Matt Yglesias underlines the dangers in what Trump’s legal muscle says.

The key passage in the memo is one in which Trump’s lawyers argue that not only was there nothing shady going on when FBI Director James Comey got fired there isn’t even any potential shadiness to investigate because the president is allowed to be as shady as he wants to be when it comes to overseeing federal law enforcement. He can fire whoever he wants. Shut down any investigation or open up a new one.

Indeed, the President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of

The Times published the whole letter with annotations. It’s a lot.

To take one item at random…

It is also worth responding to the popular suggestion that the President’s public criticism of the FBI either constitutes obstruction or serves as evidence of obstruction. Such criticism ignores the sacred responsibility of the President to hold his subordinates accountable — a function not unlike public Congressional oversight hearings. After all, the FBI is not above the law and we are now learning of the disappointing results of a lack of accountability in both the DOJ and FBI.

And that’s what Trump is doing, is it? Performing his sacred responsibility to hold his subordinates accountable? By screaming insults at them on Twitter … Read the rest

Trump’s lawyers are seriously arguing, in a long memo to Mueller, that Trump can’t obstruct justice because as president he is justice himself.

President Trump’s lawyers have for months quietly waged a campaign to keep the special counsel from trying to force him to answer questions in the investigation into whether he obstructed justice, asserting that he cannot be compelled to testify and arguing in a confidential letter that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations.

Including federal investigations into his own crimes. So a president can do anything at all and then simply shut down or forbid all federal investigations because his authority is that absolute.

So they’re saying … Read the rest

Tom McCarthy at the Guardian talks to a couple of legal boffins about Trump’s erosion of democratic and legal norms.

“We’ve never had a president attack the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that work for him in this way,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former assistant attorney general under George W Bush, said in an email. “He’s attacking them in order to discredit the Mueller investigation. But the baleful impact on those agencies’ morale and on public trust in them unfortunately extends far beyond that investigation.”

While whispers of a “constitutional crisis” are in the air, many mainstream analyses reject that idea, pointing out among other things that the Mueller investigation continues full steam ahead, no

Trump loves Kim again.

.@realDonaldTrump is smiling next to a man who runs a gulag jailing some 200,000 North Koreans and who oversaw the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship killing 46 & the hacking of Sony North America. pic.twitter.com/1sH5S9LbVa

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 2, 2018

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1002708327552385024

Trump has agreed to meet with the North Koreans — something they’ve been dying to do for years — in exchange for nothing

Also, we have to figure out how to pay for luxury hotel rooms for Kim Jung Un and his entourage

World’s Greatest Negotiator

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 2, 2018

… Read the rest

Rachel Maddow did a brilliant cold open last night about Trump and pardons and Nixon and Haldeman and criminal obstruction of justice. Her opening segment sometimes loses me, but this one was genius.

One part of it was about Camp David (complete with photos of various buildings there and explanation that they are named after trees and that the presidential building is called Aspen and sometimes people talk about the president at Aspen and they don’t mean the one in Colorado), and the fact that Bob Haldeman made a recorded diary entry at the end of every day as Chief of Staff, and he made one after a conversation with Nixon at Aspen right before the indictments and firings. It’s … Read the rest

Trump met yesterday with families of the people killed in the Santa Fe school shooting slaughter.

One mother said he showed sincerity and compassion. Another, not so much.

Rhonda Hart, whose 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, was killed at the school, told The Associated Press that Trump repeatedly used the word ‘wacky’ to describe the shooter and the trench coat he wore. She said she told Trump, “Maybe if everyone had access to mental health care, we wouldn’t be in the situation.”

Hart, an Army veteran, said she also suggested employing veterans as sentinels in schools. She said Trump responded, “And arm them?” She replied, “No,” but said Trump “kept mentioning” arming classroom teachers. “It was like talking to a toddler,”

And for his next trick…

Aboard Air Force One, Trump says he's considering pardons or commuting sentences for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart

— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) May 31, 2018

Hmm. Corruption and lying to the FBI. That sounds familiar somehow…

PARDON NEWS: @realDonaldTrump considering commutation of sentence for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and a pardon of Martha Stewart, the lifestyles mogul.

— Michael D. Shear (@shearm) May 31, 2018

What’s the commonality here I wonder…

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1002222024717107200

Oh yes, that’s it!… Read the rest

He’s off to Texas to meet with family members of the victims killed in the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School; he plans to have fun there.

Speaking with reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews Thursday morning, the president detailed his schedule for the day, boasting about the state of the economy and ongoing efforts to arrange a previously scrapped meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“I just want to tell you we’re doing very well with North Korea … a letter is going to be delivered to me from Kim Jong Un, so I look forward to seeing what’s in the letter,” Trump said. “…Other than that, the economy is good, stock

Yesterday Trump was way too busy with important president stuff to be talking about Roseanne Barr.

On Tuesday, when Sarah Sanders was asked for Trump’s view about the cancellation, Sanders said “that’s not what the president is looking at. That’s not what he’s spending his time on. And I think that we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now, certainly that the President is spending his time when it comes to policy.”

He was thinking about North Korea, trade deals, the military, the economy, not trivial stuff about some sitcom actor’s racist tweets.

Today, on the other hand, he was thinking about himself and how come nobody calls him up to apologize? North Korea … Read the rest