Playbook: “At 10 a.m. this morning, former FBI Director James Comey will appear in a Virginia courthouse to face federal charges. The hearing will be brief. Comey will be formally charged with lying to Congress and with obstruction of justice, and he will plead not guilty. A trial date may be set. The whole thing should be over in a few minutes.”

“But this is a momentous day for America — and not just because Comey is the first former FBI chief to be arraigned since Richard Nixon’s fall guy L. Patrick Gray in 1978. (The charges against Gray were later dropped.) Today’s proceedings matter because after years of threats, Trump is following through on something he has long vowed to do: criminally prosecute his political foes. It’s a moment many believed would never come.”

“A top prosecutor in Virginia has informed colleagues she plans to decline to seek charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, resisting intense pressure from President Donald Trump,” MSNBC reports.

“Elizabeth Yusi, who oversees major criminal prosecutions in the Norfolk office of the Eastern District of Virginia, has confided to co-workers that she sees no probable cause to believe James engaged in mortgage fraud.”

“Democrats are pushing their candidates to go on the offense on crime ahead of the 2026 midterms, seeing upside in what’s been one of their weakest electoral issues,” Politico reports.

“A private polling memo that shows potential openings for the party to peel voters away from Republicans on one of their core issues is being distributed to House Democrats and their campaign committees.”

“The battleground-district survey from Global Strategy Group offers a bleak assessment of Democrats’ starting point: 89 percent of the 1,200 likely voters surveyed want their Congress member to take steps to keep them safe, but only 38 percent trust Democrats over Republicans with that task.”

Robert Morris, the Texas megachurch pastor who built Gateway Church into one of the largest congregations in the country, pleaded guilty to charges that he sexually abused a girl in the 1980s, NBC News reports.

Former South Carolina state Rep. R.J. May III (R) will plead guilty to distributing child sex material, the Columbia State reports.

May, the married father of two young children, has agreed to plead guilty to five counts of distributing child pornography on the internet and faces 20 years in prison.

“The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers,” the AP reports.

New York Times: “Getting an indictment is relatively easy for prosecutors, who have a lot of sway over grand juries. Winning at trial is much harder, and in the Comey case, many factors could make it challenging for the government to secure a conviction.”

“Line prosecutors in Virginia who had initially reviewed the evidence in the Comey case put in a memo why they thought the effort to convict him was too weak to take to court. The grand jury on Thursday rejected one of the three counts presented to it. And Mr. Trump’s string of invective about Mr. Comey and his repeated references to his own criminal cases provide a lot of evidence for possible defense motions about a vindictive prosecution.”

“Still, Mr. Trump has always understood that even absent a conviction, defendants face a reputational cost in a criminal case, not to mention the financial penalty in the form of legal bills.”

“Congress is on track to spend more than $1 billion on the budget for the U.S. Capitol Police for the first time in history, with even fiscal conservatives pushing for more member security investments in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing,” Politico reports.

“Kirk’s assassination and a broader rise in high-profile political violence has activated lawmakers around a renewed push for additional protections for themselves and their families. It’s scrambling Capitol Hill’s typical ideological factions, with some GOP budget hawks accusing Republican leadership of penny-pinching.”

Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) wrote a letter to the South Shore Press asking President Trump to “intervene” and “help me escape” from prison.

Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) “said he doubted that the FBI would lead a thorough and objective investigation into a shooting that left three people dead near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in his district,” NOTUS reports.

Said Veasey: “I don’t trust anything that’s happening out of that agency at all. I don’t trust them at all. They’re overly political.”

Three people were shot at the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office on Wednesday morning, ABC News reports.

“The trial of Ryan Wesley Routh came to a dramatic end Tuesday when he started stabbing himself in the neck with a pen after a Florida jury found him guilty of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last year on a golf course,” NBC News reports.

“Elon Musk has not been shy about putting much of his life on public display. The tech billionaire posts daily on his social network X, has cooperated with two biographies and often speaks on podcasts and at conferences,” the New York Times reports.

“But there is one part of his life that he has not revealed much about — his longtime estrangement from his father, Errol Musk, who has become increasingly outspoken about his family and business ventures tied to the Musk name.”

“A New York Times investigation found that a significant factor in Elon Musk’s rupture with his father stems from accusations against Errol Musk of child sex abuse.”

Atlanta Journal Constitution: “It’s not quite over. The case will soon be transferred to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a nonpartisan state agency that steps in when a prosecutor is removed or has a conflict. Whomever the executive director appoints to replace Willis could decide to pick up where she left off, slim the case down or dismiss it entirely. What is clear: There is no guarantee Willis’ evidence will ever go before a jury.”

“That means some of the most contentious elements of Georgia’s 2020 election — some of which are still being fought over in party and election board meetings, in the legislature and on cable TV — might never have their day in court.”

Erika Kirk talked to the New York Times about her husband’s murder and revealed that given “numerous death threats over the past year,” she had implored him to wear a bulletproof vest.

“When he demurred, a friend suggested that Mr. Kirk speak behind bulletproof glass. ‘Not yet,’ Mr. Kirk replied. He said he felt confident in his team, and that there would be additional security at the Utah event. But Ms. Kirk, like several of her husband’s subordinates, had occasionally heard him imply that his life could be cut short by violence. She found herself wondering if a part of him had already surrendered to such a prospect.”

Wall Street Journal: “Friends said Charlie Kirk, who was 31 years old when he was killed, had long envisioned a leading role for his wife at the organization if he died—a plan the couple hoped never to have to implement.”