Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:43 PM, for 13h 39m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1836, the oldest library in the state is founded: “On this date an Act of Congress created the Territory of Wisconsin and in the sixteenth and final section of that Act appropriated funds for the Wisconsin State Library to support the needs of the fledgling government. The library is still functioning but has been renamed as the Wisconsin State Law Library.”
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Quinta Jurecic writes Get Yer Comey Memos Here:
Earlier today [Thursday], the Justice Department provided copies of ex-FBI Director James Comey’s memos of his conversations with President Trump to the House Judiciary Committee and House Intelligence Committee, the majority leaders of which had threatened to subpoena of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and hold him in contempt if he did not provide the memos. The memos have since become public. The transmission letter, as well as the declassified memos, are available below [documents embeded at FW below].
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/20180419-james-comey-memos.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]
➤ Michael S. Scmidt reports 6 Takeaways From the James Comey Memos:
Here are six takeaways:
Trump’s Preoccupation With the Dossier
Shortly before Mr. Trump was inaugurated, Mr. Comey briefed him at Trump Tower about a dossier compiled for the F.B.I. by a former British spy that said Mr. Trump and his associates had longstanding ties to Russia. In its most salacious allegation, the document said that the Russian government had a tape of Mr. Trump watching prostitutes urinate on one another during a trip to Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant.
Mr. Trump denied the episode had taken place and appeared to Mr. Comey to be defending himself. Mr. Comey replied that the allegations could have been made up, but that the job of the F.B.I. was to protect the president from efforts to coerce him.
Though Mr. Trump ended the meeting genially, the accusations clearly stuck with him, Mr. Comey’s memos showed. At least twice more in the ensuing weeks, Mr. Trump laid out a timeline for Mr. Comey and claimed that it showed that such a tape could not exist [additional takeaways in original article].
➤ Greg Sargent observes The leaked Comey memos just blew up in Trump’s face:
First, the Comey memos. When you cut through all the noise, what they really reveal is a senior law enforcement official struggling to figure out in real time how to handle efforts by the president to turn him into a loyalist devoted to carrying out his political will in wildly inappropriate fashion. Comey’s memos recount in new detail that Trump repeatedly demanded his loyalty and that Trump pressed him to drop his probe into his then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
We already knew those things happened via dogged reporting and Comey’s previous testimony to Congress. But now that we have the memos recounting them in full, contemporaneously, the consistency and credibility of this picture become a lot firmer. Simply put, the memos confirm that Trump did, in fact, try to exert a level of control over his FBI director, and over an ongoing investigation into his and his cronies’ conduct, that is wildly at odds with norms dictating that law enforcement should be free of political and/or presidential interference.
➤ Jonathan Bernstein asks Republicans Protecting Trump? Actually, It’s Worse:
In a way, this is worse than merely seeking to protect Trump by placing party above the nation’s interests. By continuing down this path, these House Republicans are placing their True Conservative goal above the party, its president, and the national interest.
Eleven of them are urging the prosecution of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and a bunch of other people. Their reasoning, let’s just say, is specious. At the same time, three House chairs and other House Republicans pressured Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to release Comey’s memos. This is almost certainly not legitimate congressional oversight, as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent detailed; it’s simply a means of interfering with the Mueller investigation. This is more of the same from the folks, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of fast-to-fizzle #releasethememo controversy.
Everyone is assuming that in doing this, the House radicals are seeking to protect Trump. But it’s very possible that they are seeking a Saturday Night Massacre type event for their own reasons. How did the release of the Comey memos help Trump, for instance? They certainly burnished the reputation of Nunes to the strong conservatives who might help him overcome a surprisingly competitive re-election campaign — both through national fundraising and district support.
➤ The Curious Case of Ferret Legging:
(Honest to goodness, it’s hard – but sadly not impossible – to believe this is a real thing.)