Jonathan Chait: “The Washington Post comes closest to addressing the mystery, yet fails to resolve the matter. The Post reports that the president ‘tuned in to cable television segments about the memo. He talked to friends and advisers about it.’ He thereby ‘became absolutely convinced’ it must be published. After becoming convinced, Trump ‘was then left alone to read the memo in its entirety.’ And then Chief of Staff John Kelly ‘returned a few hours later and shared with the president his opinion.'”

“‘A few hours’ is obviously ample time to read a three-and-a-half-page memo. But the Post does not say that Trump read it, or even that he claimed to have read it. All we know is that he was left alone with a copy.”

“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation has gathered enough steam that some lawyers representing key Donald Trump associates are considering the possibility of a historic first: an indictment against a sitting president,” Politico reports.

“Neither attorney claimed to have specific knowledge of Mueller’s plans. Both based their opinions on their understanding of the law; one also cited his interactions with the special counsel’s team, whose interviews have recently examined whether Trump tried to derail the probe into his campaign’s Russia ties.”

Said one lawyer: “If I were a betting man, I’d bet against the president.”

President Trump said that the top officials and investigators at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department had “politicized the sacred investigative process,” hours before the White House is expected to clear the way for Congress to release a controversial memo, the New York Times reports.

“The early-morning Twitter post reinforced reports that Mr. Trump, in allowing the memo to be released, is seeking to clean house in the upper ranks of the law enforcement agencies, even at the risk of losing his own F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray.”

After the press was escorted out of the conference room, Breitbart News obtained an audio recording of the rest of President Trump’s speech to Republican members of Congress “as he delighted the crowd by discussing the details of his cognitive exam at Walter Reed Military Hospital. He boasted that he got a ‘30-for-30’ score… He said that in the beginning of the test, he had to identify sketches of animals, which was pretty easy.”

“Later in the test, he explained, he had to repeat disassociated words as the test administrators asked him to repeat them at different points in the test: ‘Let me tell you, those last ten questions are hard,’ he said, and added. ‘There aren’t a lot of people that can do that.'”

“Trump said he was up to nine minutes on the treadmill for his physical, even though he was only asked to do five before the doctor asked him if he wanted to keep going. ‘I said, “What do I have to prove?”’ he said. ‘I’m telling you, I could have gone much longer.’”