RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey is now a subject of the federal probe being headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, which has expanded to include whether the president obstructed justice, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Mueller is examining whether the president fired Mr. Comey as part of a broader effort to alter the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether associates of Mr. Trump colluded with Moscow, the person said.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, denounced the revelation in a statement.

“The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal,” Mr. Corallo said.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mr. Mueller, declined to comment. The special counsel’s pursuit of an obstruction of justice probe was first reported Wednesday by the Washington Post.

Mr. Mueller’s team is planning to interview Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers as part of its examination of whether Mr. Trump sought to obstruct justice, the person said.

The special counsel also plans to interview Rick Ledgett, who recently retired as the deputy director of the NSA, the person added. CONTINUE AT SITE

Senate Republicans continue to negotiate the details of their health-care reform, and one measure of progress is that their opponents are more manic and disingenuous. Progressives who used to deride the GOP for incompetence are now panicked that they may really succeed, and thus the faux tantrums.

The distortion du jour is that the GOP is operating “in secret.” This week Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Republicans of working “behind closed doors, writing a bill they won’t let the public read. . . . Today, no Member of Congress can read the bill because we don’t know what it is.”

Despite Mr. Schumer’s bewilderment, he still knew enough to assert that the Senate bill will “greatly hurt the American people.” Well, which is it? And if Republicans are trying to suppress a public debate about repealing and replacing Obama Care, then they haven’t prevailed, either now or across the presidential campaign. Health care has been central to U.S. political debate for nearly a decade as Democrats created a new entitlement with little public support.

Compared to that effort, the Senate this time has been a model of deliberative democracy. On Dec. 19, 2009, a Saturday, then Majority Leader Harry Reid tossed the 2,100-page bill the Senate had spent that fall debating and offered a new bill drafted in an invitation-only back room. Democrats didn’t even pretend to care what was in it while passing it in the dead of night on Dec. 24, amid a snowstorm, in the first Christmas Eve vote since 1895.

Liberals excused this legislative sausage-making as the price of making history, which was an insult to sausages. MIT economist and ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber told an academic audience in 2014 that “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

Mr. Gruber has since re-emerged to complain of the current debate that “I’m just worried about the speed they’re moving at for what that implies, because it implies no effort to actually get this right.” The professor had apologized for what he called his “inexcusable” remarks in 2014 but he’s betting he can con Americans again.

The irony is that the GOP negotiations are so time-consuming because Senators are trying to improve the product as they build a consensus that can get 50 votes. They’re trying to answer the House bill’s critics on the left and right, not that they’ll get any credit.

James T. Hodgkinson, who on Wednesday shot Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and four others, posted this on his Facebook page March 22: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

Sitting in the dying light of World War I, the poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “I had not thought death had undone so many.” What’s our excuse? Displays of political or social excess seem to be everywhere. Whatever once fastened the doors of people’s minds to something secure and stable has become unhinged.

Some thought the apotheosis of political derangement had been reached when celebrity Kathy Griffin posted a video of herself holding the bloody, severed head of Donald Trump.

But that wasn’t the end of it. We may assume that as Ms. Griffin was creating her video, the artists at New York’s Public Theater were rehearsing their production of “ Julius Caesar, ” the one in which Central Park audiences watch Caesar as a blond-haired Donald Trump, who is pulled down from a podium by men in suits and assassinated with plunging knives.

The news site Axios runs stories regularly about journalists who have been suspended or fired because of their unhinged postings on Twitter . After Donald Trump used a tweet to revive his long-running feud with the mayor of London amid the June 3 killings, CNN personality Reza Aslan tweeted that Mr. Trump was a “piece of s—.”

Some take comfort that these displays did not go unpunished. CNN wrist-slapped Ms. Griffin by dropping her as co-host of its New Year’s Eve show with Anderson Cooper. Delta Air Lines , American Express and Bank of America withdrew their sponsorship of “Julius Caesar,” though New York City’s Democratic Comptroller Scott Stringer said their pullout “sends the wrong message.”

Advertisers must wake up every morning wondering what political meteorite will hit them next. J.P. Morgan Chase pulled its ads this week from NBC News rather than be associated with Megyn Kelly’s prime-time interview with Alex Jones to discuss “controversies and conspiracies,” such as his notion that the Sandy Hook murders were a hoax. Ms. Kelly justified the interview in part on Twitter because Donald Trump appeared on Mr. Jones’s show and “our job is 2 shine a light.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The essence of anti-Semitism is the bigoted claim that if there is a problem, then Jews must be its cause. This is the exact canard peddled by Stone — and is extremely dangerous if unrebutted. I challenge my old friend (and co-producer of Reversal of Fortune – the film based on my book) to debate me on the following proposition: Did Israel do more to influence the 2016 election than Russia?

When film director Oliver Stone could not come up with a plausible response to Stephen Colbert’s tough questions about why he gave a pass to Vladimir Putin for trying to influence the American presidential election, Stone resorted to an age-old bigotry: blame the Jews – or, in its current incarnation, shift the blame to the nation state of the Jewish people, Israel. Colbert was interviewing Stone about his new documentary, “The Putin Interviews” – a film comprised of conversations he had with the Russian president over the past two years. The exchange regarding Israel did not make it to air but was relayed to the New York Post’s Page Six by a source who was in the audience.

When pressed by Colbert about his apparent fondness of the Russian dictator, Stone replied: “Israel had far more involvement in the U.S. election than Russia.” He then said again, “Why don’t you ask me about that?” Colbert responded: “I’ll ask you about that when you make a documentary about Israel!”

If Stone’s absurd response were not reflective of a growing anti-Semitism by the intolerant hard left (of which Stone is a charter member) it would be laughable. Indeed, Stone resorted to the “socialism of fools” (which is what German Social Democrat, August Bebel, coined anti-Semitism) precisely to save face because he was being mockingly laughed off stage by Colbert’s audience for giving Colbert ridiculous answers. Some of Stone’s bizarre pronouncements included:

“I’m amazed at his [Putin’s] calmness, his courtesy…he never really said anything bad about anybody. He’s been through a lot. He’s been insulted and abused.” Stone also expressed his “respect” for Putin’s leadership. But no answer was more ridiculous than his bigoted claim that Israel did more to try to influence the election than Russia.

We know for certain that Russia (and that means Putin) desperately wanted Hillary Clinton to lose. We know that their surrogates timed leaks to cause maximum damage to her campaign. All of our intelligence agencies, in a rare show of unanimity, concluded that Russia went to great lengths to try to defeat Clinton.

Shock waves rippled through Capitol Hill on Wednesday after a shooter targeted Republican lawmakers during a morning baseball practice, wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others.

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Speaker Paul Ryan said from the House chamber, where most members gathered Wednesday afternoon following a security briefing on the incident.

Also shot were Zack Barth, an aide to Rep. Roger Williams of Texas; Matt Mika, a lobbyist who was volunteering at the practice; and two Capitol Police officers, Crystal Griner and David Bailey. The gunman died at the hospital, President Trump announced later.

Scalise’s office released a statement saying that prior to entering surgery, the Louisiana Republican was in good spirits and spoke to his wife by phone. MedStar Washington Hospital Center later tweeted that the congressman was “critically injured and remains in critical condition.”

The incident seemed to confirm the worst fears among some lawmakers that partisan rhetoric has reached a troubling, even dangerous level. Many expressed concern about their security, particularly in situations like a baseball practice where they gather together.

“It’s a concern we always have,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, “and … until the rhetoric changes, I think it’s a concern we’re always going to have.” He added that “everybody” is responsible, in his view, for deepening divisions.

Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, who witnessed the shooting, still wore his baseball uniform and cleats in the Capitol as he recounted the attack to reporters.

“What that rhetoric and that hatefulness has led to is members of Congress, I believe, having to dodge bullets today at a baseball practice for a game that we play for charity,” Davis said. “This should never happen, and we as Republicans and Democrats have to come together and say, as a team and as members of Congress … that this hate and this rhetoric has got to be toned down, it has got to stop.”

The shooter was identified as James T. Hodgkinson III, 66, from Illinois, according to various news outlets. Hodgkinson had volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, and his Facebook page included a photograph of Sanders as its cover image. He had written anti-Republican and anti-Trump posts, including one with a picture of the president and the message that Trump is a “traitor” and “It’s time to Destroy Trump & Co.” He belonged to a number of anti-Republican groups, according to the Belleville, Ill., newspaper, including one called “Terminate the Republican Party.” The newspaper also released a number of letters to the editor Hodgkinson had written critical of the Republican Party, though none of the letters released specifically mentioned Trump.

“I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/14/special-counsel-swamps-watchdog-trump/

That statement by James Comey had this old trial lawyer’s antennae buzzing. While being questioned about his memos-to-self by Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) at last week’s big intelligence committee hearing, the former FBI director used the term “recollection recorded” not once but twice. He was rationalizing why he had failed to treat the notes he’d made of conversations with President Trump as government documents (maintaining, instead, that they were his own property).

“My view,” Comey elaborated, was that the “memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.”

I won’t belabor the fact that the former FBI director’s memos were government records. It is a moot point. He has surrendered them to Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department.

My focus is on the fact that a special counsel is what Comey says he wanted, even though he repeatedly acknowledged that Trump himself was not under investigation, and even though the investigation in question—a counterintelligence probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—is the kind that ordinarily does not get a prosecutor assigned. Because its objective is not to build a criminal case, a counterintelligence probe is conducted by intelligence agents and analysts, not criminal investigators and prosecutors.

Many other former Obama administration officials wanted a special counsel, too. So did Democrats and their media echo chamber—all convinced that Trump was not merely objectionable but unfit.

So, the question is: Was that the plan all along—to impose a watchdog on Trump?

Obviously, it has not mattered that there is no crime to investigate, even though the governing regulations make that a prerequisite for appointing a special counsel. Was Washington’s push for a special counsel spurred by concern over Russia or revulsion over Trump?

Without an evidence-based predicate for a criminal investigation of Trump, did the intelligence agencies undertake to build the predicate themselves? Did they reckon that the semblance of a criminal investigation would justify installing a monitor from outside Trump’s administration, with jurisdiction sufficiently elastic to keep the president in check?