smiles and not only second-hand terror and despair.

Also, sorry it's so long.

THE ORIGINAL ALLEGED JUSTIFICATION: On Tuesday at 5:30pm, news broke that Trump had summarily fired FBI Director James Comey. Soon, the White House had released the purported basis for Trump’s decision: a three-page letter (dated Tuesday as well) from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying that he “cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails.” The letter said that Comey “usurp[ed] the Attorney General's authority” in July when he held the unprecedented press conference releasing “derogatory information” about Clinton and essentially indicting her in the public eye, all while announcing that no criminal charges would be brought. “The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial,” Rosenstein wrote. “It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.” Next, the letter states that Comey should not have announced, just days before the election, that the investigation into the emails was re-opened after they found emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, noting that longstanding DOJ procedure is to remain quiet about investigations. Then he quoted a long line of commentators who had publicly previously criticized the July press conference and/or the October announcement. He concluded: “The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them.” He did not explicitly recommend that the President fire Comey. Importantly, 100% of the letter was based on Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions attached his own letter to Rosenstein’s, declaring that the FBI needed “a fresh start” for “the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General.” Finally, Trump’s own letter officially canning Comey said that he agreed with the two other letters.

THE ALLEGED JUSTIFICATION IS UTTER BULLSHIT: First, and this should go without saying, Rosenstein’s letter is, of course, completely right! Comey totally mishandled the Clinton investigation, in ways that were and remain shocking and disturbing. I silently read in a “Damn straight!” at the conclusion of every sentence in that letter. But just as clearly, the letter was not the basis for Comey’s firing. Of course Trump didn’t fire Comey because he thought Comey was too unfair to Clinton in July and October. We know that because Trump was alive last year, and had a mouth, and said exactly what he thought of Comey at the time: “It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution . . . It took a lot of guts. . . . What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back.” It’s equally insane to think Sessions was upset over Comey’s handling of the Clinton saga. “In a late October interview on the Fox Business network, Sessions said Comey ‘had an absolute duty … to come forward with the new information.’ Just before the election, he said on Fox News Channel that Comey ‘did the right thing … He had no choice.’” And of course, it’s May. If Trump was so disturbed by Comey’s behavior (notwithstanding his praise of Comey), he could have and should have fired him right away, leading uber-conservative Charles Krauthammer to call the timing of the firing “inexplicable." As Julian Sanchez writes, “The stated reasons for Comey’s dismissal are pretextual. They are so transparently, ludicrously pretextual that we should all feel at least a little bit insulted.”

THE WHITE HOUSE GIVES AWAY THE GAME: The outrage over the firing was not because Comey was particularly beloved by anyone, least of all Democrats. It’s because he is heading a crucial probe into Russia’s interference in our election and, specifically, whether Trump or his associates played any role in that Russian scheme, and the FBI is supposed to be free of all political interference. In March, Comey acknowledged in an open congressional hearing that the FBI was investigating “whether members of President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.” So it is natural to wonder whether the White House fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. The answer is yes. Of course. Here’s why we can be pretty sure of that that:

First, Trump’s letter to Comey raised Russia -- thanking him for purportedly assuring him on three separate occasions that he (Trump) was not under FBI investigation -- even as the letter allegedly framed the firing as a response to Comey’s handling of the Clinton emails.

Second, the timing of the firing also points to nefarious motives. The New York Times reported that, just last week, Comey “asked the Justice Department” -- specifically, Rod Rosenstein -- “for more prosecutors and other personnel to accelerate the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.” (Note: It was reported that he was seeking more money for the investigation -- which Rosenstein denied today -- but in fact he wanted more prosecutors.) And then word leaked that, in recent weeks, the DOJ has issued several grand jury subpoenas to former business associates of Michael Flynn -- someone Trump continues to insist is a good man who did nothing wrong and is being unfairly targeted by investigators (including, of course, the FBI), and with whom he still tries to communicate.

Third, numerous reports on Tuesday night and into Wednesday said that Trump has been “stewing over Mr. Comey’s testimony to Congress last week in which he provided a few new details about the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election.” The Washington Post: “Trump was angry that Comey would not support his baseless claim that President Barack Obama had his campaign offices wiretapped. Trump was frustrated when Comey revealed in Senate testimony the breadth of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And he fumed that Comey was giving too much attention to the Russia probe and not enough to investigating leaks to journalists.” Politico: He [Trump] had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.”

Then we have the rapidly shifting account of its reasoning coming from the White House itself. On Tuesday night, when the reasoning was still the Clinton investigation, Sean Spicer told the press that the idea to review Comey’s performance and recommend termination started with the DOJ and Rosenstein. Rosenstein, Spicer said, “independently took on this issue so the president was not aware of the probe until he received a memo from Rosenstein on Tuesday.” Sarah Sanders, another spokesman,said the reason for the firing was “real simple ... The deputy attorney general made a very strong recommendation.” On Wednesday morning, Mike Pence affirmed that Trump “was acting upon the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein,” a statement he repeated 7 times. Yeah -- all of that was a lie. “By [later] Wednesday, [the White House] had amended the timeline to say that the president had actually been thinking about getting rid of the F.B.I. director as far back as November, after he won the election, and then became ‘strongly inclined’ after Mr. Comey testified before Congress last week.” It was such a lie that Rosenstein called the White House counsel to demand that his role in this be clarified, after seeing the numerous reports stating that he had recommended firing Comey (which he had not done) and that Trump had followed that recommendation. All of which is to say -- Comey’s firing had nothing at all to do with his handling of Clinton’s emails, and the White House is admitting that.

But all this tea-leaf reading is not really necessary: Today, Trump just came out and said it, in an interview with NBC News: “I was going to fire Comey. My decision. . . . I was going to fire Comey [before his Monday meeting with Sessions and Rosenstein]. . . . I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.” From the White House podium today, Sarah Sanders seemed to dare Congress to launch impeachment proceedings, flat-out saying that the White House hoped that firing Comey would help bring the Russia investigation to a close: “We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity . . . And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen." And then tonight, the Times published a bombshell story saying that, seven days into his administration, Trump summoned Comey to dinner and repeatedly demanded that Comey pledge his loyalty to Trump. Comey apparently refused. GUYS, WHAT THE HELL?

So all this means that Trump’s letter was a lie. It means that the entire White House explanation on Tuesday was a lie. The Vice President’s statements on Wednesday were lies. The firing had nothign to do with the reasons in Rosenstein’s letter. The firing was because Trump was pissed that Comey wouldn’t do his bidding. (More on that below.)

THE UPSHOT -- TRUMP HAS JUST ENDED PROSECUTORIAL INDEPENDENCE: The firing is a huge deal in and of itself, whether or not the underlying Russia investigation was on the brink of discovering anything relevant. As former DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller explains, “But one principle must take precedence over every other Justice Department rule or regulation: Prosecutors and agents must be free to make decisions without interference from the White House. Without that, everything else fails.” This independence is what led Republicans to literally lose their minds over AG Loretta Lynch saying hello to Bill Clinton during the investigation of Clinton’s email practices. Here, the violation of that sacred separation is clear and indisputable. In fact, in Trump’s bananas interview today, he admitted that he personally called FBI director multiple times to ask about status of criminal investigation against him. Indeed, it was Comey’s assertion of independence that drove Trump’s decision:Reuters reports that Trump’s anger at Comey hit a turning point last week “when Comey refused to preview for top Trump aides his planned testimony to a Senate panel,” which “Trump and his aides considered that an act of insubordination.” And Trump’s interview confirmed that he fired Comey because he didn't like the way Comey was running investigations, regarding Russia, “wiretapping,” and the leaks. The bigger question is whether eliminating FBI independence, including with regards to an investigation of the White House itself, constitutes obstruction of justice. “Ultimately the answer goes to the motives: Did the President or Attorney General intend for Comey’s firing to ‘influence, obstruct, or impede’ the Russia investigation?” writes Helen Klein Murillo at Lawfareblog. “Even if they had other reasons or goals—including perfectly lawful ones, such as concerns about the public’s perception of the FBI and the Director—if obstructing or impeding the Russia investigation was a goal, that would constitute obstruction of justice. Therefore, inquiries as to whether Trump’s conduct amount to obstruction will center on his motives.” It has only taken 48 hours for his true motives to come to light, and those motives make an inference of obstruction impossible to avoid.

ROUNDUP OF GOOD COMMENTARY: Each of these links is worth reading in full. But here are some good excerpts.

John Cassidy: “At a time like this, it is important to express things plainly. On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump acted like a despot. Without warning or provocation, he summarily fired the independent-minded director of the F.B.I., James Comey. Comey had been overseeing an investigation into whether there was any collusion between Trump’s Presidential campaign and the government of Russia. With Comey out of the way, Trump can now pick his own man (or woman) to run the Bureau, and this person will have the authority to close down that investigation. That is what has happened. It amounts to a premeditated and terrifying attack on the American system of government. Quite possibly, it will usher in a constitutional crisis.”

Lawfare:“It is a profoundly dangerous thing—a move that puts the Trump-Russia investigation in immediate jeopardy and removes from the investigative hierarchy the one senior official whom President Trump did not appoint and one who is known to stand up to power.”

Kevin Drum: “Trump's astronomical narcissism has caught up with him too. He has so little insight into other humans that he simply couldn't conceive of anyone hating Comey but still defending his right to serve out his term. In Trump's world, you reward your friends and punish your enemies and that's that.”

Brian Buetler: “If Trump gets away with firing Comey—if Republicans let him nominate any director he wants; if they resist the pressure to insist on appointing a special prosecutor, or to convene an investigative body; if they squash inquiries into the firing itself—he will read it as permission to run amok. . . . Absent consequences, Trump will rightly feel liberated to appoint whomever he wants to run the IRS when the current commissioner’s term expires later this year. More alarmingly, he will know that he can get away with ordering a crackdown on voting rights or investigations of his political enemies.”

David Frum: “Now comes the hour of testing. Will the American system resist? Or will it be suborned? The question has to be asked searchingly of the Republican members of Congress: Will you allow a president of your party to attack the integrity of the FBI? You impeached Bill Clinton for lying about sex. Will you now condone and protect a Republican administration lying about espionage? Where are you? Who are you?”

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: The Washington Post very helpfully laid out the three options for an independent investigation of Russian interference in our election and/or the Comey firing. As we make calls demanding that Trump be held accountable, it’s good to be clear on what exactly the options are and what we should be asking for:

1. Special counsel/prosecutor: A special prosecutor is appointed by DOJ (here, Rosenstein himself). The prosecutor has the authority to bring criminal charges, and the president has authority to fire the prosecutor. This was the position Archibald Cox had before being fired by Nixon in the Saturday Night Massacre.
2. Independent counsel: The law allowing Congress to appoint an independent counsel expired in 1999, after anger at Ken Starr’s behavior, so there is currently no way for Congress to appoint a special prosecutor (without passing a new law). So right now this isn’t really an option.
3. Special or select committee: Congress can form a special/select committee, which could issue subpoenas but cannot bring criminal charges. This is where political pressure has its best chance of exerting itself. One idea that has been floated is that there should be no hearings or vote on a new FBI director until a select committee has been formed. (McConnell and Ryan have already rejected calls for a select committee or a special prosecutor, because they are literally the scum of the earth.)

Endorsements

• The Washington Post story from Tuesday night about Sean Spicer’s literally and figuratively in-the-dark press briefing. It is amazing in every way (especially now that we know that everything Spicer was saying was patently untrue).
• This very real, actual exchange between Trump and the Economist.
• Chait’s commentary on the above very real, very hilarious exchange: “Telling The Economist you invented the phrase ‘priming the pump,’ to describe a plan that does not prime the pump, is a bit like sitting down with Car and Driver, pointing to the steering wheel on your car and asking if they have ever heard of a little word you just came up with called ‘hubcap.’”
• This tweet, which made me belly laugh for a solid 15 seconds (in equal parts sadness and hilarity).
• This very terrifying tweetstorm about Trump’s unique pathology: Lacking a “Theory of Mind.”
• This opening sentence, by Charlie Pierce: “The highlight of the now daily arse-showing at the White House Thursday morning probably was the president*'s disquisition on economics in which he invited The Economist to join him in an impromptu séance after which the bloody-toothed shade of John Maynard Keynes arose from the grave and stalked Pennsylvania Avenue, howling for gin and a good lawyer.”
• These anti-AHCA ads.
• New York Magazine’s rundown of 23 of the craziest things about the Comey firing, including oft-overlooked details (White Hosue and DOJ staff having no idea this was coming until seeing it on TV; Trump sending his personal bodyguard to deliver the letter to the FBI, etc.)
• The hero who made this photo happen.
• The song “Next Year,” by Two Door Cinema Club.