New York Times reporting that Donald Trump sent top White House lawyer to stop Jeff Sessions from recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. 

Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode. 

Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. 

Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama. Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.

Smelling more and more like obstructionism all of the time, don't you think?

The president is absolutely NOT supposed to interfere in an investigation, especially one directed at himself.

And yet here we have Trump trying to force Sessions to stay in control of the Russia probe, and then firing James Comey for continuing forward with the FBI investigation.

The reason that Trump feared an expanded investigation into his dealings with Russia is becoming increasingly clear.

Courtesy of CNN: 

The Trump Organization has provided documents on a range of events, conversations and meetings from President Donald Trump's real estate business to investigators probing Russian election meddling, according to three people familiar with the matter. 

The bulk of the information is focused on the period between June 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy, and his January 2017 inauguration. 

The information provided in 2017 to special counsel Robert Mueller's team and congressional investigators so far involves the activities of the company's executives as well as meetings and events, including emails and calendar entries, mostly connected to campaign-related matters, according to two of the sources.

The Trump Organization produced records that include information related to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the billionaire Agalarov family of Russia, head of the US-based Russian American Chamber of Commerce Sergei Millian, a paid speech Donald Trump Jr. gave in October 2016 to a Russia-friendly policy think tank in Paris, Trump's foreign policy address in April 2016 at Washington's Mayflower Hotel and communications regarding WikiLeaks, two of the sources said.

Yeah, I BET he wanted Jeff Sessions to maintain control over all of this. 

Vice News files lawsuit against FBI for records about their interference in the 2016 election.

Courtesy of Vice: 

VICE News is suing the FBI, demanding the bureau release records related to its curious disclosures, behind-the-scenes actions, and apparent leaks in the days leading up to the U.S. presidential election. 

The wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was filed Tuesday morning in conjunction with Ryan Shapiro, a doctoral candidate at MIT and research affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Earlier this month, VICE News and Shapiro filed more than 50 FOIA requests with the FBI seeking documents about the bureau’s discussions regarding Donald Trump, along with other documents that would shed light on the FBI’s decision a week before the election to tweet newly posted records from a long-dormant Twitter account about Bill Clinton’s 2000 pardon of financier Marc Rich. 

The pardon, a controversial decision by the former president, was investigated at the time by current FBI director James Comey while he was U.S. attorney. 

Our FOIA lawsuit notes that the FBI failed to respond to our requests for expedited processing. We argued that we urgently needed the documents to immediately inform the public. Among the FBI records we seek to compel the FBI to disclose: 

• Allegations of the FBI violating the Hatch Act by allegedly using its authority to influence the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential election • Internal discontent at the FBI regarding the bureau’s Hillary Clinton investigations 

• All leaks of information by the FBI to the media and political operatives about FBI investigations of Clinton 

• All FBI communications with Breitbart News; Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon, who Trump named his chief strategist and White House counselor after Bannon served as his campaign CEO; former Trump campaign manager Corey R. Lewandowski, Fox News, and Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Sean Hannity; former New York City mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani; and Republican strategist and Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone 

• White nationalist Richard Spencer, his National Policy Institute, and the “alt-right.”

I am not sure how successful this lawsuit will be, but I am pretty stoked to read about any records they might get from it.

Especially the ones about the Clinton e-mail investigation as well as anything to do with Bretibart or Fox News.

Yeah, I would really like to see those.

Jeb Bush is just George W. Bush as seen from a different angle.

Think Progress has gathered together a number of facts about Jebbie that paint his as essentially the keeper of the George W. legacy, and an uber conservative to the core.

Here are a few:  

He doesn’t recognize exceptions to abortion restrictions. When a severely retarded woman was raped and impregnated while in the care of the state, Bush asked a court to appoint a guardian for the fetus in an effort to block her abortion. 

He opposes the expansion of Medicaid in Florida. When current Gov. Rick Scott (R) accepted federal money designated under the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid coverage to more low-income residents, Bush said he had doubts about the program because funding will be phased down after three years. 

He has worked to suppress voting rights. Florida currently has one of the worst restrictions blocking many convicted felons from voting, even after they are released from prison. In 2000, Bush’s administration also misidentified 12,000 eligible voters, more than 40 percent of which were African American, as convicted voters and purged them from the voting rolls. 

He has passed NRA-supported “Stand Your Ground” legislation. In 2005, Bush signed into law the bill which gave Floridians the right to use deadly force when they are in danger in public places, despite opposition from police chiefs in the state’s high crime Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The law famously came into play when George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. 

In 1999, he abolished affirmative-action in higher education and state contracting through a unilateral executive order, triggering widespread protests across the state. His other major education reform, a statewide voucher program that directed taxpayer funds to private schools, was declared in violation of the Florida Constitution. 

 On national security, Jeb’s doctrine adheres closely to that of his brother George and he believes the U.S. should not back away from engaging allies and enemies around the world. 

When it comes to climate change, Jeb Bush claims the “not a scientist” defense. He started using that now-ubiquitous line back in 2009, when he also declared that the climate “may not be warming.”

The "New Coke" version of Bush is going to try very hard to reinvent himself as a moderate, and  is going to make distance from both his brother and father when it seems politically necessary to do so.

However Jeb has a record, and it is not one that can be buried under 25,000 e-mails hand picked to put a shine on his reputation.

What I find truly humorous about the idea of Jeb becoming the 2016 GOP candidate is that conservatives have put a lot of stock in an already visible attempt to smear Hillary using Bill Clinton's past sexual peccadilloes against her.

However I am fairly certain that the voters are going to be far less concerned with the husband of one candidate's wandering eye than the brother of the other candidate's past attempts to single-handedly destroy this country.

The city of Ferguson is requesting outlandish fees before handing records over to reporters investigating the shooting of Michael Brown. Now why does that sound familiar?

Courtesy of the AP:

Officials in Ferguson, Missouri, are charging nearly 10 times the cost of some of their own employees' salaries before they will agree to turn over files under public records laws about the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. 

Missouri's attorney general on Monday, after the AP first disclosed the practice, contacted Ferguson's city attorney to ask for more information regarding fees related to document requests, the attorney general's spokeswoman said. 

The move to charge high fees discourages journalists and civil rights groups from investigating the shooting and its aftermath. And it follows dozens of records requests to Ferguson under the state's Sunshine Law, which can offer an unvarnished look into government activity. 

The city has demanded high fees to produce copies of records that, under Missouri law, it could give away free if it determined the material was in the public's interest to see. Instead, in some cases, the city has demanded high fees with little explanation or cost breakdown.

Well that is outlandish, and I think with more public scrutiny the city will be forced to change these outrageous demands or risk attracting even more negative attention. Which at this time they can ill afford.

However as I was reading that I realized that I was suddenly having a case of deja vu.

And I am not the only one, as the AP reported a little further down the page:

Other governments also have demanded spectacular fees. During the 2008 presidential campaign, for instance, news organizations asked for emails belonging to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential nominee. 

The Anchorage Press said officials at first wanted $6,500 in search fees, leading the newspaper to withdraw its request. Thousands of pages of those emails were ultimately provided to news organizations for about $725 in copying charges.

Oh hells yeah! Who could forget all of that hullabaloo back in the days before Palin finally threw up her hands and quit?

Remember how they quoted a price to the AP of over 15 million for the emails?

Ultimately of course the state had to cave to the pressure, but it certainly gave Palin and her minions plenty to time to redact anything that might have actually proven newsworthy.

I wonder if the city of Ferguson is taking a page from that same playbook?