Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Don’t miss tonight’s show: “Special counsel Robert Mueller filed a new indictment Friday against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, charging him and a Russian associate with obstruction of justice for allegedly trying to tamper with witnesses.”
* The James Wolfe story is important for all sorts of reasons: “The former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer accused of lying to FBI agents about his contacts with reporters was released from custody Friday after a brief court proceeding.”
* I wish he’d think these things through: “President Donald Trump said Friday he was considering granting a posthumous pardon for Muhammad Ali — prompting a lawyer for his estate and family to say thanks, but no thanks: The boxing great had his criminal conviction overturned by the Supreme Court nearly 50 years ago.”
* A pointless tragedy: “Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco should have graduated from high school in Des Moines last month… Instead, Manuel died a brutal death alone in a foreign land, a symbol of gang supremacy in a country plagued by violent drug cartels. It happened three weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement returned him to Mexico, a country he had left at age 3 when his parents brought him here without a visa.”
* This is a weird story: “The Trump administration is planning to release a suspected ISIS fighter in Syria with more than $4,000 in cash and a new cellphone, a Pentagon official said in a court filing released on Thursday. The U.S. military has been holding the unidentified man, who is a Saudi-U.S. dual citizen, as a prisoner for about nine months.”
* The Imran Awan case: “President Trump weighed in Thursday on a pending criminal case involving a former technology staffer for congressional lawmakers — another instance in which he publicly lobbied for a specific legal outcome and appeared to embrace and promote unfounded allegations.”
* This is hardly an outrageous request: “On Thursday afternoon, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, made a dramatic request: He essentially asked special counsel Robert Mueller to consider whether perjury charges should be brought against witnesses who testified to the committee during its Trump-Russia investigation.” * Something new for Facebook to apologize for: “Facebook disclosed Thursday that a software bug may have switched some users’ posts to ‘public’ without telling them. That means that status updates, photos, and other Facebook activity that people thought they were sharing just with their friends, or with friends of friends, would have instead been viewable by anyone — unless they noticed the settings change and fixed it. The bug affected 14 million users around the world.” * Because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, I generally find it hard to know what to make of Carson’s comments: “What was supposed to be a simple trip to Detroit to announce a new self-sufficiency center turned more complicated Thursday when U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson suggested that previous plans to increase rent for low-income people may not happen.” Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
