Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:43 PM, for 9h 19m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 33.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred ninety-fourth day.
On this day in 1904, Henry Ford sets a land speed record:
Henry Ford personally drove the rechristened 999 with his mechanic Ed “Spider” Huff at the throttle. A new land speed record was achieved of 91.37 mph (147.05 km/h) on an ice track carved into Lake St. Clair’s Anchor Bay. (Photo shows Ford and Barney Oldenfield in 1902 with a model 999.)
Recommended for reading in full:
Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt, and Nicholas Fandos report F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia:
WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.
The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.
The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.
Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them.
….
F.B.I. officials viewed their decision to move quickly as validated when a comment the president made to visiting Russian officials in the Oval Office shortly after he fired Mr. Comey was revealed days later.
“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to a document summarizing the meeting. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare summarizes this news:
It was about Russia. Full stop. It was always about Russia.
See from Wittes What if the Obstruction Was the Collusion? On the New York Times’s Latest Bombshell.