What did Donald Trump do today?

He announced he wouldn't be complying with the Epstein document release law he signed a month ago.

Today is the deadline for the Trump administration to release materials the DOJ gathered during its  investigation of Trump's longtime friend Jeffrey Epstein. After fighting tooth and nail against its near-unanimous passage in Congress, Trump signed a bill into law last month that set this deadline, with a 30-day window in which to redact certain details like the identities of Epstein's victims. The law also requires that the DOJ provide a specific and explicit justification for any materials withheld from public view, in order to prevent it from simply refusing to release materials that might be embarrassing or incriminating for Trump or his political allies. 

This morning, the Trump administration announced it was not complying with the law, and issued a vague timeline for when it would supposedly produce the documents. It did release some documents, including a vast number of documents that had been entirely blacked out.

But as the normally Trump-friendly Fox News reported today, Trump's DOJ is explicitly redacting the identities of "politically exposed individuals," even though the text of the law expressly forbids that. 

Trump, who knew and was befriended by and partied with Epstein for decades, and who is mentioned thousands of times in files released by Congress from the Epstein estate, is mentioned only twice in today's document release—all but guaranteeing that he was either deliberately kept out of today's file release, or illegally redacted.

Even the law's authors admit that it's ultimately powerless to force Trump to release anything that is actually damning to him: as today's announcement demonstrates, simply breaking the law is always an option for Trump. Given the horrendous implications of some of the material regarding Trump's ties to Epstein that have already come out from other sources, that might be the correct tactical choice anyway.  

There's no smoking gun that Trump was ensnared in Epstein's blackmail web or had sex with the children that Epstein trafficked—yet. But it's almost impossible to escape the conclusion that Trump knew what Epstein was doing and kept quiet about it, at least until their friendship began to deteriorate over business conflicts. As e-mails that his estate released make clear, Epstein himself believed in 2011 that Trump had been an informant for the Palm Beach police, something he was in a position to do because he'd spent "hours" alone with one of Epstein's victims. (That person, Virginia Giuffre, had previously been employed by Trump as a Mar-a-Lago "massage therapist" despite being underage.) And in 2019, shortly before he apparently committed suicide while awaiting trial, he told a reporter that "Trump knew about the girls."

Why does this matter?

• The American people are allowed to read something into the fact that Donald Trump could not possibly be acting any guiltier than he is.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He convened a political meeting to tell the Justice Department how to shield him from the Epstein scandal—and then canceled it when he got caught.

Tonight, senior officials from the FBI, the DOJ, and the White House are meeting with Vice-President JD Vance to coordinate their political strategy over the scandal that has resulted from Trump's refusal to make good on a campaign promise to release details of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring. Trump and Epstein were close friends for many years, and Trump has steadfastly refused to offer anything but kind words towards Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's convicted co-conspirator in their child sex trafficking operation. He's also repeatedly refused to rule out a pardon or commutation of her sentence.

UPDATE: As of 8 P.M., the meeting has reportedly been canceled, because of the leak that it was happening. The official White House statement is that no such meeting was ever planned, but at the same time sources inside the administration are confirming that it had been set up and then canceled for fear of negative publicity.

Maxwell met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last week, and—incredibly—was upgraded to a comparatively luxurious minimum-security "honor dorm" prison in Texas, after her lawyer made clear that she expected to be rewarded for what she said in the interview.

Maxwell was also charged with perjury over lies she told under oath to protect Epstein during a 2016 civil trial. But today, there are reports that Trump is angling for ways to officially reveal Maxwell's assertions to Blanche that she never directly observed Trump engaging in wrongdoing. That appears to be a main part of the agenda for the executive branch summit at the VP's residence tonight.

Outside of a Trump presidency, it is extremely unusual for Justice Department officials to have any contact with the White House about ongoing cases, much less to get their stories straight in order to benefit a sitting president. When former president Bill Clinton had a chance meeting at an airport with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in 2016, it was an enormous political scandal, because of the implication that Clinton might have been trying to lobby Lynch on behalf of Hillary Clinton, who was running for president. 

Trump himself went nuclear on the campaign trail over that brief encounter, hyping it as an unprecedented scandal and evidence of a shadowy conspiracy against him.

Even in Trump's first term, there were lines that the attorneys general he handpicked for personal loyalty to him wouldn't cross. Jefferson Sessions recused himself when evidence of Trump's connections to Russian election interference on his behalf became impossible to ignore, allowing a deputy to appoint a special prosecutor. Bill Barr, who was willing to creatively edit that special prosecutor's report to soften its assessment of Trump's complicity, nevertheless quit rather than be involved in Trump's increasingly desperate and unlawful attempts to cling to power after the 2020 election.

But with Blanche and Bondi—both of whom served as Trump's personal defense attorneys in his criminal trials and impeachments—there has been no such reluctance. They and FBI Director Kash Patel have openly embraced Trump's philosophy that the government's law enforcement power is his personal sword and shield, to protect him from any accusations of wrongdoing and punish his enemies. 

Virginia Giuffre was employed as a 16-year-old "masseuse" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in 2000, and in one of Trump's most recent versions of the story of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, it was Epstein's "stealing" Giuffre that soured their relationship. (In reality, Trump continued to associate with Epstein at least through 2007.) Epstein and Maxwell raped and trafficked Giuffre, who took her own life earlier this year. Her family released this statement today:

We understand that Vice President JD Vance will hold a strategy session this evening at his residence with administration officials. Missing from this group is, of course, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.

Their voices must be heard, above all. We also call upon the House subcommittee to invite survivors to testify. As Virginia Roberts Giuffre's siblings, we offer to represent her in her stead and we hope the administration takes our call to action seriously.

Why does this matter?

• The only "strategy" that the DOJ should care about where child sex trafficking rings are concerned is bringing everyone associated with them to justice.  

• The law does not exist to serve and protect Donald Trump exclusively.  

• At this point, it's pretty much impossible to think of an innocent explanation for Trump's actions over the Epstein scandal.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He was very angry very late at night and had to post about it.

Just shy of 2 A.M. this morning, Trump posted this to his private microblogging website:

The very wonderful and talented Lara Trump, whose show is a big ratings success, put racist sleazebag Charlamagne "The God" (Why is he allowed to use the word "GOD" when describing himself? 

[N.B.: Trump appears to be trying to say that Lara Trump had Charlamagne as a guest on her Fox News weekend show.] 

Can anyone imagine the uproar there would be if I used that nickname?). He's a Low IQ individual, has no idea what words are coming out of his mouth, and knows nothing about me or what I have done - like just ending 5 Wars, including a 31 year bloodbath between Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, where Seven Million people have died, and there was no end in sight. He didn't know that, or India and Pakistan or, wiping out Iran's nuclear capabilities, or closing the horrendous open Border, or creating the greatest economy, where prices and Inflation have come way down, and where STUPID and CORRUPT JOE BIDEN set the record for doing the Worst Job as President, EVER. But this dope, Charlamagne, would vote for Sleepy Joe or Kamala? Remember, one year ago our Country was DEAD, now it's the "HOTTEST" Country anywhere in the World. MAGA!!!

There's a lot to unpack here, but it ends in a familiar place: Trump's Epstein cover-up.

Charlamagne Tha God is the stage name of Lenard Larry McKelvey. He adopted the handle as he rose through the hip-hop equivalent of the shock DJ ranks, where oddball names like "Bubba the Love Sponge" or "Wolfman Jack" are common. We don't have to wonder what would happen if Trump compared himself to God, because he's done it many times.

"Low IQ individual" is one of Trump's favorite insults, although one he's very selective about deploying. Here is a gallery of the people he's on record as calling that name:

 
Recently, Trump has been claiming to have "ended" a varying number of wars, usually around five or six. In most cases, the United States has had literally nothing to do with it, and where Trump has actually tried to impose a cease-fire through diplomatic force of will, the results have been deeply embarrassing. This is, by all accounts, part of his campaign to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, something he has been seething about for years because President Obama has one and he doesn't. In fact, Trump pines so openly for that recognition that "nominating" him for the prize seems has become a favorite way for governments looking to manipulate him to curry favor.

But Charlamagne's spot with Lara Trump didn't make Trump mad because he talked about about IQ scores or Nobel prizes. The main thrust of it was his prediction that traditional conservatives would retake control of the Republican Party from Trump. He noted that the very core of Trump's base is already furious with him over his cover-up of the Epstein scandal and his courting of a quid pro quo with Epstein's main accomplice, the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwell was transferred last Thursday to a minimum security, high-privilege "honor dorm" prison camp, in flagrant violation of Bureau of Prison rules for someone convicted of sex crimes against children. The transfer happened shortly after she spoke for nine hours with representatives of the Trump DOJ. The ranking person on the scene was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose previous job was serving as Trump's own criminal defense attorney. Maxwell's attorney made clear that she expected to be rewarded for saying the right things.

Trump has adamantly refused to rule out pardoning Maxwell, and has reiterated several times that he has every right to do so.

Why does this matter?

• There is only one possible reason any president would so stridently protect his right to pardon someone in a criminal child sex trafficking scheme conducted by close friends of his. 

• Assuming telling the truth is off the table, the smart thing for Trump to do now would be to stop drawing attention to the Epstein scandal, which he doesn't seem capable of doing. 

• Thinking that people of color are intellectually inferior is racism. 

• Agitation and emotional instability that becomes worse late in the day is not a sign of good cognitive health.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to change the Epstein narrative by suing journalists for reporting on it.

Trump has been facing a full-scale bipartisan revolt over his sudden refusal to share any details of the federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious abuser and sex trafficker of children as young as 14. Trump's campaign was boosted by conspiracy theories about Epstein and his connections to a secret ruling elite. 

But Trump—who may have been the closest thing to a "ruling elite" in Epstein's life, whether or not he had anything to do with Epstein's criminal activities—abruptly changed his story in recent weeks, declaring that the whole thing was old news, and a "SCAM" cooked up by his political enemies. Specifically, he accused Democratic administrations going back to President Obama of having fabricated evidence against him, although for whatever reason not releasing it when they were in power, while simultaneously denying the existence of any evidence in the first place.

Epstein died in jail awaiting trial during Trump's first term. His death was ruled a suicide, but incomplete and edited recordings of his cell area the Trump administration released this week have only added to the intrigue around his death. Also this week, Trump fired the only remaining prosecutor in the Justice Department who had worked on the case. 

With longtime supporters suddenly furious and suspicious, Trump took the battle to social media, outright demanding that his faithful stop talking about the Epstein case as a show of loyalty to him. Some prominent supporters and Trump-aligned media companies fell in line; others, like the otherwise pro-Trump Wall Street Journal, did not. Yesterday, the WSJ published a bombshell story on a previously undisclosed aspect of the Trump-Epstein relationship.

It was already public knowledge that the two men were longtime and intimate friends through the mid-2000s, and that Trump traveled and partied with Epstein. Trump famously joked in public about how well he knew Epstein's taste in "younger" women. In 1992, Trump arranged for 28 young women to participate in a "calendar girl contest," supposedly as entertainment for a Mar-a-Lago members-only party, but Trump and Epstein ended up being the sole audience.

The WSJ story deepens the connection between Trump and Epstein, reporting on Trump's contribution to a bound volume that Epstein's friends and business partners made as a gift for his 50th birthday. Trump's took the form of a sketch of a naked woman, with his own distinct signature in place of pubic hair. The page includes an imagined dialogue between the two alluding to "secrets" the two share:

Voice Over: ‘There must be more to life than having everything,’ the note began.

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Trump denied having made any such contribution, claiming that he doesn't draw. That is a lie: not only is Trump a prolific doodler, he's sold his sketches for money.

Today, Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and its corporate owners for libel and the infliction of "billions" in reputational damage to Trump, insisting that the paper had fabricated the story and published it knowing it was false. The Journal responded in a statement: "We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit."

Trump's filing (full text link) was clearly drawn up in haste to gain control of the media narrative. One White House official said that Trump was "on the fucking warpath" in an attempt to kill the story before it was released. (Trump has, in the past, sometimes been able to convince friendly media outlets to "catch and kill" embarrassing stories about him, like the National Enquirer did when it bought the rights to the story of his affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels.) The filing is nonsensical in places, accusing the WSJ of billing the piece as an "exclusive," but also of promoting it to "millions" of readers. ("Exclusive" means that a paper is the first to report something, not that it limits who can read its reporting.)

It is vanishingly unlikely that the WSJ would risk its owners' media empire worth hundreds of billions of dollars on a fraudulent story. It is even less likely that Trump will pursue the case any further, since the defendants would be entitled to legal discovery which could bring much more about the Trump-Epstein relationship to light. 

Relatedly, a federal judge threw out a similar lawsuit today brought by Trump against the journalist Bob Woodward. In his book Rage, Woodward used interviews he conducted with Trump to paint an accurate but embarrassing portrait of Trump's first term, which prompted Trump to sue.

One more plausible outcome is a settlement, if Trump can bring the powers of his office to bear on the Journal's owners. This has been a reliable tactic for him during his second term: he has already essentially blackmailed the owners of ABC and CBS into paying monetary damages and changing their coverage of him. Or, Trump may simply let the threat linger in the air while he remains in office, dismissing it at some point in the future if he feels less endangered by reporting on his Epstein connections.

Trump's extreme reaction to public attention to his Epstein ties stands in marked contrast to his relative disengagement from almost every other aspect of his presidency, and it may not be having the desired effect: he's now fifty-four points underwater in polls about how he's handled it.

Why does this matter?

• If it were harder to believe that Donald Trump could be involved in sexual violations of children, he wouldn't be having such a problem today. 

• Making an example of people who report unflattering things about the leader is what dictators do.  

• Donald Trump is innocent until proven guilty, but it's pretty much impossible to imagine why he'd fight this hard to cover up something he wasn't terrified of coming to light.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forced the resignation of six federal prosecutors over his attempt to strike a corrupt bargain with indicted NYC Mayor Eric Adams.

Eric Adams, a Democrat and mayor of New York City, had been under investigation by the Biden administration for bribery. This culminated in federal grand jury indictments in September. Publicly reported details were lurid, with Adams's staffers joking with Turkish officials about how best to conceal the bribery by charging token amounts for airline tickets costing $15,000, or how Adams's name could be kept off of luxury hotel reservations.

After the election, Adams began publicly courting Trump for a pardon. He ordered staff not to publicly criticize Trump, and to cooperate with ICE raids even when they interfered with city business. 

Earlier this week, in a virtually unprecedented departure from normal practice, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to dismiss the charges against Adams. The reason given was that the Adams was the victim of political persecution by the (Democratic) Biden administration, and that he is a candidate for office. (Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign that it was improper for him to have to be put on trial for the same reasons.) Bove's order also forbade federal prosecutors from conducting any investigation into Adams going forward—in essence, declaring him off-limits for any federal law enforcement.

Bove's order also claimed that prosecuting Adams would prevent him from implementing Trump's immigration agenda at the local level—which, the New York Times is now reporting, is an argument that Bove's team coached Adams's lawyers to make.

Bove was one of Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers in the New York trial last year that saw Trump convicted of 34 felonies. Alex Spiro, who represents Adams, is also Trump patron Elon Musk's lawyer.

In a letter dated yesterday, Acting United States Attorney Danielle Sassoon refused to drop the charges, and offered to resign if Bove was unwilling to retract the order. Bove fired her today and threatened to investigate her instead. (Sassoon was made AUSA only days ago and was not part of the Adams investigaiton.)

Sassoon is a Trump appointee, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, and a former clerk for arch-conservative former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. Like other people in acting roles, she was hand-picked by the Trump transition team precisely because of her political loyalties.

Five other prosecutors involved in the Adams case announced their resignations in quick succession today. 

Sassoon's letter says in unambiguous language that she witnessed an explicit quid pro quo between Bove and Adams's defense team, in which Adams would support Trump's immigration policies in exchange for the dismissal of charges. She also notes that Bove yelled at a DOJ lawyer who was taking notes on the procedure.

According to NBC News, a seventh official was prepared to resign, but had not made it official as they were currently giving birth.

One of the precipitating events of Richard Nixon's resignation was the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre," in which his attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned rather than follow Nixon's illegal order to fire the special prosecutor investigating him. The reaction to this purge was so negative that Robert Bork, the official who did eventually carry out Nixon's order, failed to win Senate confirmation when he was nominated for a Supreme Court seat in part because he lost Republican votes due to his involvement.

Why does this matter?

• There's corruption, and then there's corruption so obvious that even hand-picked loyalists will destroy their careers rather than participate in.

• Politicians who commit crimes should be prosecuted for those crimes, not blackmailed into using their office to do what prosecutors want.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened a reporter.

Washington Post reporter David Farenthold won a Pulitzer Prize for his series of articles exposing Trump's long history of lies and illegal behaviors around charities. He's also known for breaking the Access Hollywood tape story, where Trump was recorded admitting to sexual assault of women and claiming he could get away with it because he's famous.

Today, Farenthold was on the byline of a new story about Trump's ongoing attempts to profit from the presidency. It ran under the headline "Room rentals, resort fees and furniture removal: How Trump’s company charged the U.S. government more than $900,000."

In response, a White House spokesperson was dispatched to threaten Farenthold with blackmail. In a statement, spokesman Judd Deere wrote, "The Washington Post is blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization, and it must stop.” 

He added, “Please be advised that we are building up a very large ‘dossier’ on the many false David Fahrenthold and others stories as they are a disgrace to journalism and the American people.”

Deere is a government employee. The Trump Organization is Trump's private business. The statement did not dispute the accuracy of the article's claims.

Farenthold appeared unworried by the threat, but blackmail is one thing Trump knows a thing or two about. He is famous for his attempts to hush up uncomfortable truths about himself with nondisclosure agreements—even forcing White House employees to sign legally invalid ones as a scare tactic. 

Trump has also dabbled on the supply side of blackmail. According to his former "fixer" Michael Cohen, it's how he got the unexpected endorsement of Jerry Falwell Jr. Cohen described a quid pro quo in which Trump got Falwell's endorsement—at a time when he was widely disliked among the evangelical community—in exchange for Trump getting the National Enquirer not to run sexually compromising photographs of Falwell's wife.

Why does this matter?

• The United States government doesn't exist to protect Donald Trump's private interests above everyone else's.

• Threatening the press when it publishes things that make the leader look bad is what authoritarians do.

• Making unlikely threats doesn't make you look strong.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made his final appeal to keep his tax returns secret.

Trump filed an appeal with the Supreme Court today in what will be, from a legal perspective, his last chance to keep his personal and business tax returns from law enforcement officials. 

There is overwhelming evidence that Trump got much of his inheritance from his father, amounting to the present-day equivalent of almost half a billion dollars, through tax fraud. He can no longer be prosecuted for those apparent crimes because the statute of limitations has expired, although the threat of an internal investigation forced his sister, a federal judge, to retire.

Congress is (separately) attempting to exercise its legal right to review his personal tax returns because Trump is widely suspected of having participated in money laundering for Russian oligarchs, among other crimes that would make him vulnerable to blackmail. But the present case, brought by the Manhattan District Attorney's office, is about his business returns. Trump is suspected of having laundered hush-money payments to women he had sex with through the Trump Organization.

There is a legal theory that a sitting president cannot be indicted, although this has never been tested in the courts. It is the prevailing interpretation at the Department of Justice, which is why the special counsel Robert Mueller did not seek Trump's indictment. Trump's argument in the tax case, which every lower court has emphatically rejected, is that not only can he not be indicted, he can't even be investigated, no matter how overwhelming the evidence is that he committed a crime.

In other words, Trump is arguing that while he remains in office, he is above the law, and that impeachment is the only remedy for a lawbreaking president. (He's also said it's illegal to impeach him because he hasn't been convicted of crimes.)

Neither the District Attorney nor Congress would be permitted to make Trump's tax returns public, except for anything that might be introduced as evidence in a criminal trial. Trump is the only president or presidential candidate since Richard Nixon to refuse to let the public verify that his finances are legitimate.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents are not above the law.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He defended Rudy Giuliani—to a point.

Trump's new "fixer," Rudy Giuliani, is reportedly under federal investigation related to his involvement in Trump's attempt to gin up a fake Ukrainian "investigation" of his political rival Joe Biden. The news broke yesterday, just two days after Giuliani's associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested on charges related to their attempts to illegally funnel Ukrainian money to American political campaigns. 

Parnas and Fruman had lunch with Giuliani the day before their arrest, and were traveling on one-way tickets to Europe, where Giuliani had been scheduled to meet them. The two have long-standing ties to Trump, as well.

Whether Giuliani is Trump's actual lawyer is a matter of some debate. Trump himself was very reluctant yesterday to call Giuliani his lawyer. When asked, he said, "I don't know. I haven't spoken to Rudy," before correcting himself: "I spoke to him yesterday, briefly." Trump then added, equivocally, "He's a very good lawyer and he has been my lawyer, sure." Today, after leaving Giuliani's status up in the air for more than 24 hours, Trump confirmed that Giuliani is his lawyer. 

Trump has good reason to hesitate. No attorney-client privilege applies to illegal acts that the "lawyer" is party to, which means that Giuliani could testify against Trump about his Ukrainian activities, either in a court or an impeachment proceeding. But insulting Giuliani, whose temper and emotional stability are much like Trump's, could be equally disastrous.

That is presumably why Trump tweeted out his support this morning, blaming the "Deep State" for Giuliani's problems. 

The investigation into Giuliani is reportedly being done through the Southern District of New York office, whose leadership is, like all United States Attorney's offices, made up of Trump appointees.

Why should I care about this?

• The president doesn't just get to declare his friends and/or criminal co-conspirators innocent of any crimes.

• The reason it's important to remove presidents who are mixed up in criminal activity is that they are easily blackmailed.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to undo releasing the memo that summarizes his attempt to force the Ukrainian government to interfere in the 2020 election.

Impeachment is now looking increasingly likely after a whirlwind week of revelations about alleged corruption and cover-up over Trump's attempts to get another foreign country to intervene in an election on his behalf. All of this was, of course, put into motion by a formal whistleblower complaint that Trump initially tried to suppress.

Today, Trump insisted that "The Whistleblower’s complaint is completely different and at odds from my actual conversation with the new President of Ukraine." 

As it happens, since both the Trump administration's own summary of the call and the whistleblower's complaint are now (mostly) public, this is a testable claim.

COMPLAINT: In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. ...According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia[,] initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General [William Barr] would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.

COMPLAINT: The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.

TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out.

COMPLAINT: [Trump pressured Zelensky to] assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine , with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC’s networks in 2016

TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people.

COMPLAINT: [Trump pressured Zelensky to] meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.

TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. ...The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it...

COMPLAINT: The President also praised Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutseno, and suggested that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to keep him in his position.

TRUMP [on call with Zelensky]: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.

COMPLAINT: Aside from the above-mentioned “cases” purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other “cases” were discussed.

The summary of the call mentions no other "corruption" besides Trump's conspiracy theory about Russia's innocence in interfering in the election, and what he is trying to get Ukraine to accuse the Bidens of.

Trump also said that the whistleblower "knew practically NOTHING" about the call. That's actually true: the whistleblower was reporting things he or she was told by other Trump administration officials without having heard the call him or herself. This is a huge problem for Trump, because it means that the whistleblower's other sources—which talk about the larger attempt to strong-arm Ukraine beyond the single phone call—are accurate and direct witnesses to Trump's actions.

So what?

• Things that are true don't become false just because a president needs them to be for political purposes.

• It's illegal and anti-American to try to get foreign governments to sabotage American elections.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made sure Russia would be listening.

In an Oval Office interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Trump said today that if a foreign government approached him with information to use against a Democratic challenger, he would take advantage of it. He also said, incorrectly, that nothing would require him to report foreign interference like this to the FBI.

Here is a transcript of the portion released tonight by ABC. Stephanopoulos was asking Trump about the trouble that his son, Donald Trump Jr., had gotten into over apparently untruthful testimony about the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents peddling disinformation about Hillary Clinton.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Should [Donald Trump Jr.] have gone to the FBI when he got that e-mail? 

TRUMP: OK, let's put yourself in a position. You're a congressman. Somebody comes up and says, "Hey, I have information on your opponent." Do you call the FBI? 

STEPHANOPOULOS: If it's coming from Russia, you do. 

TRUMP: I tell you what, I've seen a lot of things over my life, I don't think in my whole life I've ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don't call the FBI! You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do. 

STEPHANOPOULOS: Al Gore got a stolen briefing book. He called the FBI.

Stephanopoulos is essentially correct here, although the Bush campaign strategy materials were sent to a Gore surrogate, Rep. Tom Downey, who was helping him prepare for the debates. Downey turned them over to the FBI immediately, without involving the Gore campaign.

TRUMP: Well, that's different, a stolen briefing book.

At this point, Trump seemed to move away from a hypothetical situation to a specific case where Russia offered him assistance, or where he asked for it from Russia.

TRUMP: This isn't a stolen—this is somebody that said, "We have information on your opponent." Oh, let me call the FBI. Give me a break! Life doesn't work that way.

The DNC e-mails that the Russian government released via Wikileaks were, in fact, stolen.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The FBI director says that's what should happen. 

TRUMP: The FBI director is wrong.

The FBI director is not wrong. It is a crime for a foreign entity to give anything of value to an American political campaign, and it is a crime for any campaign to "solicit, accept, or receive" anything of value from a foreign source. 

Government officials—like Trump is now—also have an affirmative duty to report violations of federal law. Trump's oath of office requires that he "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." 

STEPHANOPOULOS: Your campaign this time around. If foreigners, if Russia, if China, if someone else offers you information on opponents, should they accept it or should they call the FBI? 

TRUMP: I think maybe you do both. I think you might want to listen! I don't—there's nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, "We have information on your opponent." Oh? I think I'd want to hear it. 

STEPHANOPOULOS: You'd want that kind of interference in our elections? 

TRUMP: It's not an interference! They have an information. I think I'd take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI, if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, "Oh, let's call the FBI." The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it.

The FBI has 35,000 employees, including many specifically detailed to election security and preventing election fraud.

TRUMP: But you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that's the way it is.

Exactly one member of Congress in the last 230 years has been investigated for soliciting campaign assistance from a foreign source: Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned in 2015 and served seven months in prison on related charges. Grimm had asked an Israeli citizen for help getting donations from his religious followers.

Trump did not elaborate on why he thought getting election help from foreign sources was so commonplace.

Why is this a bad thing?

• Encouraging other countries to spy on Americans is a betrayal of the oath of office.

• A candidate—especially an incumbent president—who makes himself beholden to foreign countries to get elected can be manipulated by them.

• Even when it's true, "everybody does it" isn't how a president should defend committing crimes.

• Someone who says "no collusion" as often as Trump probably shouldn't admit to being willing to collude with foreign spy agencies.

• If you can't get elected without illegal foreign help, you probably shouldn't be in office.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended nobody ever warned him about Michael Flynn.

In court filings released yesterday, it was revealed that Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn—who has since pleaded guilty to crimes uncovered by the Mueller probe—had been pressured by Trump's representatives to refuse to cooperate. The sentencing memo says that 

[Flynn] informed the government of multiple instances, both before and after his guilty plea, where either he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could’ve affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation

Specifically, the memo reveals that Trump's personal lawyer left Flynn's lawyer a voicemail imploring him to let Trump's defense team know if Mueller was targeting Trump—for "national security" reasons—and reminding him of Trump's "feelings toward Flynn." When Flynn's defense team refused to cooperate, Trump's lawyer followed up with a threat. More disclosures are expected as Flynn's sentencing proceeds.

Today, in an apparent effort to distance himself from the once-again metastasizing Flynn scandal, Trump took to Twitter to claim he'd never been warned about Flynn.

In reality, Trump was repeatedly warned, both before and after his term began. 

Then-President Obama explicitly and urgently warned Trump within days of the 2016 election to not hire Flynn, who at the time was a Trump campaign official. Obama had fired Flynn for insubordination and abuse of subordinates, which may have pushed Flynn into Trump's camp. 

In the week after the election, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) sent a letter warning Vice-President-elect Mike Pence that Flynn was vulnerable to conflict of interest charges due to his undisclosed lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government. (Some of Flynn's criminal convictions stemmed from his attempts to hide this illegal lobbying.)

Trump campaign surrogate Chris Christie also warned Trump against having anything to do with Flynn, although Christie himself was in the process of being purged from the transition by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. (As a U.S. Attorney, Christie successfully prosecuted Kushner's father in 2005 for campaign finance fraud, tax evasion, and witness tampering, and Kushner has openly held a grudge ever since.)

Six days after Trump's inauguration, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates made an highly unusual trip to the White House to personally warn White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail because he'd lied about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Yates was fired four days later. Flynn continued to take part in the Trump administration's outreach to Russia, until Trump was forced to finally fire him eighteen days after Yates' warning when the story became public.

Why should I care about this?

• Reality doesn't change just because a president's story does.

• Lying about things that have been in the public record for years is insulting to the people being lied to.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He felt attacked.

Trump once again spent the day's "executive time" on Twitter, complaining about "Unlimited Presidential Harassment," by which he meant the various investigations into him and his businesses. He seems (not without reason) especially concerned about the revived House Intelligence Committee investigation, which is no longer chaired by his close political ally Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). 

In one tweet, he insisted that "Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government."

This is, to some extent, true. President Obama did not have a private business other than his book royalties, so there were no concerns that his business connections could be used to buy influence over him in violation of the emoluments clause. Since there was no such business, it could not have violated campaign finance law by illegally funneling hush money to the porn-star mistresses Obama didn't have. Nor could it have been suspected of helping launder money for Russian oligarchs and drug cartels. Also, his tax returns were made public every year, so there was nothing to investigate in terms of what entities he might have owed money to.

By a similar token, the only "investigation" into the possibility of secret ties that Obama had to foreign governments was the one (supposedly) launched by Trump himself into whether Obama had in fact been born in the United States. It's not clear that the "investigators" Trump said he had dispatched to Hawaii actually existed or did any work, but in the end even Trump acknowledged that the "birther" conspiracy theory was wrong.

It's also fair for Trump to say that President Obama was not suspected—even by the Republican-controlled Congress that spend thousands of committee-hours investigating other aspects of his administration—of having collaborated with hostile foreign countries to sabotage the 2008 or 2012 election.

Obama operates a charitable foundation that has not admitted to illegal "self-dealing" or allowing itself to be used to further Trump's political ambitions. Neither were his inaugural committees accused of being slush funds, or any super-PACs associated with him of illegally accepting foreign donations, so no investigations were done there either.

Why should I care about this?

• Suspected criminals don't get a pass just because they feel "harassed."

• Presidents don't get to opt out of Congressional oversight.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He finally admitted to working with Russia on a Moscow hotel project all through the 2016 campaign.

Trump sent his "TV lawyer" Rudy Giuliani to NBC's Meet the Press to make a huge admission: that he had been trying to make a deal to build a luxury residential tower in Moscow as late as "October or November" of 2016.

This is significant for two reasons. First, it is difficult to count the number of times, before and after being elected, Trump has categorically denied having any business interest in Russia.

In turn, that means that Russia was aware the whole time that Trump was lying to voters and, potentially, to law enforcement, giving the Putin regime even more blackmail leverage over Trump. Voters would have had good reason to be worried if they'd known about the deal: it would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump.

Giuliani's role in the army of defense lawyers working for Trump is to help him "get ahead of the story" by admitting things Trump has previously denied when it is clear the truth will come out regardless. In the past year, he's appeared on TV to blunt the impact of several serious revelations. He has helped Trump back down from countless "no collusion" tweets by saying that "collusion" doesn't refer to any specific criminal act, and he recently suggested that whatever "collusion" may have happened must have been done by campaign officials without Trump's knowledge. Last May, he admitted that Trump had paid hush money to Stormy Daniels via Michael Cohen to conceal their sexual affair. 

In the same interview, Giuliani admitted that Trump "might have" discussed with Cohen his testimony in front of Congress before Cohen gave it. Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow deal in order to avoid exposing Trump's lies on the subject.

Why does this matter?

• Some people who voted for Trump might not have done so if they'd known he was lying about being in business with the Putin regime.

• Eventually telling a version of the truth after you've been caught isn't the same thing as telling the truth the first time.

• Honest public officials don't seek nine-figure bribes, or let it look like they're open to them.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He thought a threat by North Korea was a compliment.

Trump was once again "confined" to the White House today by the government shutdown, now in its 11th day. And once again he spent most of the day (including the early morning hours) tweeting. Most of them were angry or defensive—they included sarcastic all-caps holiday greetings to his "HATERS," and calling a retired Army general a "dog"—but one of them offered what Trump apparently thought was good news.

Trump apparently took what virtually everyone else saw as a threat or a warning and concluded that Kim Jong-un was praising him. 

In reality, what Kim said was that North Korea would not make or test nuclear weapons unless the United States dropped its economic sanctions. Those sanctions are essentially the only thing besides the threat of nuclear annihilation that has kept the Kim regime in check until now. 

Basically, Trump was bragging that by "falling in love" with Kim Jong-un and agreeing to weaken the U.S.-South Korea military alliance, he had succeeded in getting North Korea to do exactly what it has been doing all along.

North Korea already has a stockpile of perhaps 60 nuclear warheads. Kim did not promise to give up this arsenal (and never has). He only suggested that he would not add to it, but warned that

if the United States does not deliver its promise and misjudge our people’s patience, making unilateral demands to continue sanctions and put pressure on us, we will have no choice but to seek a new path to protect the country’s independence, interests and peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim has had Trump over a barrel politically since Trump went against the strenuous advice of his advisors and accepted Kim's invitation to a summit meeting. By declaring the summit a success even before it had happened, and by insisting immediately afterwards that North Korea was "no longer a nuclear threat," Trump gave Kim an enormous amount of leverage over his presidency. To even hint that North Korea was not acting in good faith would be to admit failure, something Trump seems incapable of even if he could afford it politically. This is, at least in part, why Trump has ignored his own intelligence agencies' findings that the Kim regime is accelerating work on their missile program and is developing plans to hide its nuclear stockpile from inspectors.

Why is this a problem I should care about?

• No president can afford to be this incompetent where the nuclear security of the United States and its allies are concerned.

• It's a problem when a president flies into a rage at a retired American military officer who criticizes him, and then "looks forward" to spending more time with a murdering, torturing dictator.

• Good "dealmakers" don't get nothing in exchange for something, and aren't pleased with themselves when that happens.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He went on the defensive after admitting he'd lied to voters about his Russia ties.

Reeling after a terrible news day in which he was forced to admit he lied to Republican primary voters about his ongoing business ties to Russia, Trump tried to mitigate the damage on Twitter. Addressing his now-unveiled 2016 plans to build Trump Tower Moscow, Trump characterized it this way:

Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail... ....Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project. Witch Hunt!

Some of this is at least technically true. It was not illegal for Trump to seek out business in Putin's Russia, or even to repeatedly lie about whether he was doing that while running for president. (It probably would have been illegal if his proposed $50 million bribe of Vladimir Putin had happened—U.S. citizens aren't allowed to pay or even offer bribes to foreign governments—but prosecution seems unlikely on that point.)

And Trump's claim that he put up "zero money" is also true, at least as far as we know at the moment. The financing for what would have been a billion-dollar project was slated to come not from Trump (who was effectively blackballed from legitimate banks anyway), but from a Russian state-owned institution, VTB Bank.

VTB Bank was (and remains) under sanction by the United States, which would have put Trump's investment on legally shaky ground. But that didn't dissuade Trump from signing a letter of intent just two weeks after Putin's government guaranteed Trump's financing. Trump signed the letter the same day that he participated in the third Republican primary debate.

Whether pursuing the project for a full year after starting his presidential run, lining up financing from a U.S.-sanctioned bank, involving his adult children and a Trump Organization vice-president, and obtaining permission from Putin himself counts as "lightly looking" is a matter of opinion.

Why does this matter?

• It's wrong for a presidential candidate to lie to voters about who is or isn't influencing them.

• It's incredibly stupid and dangerous for a presidential candidate to give a hostile foreign country leverage over him—even if it might be good for the candidate's private business.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted he'd lied to the American people about his business interests in Russia.

This morning, Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer and longtime Trump Organization executive, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. Cohen admitted that he'd lied to protect Trump politically, by (falsely) saying that Trump wasn't seeking to do business in Russia during the campaign.

Since entering politics, Trump has insisted over and over again that he had no business interests in Russia.

Reacting to the Cohen plea, Trump was forced to admit this afternoon that he'd been pursuing a massive construction project in Moscow well into 2016, and that, notwithstanding his years of denials, that "everybody knew about it."

Specifically, as BuzzFeed News reported today, Trump was dealing directly with Dmitry Peskov, a Putin lieutenant. Trump wanted to give Putin a $50 million penthouse in the proposed Moscow Trump Tower, in the hopes of making the money back from other Russian oligarchs.

Voters knew none of this. Almost all of the 2016 Republican primaries had taken place by the time work finally stopped on the project. That fact raises national security concerns. By engaging in secret deals with Russian interests, and deliberately concealing them from voters, Trump gave the Putin regime leverage over him.

This may to some extent explain Trump's astonishing deference to Putin, even after he became president. And that in turn would explain Putin's willingness to go extraordinary lengths to make sure that Trump became president.

Why should I care about this?

• It's bad if a presidential candidate hands a hostile foreign power the tools to blackmail him with.

• It's wrong to lie to voters about things that would make them not vote for you if they knew the truth.

• The part where Trump tried to give Vladimir Putin a $50 million gift.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted defeat to Stormy Daniels.

In court papers filed today, Trump promised not to attempt to enforce his nondisclosure agreement against Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had sex with him shortly after the birth of his youngest son to his current wife. Trump had his "fixer" Michael Cohen use a shell company to pay Daniels $130,000 for her silence in the weeks before the 2016 election. The fact that both Cohen and Trump's businesses were illegally involved in funneling that money to Daniels means that Trump was part of a criminal conspiracy--as Cohen testified under oath when he pleaded guilty to related charges last month.

By giving Daniels what she wants--free rein to tell her story--Trump has apparently decided that the sordid details are less dangerous to him than undergoing a routine pre-trial deposition would be. Depositions are taken under oath. That means that Trump, who Cohen recorded directing the illegal shuffling of money, would have to choose between perjuring himself or invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. 

Trump is on record as saying that only guilty people plead the Fifth, but his friends and legal team seem absolutely convinced that he would be unable to tell the truth under oath--and have repeatedly said so in public.

So what?

• It's bad if porn actors can successfully blackmail the president.

• Presidents who don't commit crimes in the process of trying to get elected are less vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.

• A president who is afraid of having to tell the truth under oath is unfit for the job.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened to revoke a non-existent "license" from a television network he doesn't like.

This morning, Trump tweeted this:

A part of this is actually true: NBC News is indeed coming under scrutiny for its handling of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story, which ultimately ended with journalist Ronan Farrow taking it to the New Yorker. 

But the implicit threat to "look at their license" is both empty and chilling. Neither Trump nor the FCC has the power to revoke NBC's "license," because only individual local stations have broadcast licenses to revoke. NBC's cable channels do not come under the FCC's jurisdiction. And--at least under the rule of law--even local licenses can't be revoked simply because the President feels a particular news story was not reported quickly enough.

It's not clear if Trump, a former NBC employee, knows that he can't legally order a network shut down.

The real threat is Trump's apparent belief that he should shut down news organizations he doesn't like. He's tried to use the powers of his office to weaken or silence the free press before, as when he tried to force Time Warner to sell CNN in order to get Justice Department approval for a planned merger, or just last week when he threatened to slap regulations on search engines and social media platforms if they didn't change the political tone of their content.

Trump's decision to call attention to the Weinstein coverage is interesting. Many of Trump's own sexual harassment and infidelity scandals were deliberately hidden during the campaign because the National Enquirer bought the rights to them and stored the supporting evidence in a secret safe. David Pecker, the Trump ally and CEO of the Enquirer's parent company who arranged for those deals to be made, has been granted criminal immunity and is cooperating with prosecutors.

Why should I care about this?

• Threatening the free press is what authoritarians do.

• Presidents should have at least a remotely accurate idea of what their actual powers are.

• A man who pays hush money to keep his sex scandals out of the press probably isn't the best person to criticize a lack of investigative vigor in the press.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended to be surprised that his "fixer" might have done something unethical.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported on a tape recording made by Trump's longtime "fixer" Michael Cohen, in which Cohen and Trump discuss paying hush money related to Trump's affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Today, Trump weighed in on Twitter: "Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal."

Trump is wrong about the law: it was not illegal for Cohen to record Trump in New York (or 37 other states), where the law allows people to make recordings of conversations they are a part of. Trump is also lying when he says it is "inconceivable" that the FBI would conduct a raid like the one at Cohen's office. In reality, law enforcement acts to protect evidence it thinks a suspected criminal will destroy regardless of the time of day, or who the target's business partners might be.

As an ethical matter, it is debatable whether an attorney should make such recordings--but then, whether Trump is willing to admit that Cohen was ever his lawyer changes frequently according to what is politically convenient. (As recently as May, Rudy Giuliani couldn't even say for sure whether Cohen was still doing legal work for Trump.)

Trump's tweets leave out one important piece of the context, though: it is very likely that Trump himself leaked this particular tape. Cohen's team was apparently caught by surprise, and had no public response until the end of the day. But Trump's favorite "TV lawyer" Rudy Giuliani was ready to do media appearances declaring that the tape somehow exonerated Trump, and Trump's legal team had waived their attorney-client privilege with respect to this particular tape. 

For the past few months, Trump has rapidly cycled between abusing Cohen in the press and speaking warmly of him--which is not much of a change from their previous relationship. Given that Cohen is now very likely to cooperate with federal authorities, Trump seems to have decided that a pre-emptive attack on his former "fixer" is his best option.

Why should I care about this?

• Presidents shouldn't attack their own government for executing lawful search warrants.

• No legal privilege exists between criminal co-conspirators.

• There are probably more important things for a president to be doing than trying to attack the credibility of a future witness against him.

• Trump's sexual affairs are his own business, but a president who needs to pay off multiple women to keep quiet about them is vulnerable to blackmail.