Mike Allen: “The calls to White House alumni show that the president is continuing his pattern of consulting widely by telephone, despite being suddenly encased in the ultimate closed system. According to associates, Trump sill has his old number that he used to work with the avidity of a telemarketer.”

“The secret system: Friends and Trump are co-conspirators in a cheeky new practice that keeps him tied to his longtime outside network. Here’s how participants say it works: You call and leave a voicemail on the old phone — or at night, perhaps Trump sees the number pop up on caller ID. If POTUS wants to talk, he calls back from his new, Secret-Service-approved secure phone — savoring his small triumph over a bureaucratic and security apparatus designed to rein in this lifelong kibitzer.”

President Trump said there was “no reason” to curb law enforcement agencies that seize cash, vehicles and other assets of people suspected of crimes, a practice that some lawmakers and activists have criticized for denying legal rights, Reuters reports.

Trump also suggested he might want to “destroy” the career of one Texas legislator who wanted to change asset forfeiture laws.

CNN: “Thanks to a little-known and rarely used provision in the law, either the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee or the Joint Committee on Taxation may request anyone’s tax returns to examine — including the president’s — from the secretary of the Treasury.”

“They wouldn’t need to tell anyone that they did so. They could share the returns with their committee members in closed session. And if one of the committees thinks releasing the returns to the House or Senate would further a legitimate committee purpose and be in the public interest, they can do that, too — without Trump’s consent.”

Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Bush Justice Department official who helped design the post-9/11 anti-terror legal architecture, told the New Yorker that President Trump might be laying the groundwork for expanded powers in the wake of a major terrorist attack.

Said Goldsmith: “If it is a large and grim attack, he might ask for more surveillance powers inside the U.S. (including fewer restrictions on data mingling and storage and queries), more immigration control power at the border, an exception to Posse Comitatus (which prohibits the military from law enforcement in the homeland), and perhaps more immigration-related detention powers. In the extreme scenario Trump could ask Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which would cut off the kind of access to courts you are seeing right now for everyone (or for every class of persons for which the writ is suspended).”

He added: “The point of the example is that the only question is not what powers Trump might ‘ask for,’ powers he might assert or assume or grab, and what he can get away with.”

“The White House is ramping up its search for a new communications director in an effort to lighten the load of embattled White House press secretary Sean Spicer,” multiple sources told CNN.

“A source familiar with internal communications said President Donald Trump is disappointed in Spicer’s performance during the first two weeks of the administration.”