Jennifer Rubin says what we know, which isn’t much.

So what does this all mean? “If it turns out that McCabe was pressed to accelerate his planned early retirement by a month or so by Sessions or on behalf of Trump, this would strengthen the argument for a pattern of obstruction of justice,” constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe tells me. “But without proof of such pressure, this development isn’t likely to have major significance.”

The main job for Congress now is to find out what happened. “It’s entirely possible that this was entirely McCabe’s decision, but given the president’s calls for his ouster and his constant meddling with the FBI and DOJ, we need to hear answers immediately,” says

Jeffrey Toobin says it’s all about intent. Intent cases are about what’s in people’s heads, what they knew and how that related to what they did. Selling stocks in your company? Fine. Selling stocks in your company when you know it’s tanking and others don’t? Fraud.

The issue of whether President Trump obstructed justice centers on his decision to fire James Comey, the F.B.I. director, last May. This is a classic intent case. The President clearly had the right to fire Comey, but he did not have the right to do so with improper intent. Specifically, the relevant obstruction-of-justice statute holds that any individual who “corruptly . . . influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or

Richard Wolffe at the Graun points out another cognitive deficit that hinders Trump.

Donald Trump has a problem with reality. To be specific, he has a problem distinguishing reality television from reality. With each passing news cycle, it’s alarmingly clear that he believes in his own character from the fantasy show known as The Apprentice.

Now, most viewers above the age of four have already figured out there’s a certain artifice to the world of TV. There’s the dramatic music and the heavy editing, the make-up and the lights, and of course the word “show”, which gives away the whole game.

But our commander-in-chief sees something else when he stares into the screen during his many daily hours of 

Yasmeen Serhan at the Atlantic has more details:

Morgan tweeted triumphantly late Thursday night that “President Trump has publicly apologized for retweeting far-right group Britain First.” But when the preview came out Friday morning, it wasn’t quite that. The four-minute clip showed Morgan pressing Trump on his controversial retweets of the far-right ultranationalist British political group “Britain First” in November—a move that prompted outrage in the U.K., and a rare rebuke from Trump’s British counterpart, Prime Minister Theresa May. But Trump’s response was more deflection than admission.

Morgan: You retweeted an organization called Britain First, one of the leaders, three times.

Trump: Well, three times. Boom, boom, boom. Quickly. Yeah.

Morgan: But this caused huge, huge

Speaking of Don and Terry…Bloomberg revisits their first meeting a year ago.

Over a meal of blue cheese salad and beef ribs in the White House banqueting room, Trump held forth on a wide range of topics. “The president had strong views on all of them,” recalls Chris Wilkins, then May’s strategy director, who was among the aides around the table. “He said Brexit’s going to be the making of us. It’s going to be a brilliant thing.”

Oh god oh god can’t you just see it? We’ve all been stuck next to that guy – the one who Holds Forth on a Wide Range of Topics that he knows nothing about. The pompous bore who thinks he has … Read the rest

Here’s one for the books: Trump’s people are bragging to the press about how “unprecedentedly” transparent Trump and his gang are being. Transparent – oh sure, the guy who won’t release his tax returns, the guy who can’t utter a sentence without a lie in it, the guy who told the head of the CIA to “lean on” the head of the FBI to back off investigating him (Trump), the guy who composed a lying version of what happened when Don Junior met with the Russians – do tell us all about how transparent he is.

On Wednesday, Trump said at his impromptu appearance that not only did his campaign not collude with the Russians who attacked the election,

.@DonLemon: There's "nothing random" about the arrest of a Michigan man who threatened to kill CNN employees. "This is what happens when the President of the United States repeatedly attacks members of the press simply for reporting facts he does not like" https://t.co/b7oXT900iO

— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) January 24, 2018

… Read the rest

Ruth Marcus at the Post explains why the head of state is not supposed to ask the top cop how he voted.

In my country — in our country — the ruler does not call in the head of the state police and demand proof of loyalty. That is because in our country the ruler is an elected, term-limited official, and the state police is, or is supposed to be, an independent, professionalized entity.

The importance of that distinction becomes starkly obvious when the elected official is incompetent and malign in every possible way. A head of state who has integrity and a conscience is less likely to try to make the head of the police into a personal … Read the rest

So a woman who had the good sense and reasoning abilities to marry Eric Trump thinks the women who marched last Saturday are too stupid to know why they did it.

Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, appeared on the president’s favorite cable network Tuesday to offer her opinion on the hundreds of thousands of women who participated in marches that took place this past weekend in cities across the country.

“It was more of a hateful, anti-Trump protest, which I think is really sad because this president has done so much for women. . . . Women’s unemployment is at a 17-year low right now. And, yet, these women out there are so anti-Trump. And I don’t even think

Oh lord.

Shortly after President Trump fired his FBI director in May, he summoned to the Oval Office the bureau’s acting director for a get-to-know-you meeting.

The two men exchanged pleasantries, but before long, Trump, according to several current and former U.S. officials, asked Andrew McCabe a pointed question: Whom did he vote for in the 2016 election?

You know why the tenure of the FBI director is normally ten years? So that the job won’t be dependent on the favor of one president. The goal is to have a Justice Department and FBI that are separate from the presidency, even though the DoJ is part of the Executive Branch. They need to operate independently to do the job … Read the rest

Desperation.

White House emails: “Photos of President Donald J. Trump working in the White House during the Democrat shutdown” pic.twitter.com/cJzSmalG3p

— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) January 20, 2018

… Read the rest

It looks as if Trump won’t be able to make it to his own party tonight, but at least he will still get to make a big profit from it.

President Trump’s posh Mar-a-Lago Club is set to host a high-priced gala on Saturday night intended to celebrate Trump’s first year in office and raise money for his reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Tickets start at $100,000 per couple, Bloomberg News reported.

Posh. Hm. I don’t really think of anything connected to Trump as posh. Expensive, yes, but posh, no.

The guest of honor, however, may not be there. With the government shut down and Congress in negotiations, Trump postponed his scheduled departure from Washington

We’re apparently lurching into a government shutdown but Trump found the time to underline his support for stripping women of their right to decide what happens in their own bodies.

President Trump and Vice President Pence signaled their support as thousands of anti-abortion activists rallied on the National Mall at the annual March for Life on Friday.

“Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden, in a speech that was broadcast to the marchers gathered near the Washington Monument.

The march — which typically draws busloads of Catholic school students, a large contingent of evangelical Christians

The hypocritical rat has done it.

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it was expanding religious freedom protections for doctors, nurses and other health care workers who object to performing procedures like abortion and gender reassignment surgery, satisfying religious conservatives who have pushed for legal sanctuary from the federal government.

The new steps, which include the creation of an oversight entity within the Department of Health and Human Services called the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, are the latest efforts by President Trump to meet the demands of one of his most loyal constituencies. They coincide with Mr. Trump’s planned address on Friday to abortion opponents at the annual March for Life in Washington.

…

Eric D. Hargan,

Aw, now it’s Kelly that Trump is on the outs with. Poor Donny, he does have such a hard time getting along with all the children in the sandbox.

President Trump on Thursday publicly pushed back against a characterization by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that his views on a southern border wall had “evolved” and privately fumed about the episode.

“The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,” the president said in a morning tweet. “Parts will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers