“If you start to see this president use pardon power for people who are connected with this investigation, I think you’ll see Congress erupt.”

— Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), quoted by The Hill.

Timothy O’Brien: “A series of hurricanes tore through Florida in 2005, and Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s business and residence in Palm Beach, was apparently very beaten up because Trump collected about $18.3 million in insurance payments from Aon PLC that year.”

“When my attorney asked Trump during a 2007 deposition if he ever plowed all of those funds back into his club, he pointed out that ‘under the insurance plan you didn’t have to’ even though ‘the hurricane really did tremendous damage.'”

“In 2016, the Associated Press scoured Palm Beach property records for damage reports, interviewed the adjuster who assessed Trump’s insurance claim, met with the man who oversaw Mar-a-Lago and spoke with several former Palm Beach officials about possible hurricane damage to the club. There was ‘little evidence’ of ‘large-scale damage,’ the AP concluded.”

“House Democrats have already gone to war with President Donald Trump. But there’s one target they’re skittish of hitting too hard: his children,” Politico reports.

“In public and private, Democrats see potential pitfalls in dragging Trump’s adult children into their political squabbles with the president. So even as they ramp up their investigations into Trump, senior Democrats are reluctant to scrutinize Trump’s adult children too much as part of their sprawling probes into Trump’s administration, campaign and business empire.”

“Democrats, in fact, would prefer to let federal prosecutors handle the family while they take on the president themselves. Yet Trump’s family members — including Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner — are so deeply involved in his business and presidency that it likely would be impossible to take a completely hands-off approach.”

Washington Post: “Late last week, Trump flew home empty-handed from a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi — and, within days, new satellite images appeared to show that the North was secretly rebuilding a rocket-launching site.”

“On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that unauthorized border crossings have spiked to the highest pace in 12 years — despite Trump’s hard-line rhetoric and new policies aimed at deterring migrants. And on Wednesday, the Commerce Department said that the nation’s trade deficit is at a record high — in part due to punitive tariffs Trump imposed on allies and adversaries.”

Jonathan Swan: “Two of Trump’s most reliable media allies — Fox Business host Lou Dobbs and Matt Drudge — called him out last night over the direction of his administration.”

Rudy Giuliani said “that lawyers for several people facing scrutiny from the Justice Department in the investigations into the Trump campaign and presidency had contacted him to see whether the president would pardon their clients,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Giuliani declined to identify the lawyers who broached the subject with him or their clients.”