It is safe to say that Donald Trump’s presidency is in actual jeopardy.
1) In a memo, former FBI director James Comey claimed that President Trump asked him to end the FBI’s investigation into Michael Flynn.
That sounds a lot like obstruction of justice—especially if Trump then fired him for not doing so.
Trump allegedly cleared Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Vice President Mike Pence out of the Oval Office in February so he could convince James Comey to call off the bureau’s investigation into Flynn’s potential ties to Russia.
From The New York Times:
President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.
“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.
The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Late Tuesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the F.B.I. turn over all “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.
Here is the letter Chaffetz sent to acting FBI director Andrew McCabe last night:
How about some more on the memo, since it looks like it will soon be public record.
Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
According to the memo, Trump also wanted Comey to jail journalists.
Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.
Here’s the White House response:
“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”
What say you, Senator Angus King? From Politico:
Sen. Angus King said if allegations that President Donald Trump tried to shut down an FBI investigation into one of his former advisers prove true, the president will be bordering on “the legal definition of obstruction of justice” and could open himself up to impeachment proceedings. …”If that’s true and confirmed I think you’re getting very close to the legal definition of obstruction of justice,” King said.
North Carolina’s own G.K. Butterfield:
If you want to know what everybody else in Congress thinks, the Los Angeles Times has a running list of where people stand.
2) Israel was the country Trump narced out to Russia.
From the NYT:
The classified intelligence that President Trump disclosed in a meeting last week with Russian officials at the White House was provided by Israel, according to a current and a former American official familiar with how the United States obtained the information. The revelation adds a potential diplomatic complication to an episode that has renewed questions about how the White House handles sensitive intelligence.
Israel is one of the United States’ most important allies and runs one of the most active espionage networks in the Middle East. Mr. Trump’s boasting about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries and raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the region.
We’re sure there are other headlines worth noting, but in the interest of not downplaying one of the biggest dumpster fires in the history of the country, we’ll leave it at that for today. Have a good one. And don’t forget there’s a new INDY on the racks.
