This tweet last night caught my eye:

So I was not surprised that the Axios morning email thingie tells us:

The New York Times scoop, by Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, says Mueller “has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators”:

• “[T]he president told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January” about Trump asking McGahn to fire Mueller.
• So good: “McGahn … had to remind the president that he had indeed asked Mr. McGahn to see that Mr. Mueller was dismissed.”
• “In the other episode, Mr. Trump asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview had gone with the special counsel’s investigators and whether they had been ‘nice.'”

Here’s the line from the story that I think is really important and rings as true: “The president has ignored his lawyers’ advice to avoid doing anything publicly or privately that could create the appearance of interfering with the investigation.”

I don’t know the technicalities of Witness Tampering, but if this isn’t it, it must be close. You can smell the flop sweat from here.

crossposted from Mock Paper Scissors