January 23, 2018

Update: Another story has broken. Apparently Trump summoned the FBI's acting director to the White House for a little meeting. During that meeting, he asked Acting Director Andrew McCabe who he voted for in 2016. McCabe told Trump he didn't vote.

And now we have the White House working overtime to shovel McCabe out the door.

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Ari Melber is busy tying together all of the rapidly-breaking Mueller investigation stories today, calling it an "inflection point" in the Mueller investigation.

First, the news that Mueller has interviewed Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III and James Comey. Comey's interview centered on his contemporaneous notes about meetings with Trump which made him uncomfortable.

This leads us to the most recent story, where the Washington Post reports that Special Counsel Mueller is looking to interview Trump specifically about events surrounding the firing of Michael Flynn and FBI director James Comey.

According to that report, Mueller's investigation is intensifying its focus on possible efforts by the president or others to obstruct or blunt the special counsel’s probe, also known as obstruction of justice.

Meanwhile, efforts to discredit the FBI are intensifying as the pressure ramps up on Trump. FBI Director Christopher Wray is reported to have threatened to resign after the White House pressured him to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. While Wray stood up for McCabe, other FBI careerists are being pushed out, according to the another report in the Washington Post.

At the same time, former U.S. Attorney Dana Boente is headed to the FBI to serve as general counsel to the agency. Boente originally replaced fired US Attorney Sally Yates before he, too, was asked to resign.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden confirmed that Mitch McConnell did indeed stop Trump from calling out the Russian interference in the 2016 elections, for which he should be accused of obstructing justice.

While Republicans take extraordinary steps to obstruct justice protect Their Hero Trump, including misuse of classified information.

“The release of the materials by the chairman violated an agreement he entered into with the FBI and the Department of Justice,” Schiff told me, in a reference to the release of the memo to the membership of the House for reading. “The agreement was because of the sensitivity of the materials to limit their distribution,” Schiff also said. “There were certain conditions attached to the viewing of the materials which have been violated.”

Asked if it would violate the agreement if the memo were to be released publicly, Schiff said: “Of course.” He added that this was revealing that there may be “no limit” to “how far Nunes and the majority are willing to go to protect the president from the Russia investigation.”

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