Did Paul Manafort reach out to Russia to ask for help? Did Donald Trump offer Mike Flynn a pardon?

Special counsel Robert Mueller has dozens of questions for President Donald Trump about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and obstruction of the investigation led by Mueller.

They include questions on “any efforts made to reach out to Mr. Flynn about seeking immunity or possible pardon.”

Another question will make headlines tonight: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” As the Times notes, “No such outreach has been revealed publicly.” Read the rest

Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation has issued a subpoena to the Trump Organization for an array of documents, including those related to contact with Russia. Read the rest

President Donald Trump's lawyers want him to refuse to be interviewed by Robert Mueller in the ongoing investigation involving Russia and other possible areas of criminal activity. He may refuse, but the investigation isn't going away. Read the rest

Trump has said that he is "looking forward" to giving a statement to special investigator "under oath" -- but talking to smart people under oath requires the kind of sustained, detail-oriented focus that our barely literate president is notoriously bad at. Read the rest

Trump ordered that special investigator Robert Mueller be fired, but backed off when the White House's legal counsel threatened to resign.

The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

Amid the first wave of news media reports that Mr. Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.

The man who mastered Trump here is Donald F. McGahn II. There seems to be a knack for manipulating Trump, through sycophancy or triggering his fear of looking stupid. Some people just never get close -- GOP politicians -- but military men and rock guitarists instinctively have his number. Read the rest

Not long after Donald Trump fired FBI chief James Comey in May, 2017, he summoned the bureau’s acting director Andrew McCabe to the Oval Office for “a get-to-know-you meeting.’ Read the rest

President Donald Trump “repeatedly urged senior Senate Republicans, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to end the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election” earlier this year, according to a New York Times report citing “a half dozen lawmakers and aides.” Read the rest

CNN reports that then-Candidate Donald Trump 'did not dismiss the idea of arranging a meeting with Russia's president when it was suggested in a meeting with his campaign foreign policy advisers last year.' Read the rest

Sean Spicer, newly ennobled by Hollywood as a well-meaning funnyman briefly forced to play the buffoonish Goebbels to President Trump, is already having trouble staying in character.

About an hour after Spicer's texts, he replied to a polite email I had sent earlier, seeking comment:

Per my text:

Please refrain from sending me unsolicited texts and emails

Should you not do so I will contact the appropriate legal authorities to address your harassment

Thanks

Sean M Spicer

Context: Spicer's a famously fastidious note-taker and it appears White House investigator Robert Mueller wants a peek.

Spicer is exactly what he appears to be: a blathering thug from whom threats and lies flow like sweat. The desire for there to be something under this, some warmer more human creature behind the mask, is just another disease of that liberal center everyone keeps warning you about. Read the rest

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators are looking into whether former Trump cabinet member Mike Flynn may have been part of an effort to get a hold of Hillary Clinton’s emails, hacked by Russia. Read the rest

Special counsel Robert Mueller is using at least two grand juries, one in VA and one in D.C., to investigate possible coordination between the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and Russia, USA Today reports, citing a lawyer involved in the case. Read the rest

Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia's cyberwar on America's elections and Trump's possible collusion, has impaneled a grand jury in Washington. The Wall Street Journal was first to report this news on Thursday. Read the rest

CNN reports that special counsel Robert Mueller III has asked the staff of President Donald Trump's White Supremacist House to preserve all documents that may be related to a meeting organized by Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., at which he'd been promised dirty info hacked from Hillary Clinton by the Russian government. Read the rest

Make Justice Obstruction Again. Read the rest

Praise leaks. The Washington Post reports that special counsel Robert Mueller and his team are investigating President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice. The investigators have also been looking for possible evidence of financial crimes among Trump associates. If Trump did anything shady, he's probably getting very nervous right about now.

This should all get interesting pretty quickly. Perhaps Trump will fire Mueller first, or maybe Trump will try and pardon himself, or he could just pull a Sarah Palin and just walk away from the job. Read the rest