#resist
MEMORANDUM
To: James B. Comey, Jr.
re: Moral fitness
I think we’ll go with: Gosh, thanks Jim.
To the one, sir, you simply cannot fail to recognize this is #WhatTheyVotedFor. To the other, either way, you are a little late in telling the rest of the world what we already know. Then again, the beeblebrox figures it unlikely you give a damn.
____________________
Image note: Cartoon by Nick Anderson, via Daily Kos, 17 April 2018.
#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor
So, Rachel Maddow is having something of a week, and in her latest scoop we might note an aspect about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation we probably don’t take enough time to appreciate:
“The ‘Documents and Responsive Materials’ covered by the request include but are not limited to”—I love this—”both in draft and final form, all emails, voicemails, documents, photos, text messages, instant messages, electronic handwritten and/or hard copy records, databases, telephone records, correspondence, transcripts, audio recordings, analyses, briefings, assessments, banner entries, user agreements, audit records, metadata, storage devices, notes, memoranda, diary and calorie entries, excuse me, calorie entries, calendar entries, visitor logs, meeting attendance records, meeting room reservations, meeting agendas, badge records records of entry or exit to any building, room or security facility, safe access records, video surveillance of public and non-public areas, and access logs, including of classified information.”
Also smoke signals, if you have any of those, any removed tattoos you’d like to submit for laser analysis, x-rays from that time you broke your thumb at the company softball game. Also, your children’s report cards dating back to birth and their sonograms. Like, this is serious, right? They are going to need it all: Preservation notice.
It ends by saying, “To the extent any of you or your staffs have relevant documents, please identify and preserve them, so we can then evaluate whether and how to provide them to the requesters.”
‡
This memo went out on May 26th. Comey was only fired a couple of weeks before then. So this memo goes out May 26th to all these people at Justice, telling them to hand over all this stuff about Russia and about the firing of Comey. This is nine days after Mueller was named special counsel, and this is new . . . . 
This shows the scale of the request for documents and communications even within the Justice Department for people who may have ended up being witnesses to a potential crime that took place within the administration when the president fired his FBI director for reasons that remain in dispute and under criminal investigation.
It gives you a sense of the massive amount of stuff that Mueller and his team are hunting through in this investigation . . . . This also shows you the massive amount of stuff that has been collected by this investigation that will need to be preserved and protected somehow as evidence if, in fact, the president ends up coming for the Special Counsel’s office.
The amount of data this investigation must survey is a breathtaking prospect. In January, for instance, the Trump presidential campaign submitted 1.4 million pages in response to Special Counsel requests. The list of materials in the retention notice is not so much insane in and of itself as necessarily incomplete, and representative of, well, an insane amount of data. Badge records? Including room entry and exit? As Maddow said, “They are going to need it all.”
And then some.
#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor
The sitcom pace of benchmark headlines sometimes means the effort of retort requires falling behind the story. Or, you know, there is a professional class, and say what we will about that. More directly, Steve Benen makes a certain point about the life and times of the Trump administration:
Kasowitz’s plan to go after Comey by way of the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s office is itself more troubling than Comey’s actions. First, the IG’s office isn’t equipped to launch investigations into private citizens. And second, as Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer in the Bush/Cheney administration, noted this morning, trying to get the Justice Department to target a material witness—in this case, the former director of the FBI—only adds to the concerns about Team Trump trying to obstruct justice.
#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor
Somewhere between the joke about how conservatives in general cannot tell the difference, particular observations about the breathtaking naïveté we are supposed to believe about the Trump administration—
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Thursday dodged questions about the existence of possible recordings of conversations between President Trump and former FBI Director James Comey.
“I can’t comment on that,” Conway said on Fox News before moving to discuss other portions of Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier in the day.
Pressed twice more about the existence of possible tapes, Conway responded, “I can’t comment on that and actually the president himself has said he won’t comment any further on that.”
(Byrnes)
—we might find echoes of Sen. Martin Heinrich’s (D-NM) point to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats when the latter decided he simply did not feel like answering: “You realize how simple it would be to simply say no, that never happened?”
#PutiTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor
There are days when the primary argument against the idea we really are witnessing this debacle is, really, it just seems impossible that anyone could possibly be so bad at this. It seems even more impossible that the Trump administration should be inflicting so many wounds against itself. To wit, the lede from Reuters seems, by comparison, nearly harmless:
President Donald Trump sought to insert himself into congressional investigations on Russia on Wednesday, urging lawmakers to hear from one of his former advisers, Carter Page, to counter testimony by directors of the FBI and CIA.
Well, okay, we are discussing Carter Page, which is never quite as harmless as it ought to seem.
For instance, the lede and some detail from Roll Call:
President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Democrats of resisting testimony from Carter Page, his former campaign adviser, because he “blows away” allegations they have made.
‡
In two tweets, the president went on to say that this alleged change of heart by Democratic members comes because they have concluded Page “blows away their … case against him.”
Trump, referring to the FBI director he fired and the Obama administration’s last CIA director, wrote that his former adviser “wants to clear his name by showing “the false or misleading testimony by James Comey, John Brennan…”
A’ight, so, are we ready for the tricky part? Is there always a tricky part? Never mind.
#PutiTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor
The lede from Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima for the Washington Post:
President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.
And, you know, maybe the theme this week will be something about wondering who is actually surprised. Last week, after all, seemed to focus on President Trump’s apparent inability to not insist on his own impeachment.
This Is 