We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and its analysis of yesterday’s hearing confirming that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia:
The top priority now must be to ensure that the F.B.I.’s investigation, which could result in criminal prosecutions, is shielded from meddling by the Trump administration, which has shown a proclivity to lie, mislead and obfuscate with startling audacity. Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Comey said the bureau is conducting its investigation in an “open-minded, independent way” and vowed to “follow the facts wherever they lead.”
There is no reason to doubt Mr. Comey’s commitment. But it is far from certain that senior officials at the Department of Justice, who normally decide whether there is enough evidence to file criminal charges in politically sensitive cases, will be able to avoid White House interference. Before Monday’s hearing began, Mr. Trump issued a remarkable set of tweets calling the possibility of collusion with Russia “fake news” and urging Congress and the F.B.I. to drop the matter and instead focus on finding who had been leaking information to the press.
These brazen warning shots from the president do enormous damage to public confidence in the F.B.I.’s investigation. The credibility of the Justice Department in handling the Russian matter was already deeply compromised after Attorney General Jeff Sessions arrived in the job refusing to recuse himself from any investigation. He was forced to step aside only after it was revealed that, contrary to what he told senators under oath, he had met with the Russian ambassador to Washington twice during the campaign. Even with his recusal, it would still be his deputies and staff directing and managing any potential prosecution — which raises serious questions of conflict.
Dana Milbank:
The partisan response made it plain that there will be no serious congressional investigation of the Russia election outrage, nor any major repercussions for Russia. We were attacked by Russia — about this there is no doubt — and we’re too paralyzed by politics to respond.
Trump, whose claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower was dismissed by Comey on Monday, continued to fire his weapons of mass distraction Monday morning, tweeting about ties between Hillary Clinton and Russia and claiming “the real story” is who leaked classified information.
This is to be expected from Trump. The disheartening part was that most Republicans on the panel, which is supposed to investigate Trump, instead slavishly echoed his excuses.
David Leonhart writing in The New York Times:
[T]he current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women. [...]
Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was an attack on the United States. It’s the kind of national-security matter that a president and members of Congress swear to treat with utmost seriousness when they take the oath of office. Yet now it has become the subject of an escalating series of lies by the president and the people who work for him.
As Comey was acknowledging on Monday that the F.B.I. was investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump was lying about it. From both his personal Twitter account and the White House account, he told untruths. [...]
The big question now is not what Trump and the White House are saying about the Russia story. They will evidently say anything. The questions are what really happened and who can uncover the truth.
Tina Nguyen looks at what may be Sean Spicer’s craziest press conference yet:
1. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, was only a “volunteer” for the campaign
During the campaign, Flynn was a top adviser and, at one point, was vetted to become Trump’s running mate. He later accepted a job as national security adviser, one of the most important roles in the West Wing, before resigning 24 days into the new administration, after it was revealed that he had not been entirely forthcoming about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
“General Flynn was a volunteer of the campaign,” Spicer said on Monday, brushing off concerns that Flynn had been a high-level Trump campaign adviser with any degree of influence while maintaining ties to Russia.
Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker:
Trump did not merely allege that former president Barack Obama ordered surveillance on Trump Tower, of course. He asserted it as fact, and then reasserted it, and then insisted that forthcoming evidence would prove him right.
But in Monday’s remarkable, marathon hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey said there was no such evidence. Trump’s claim, first made in a series of tweets on March 4 at a moment when associates said he was feeling under siege and stewing over the struggles of his young presidency, remains unfounded.
Glenn Kessler:
The president’s tweets throughout the day were misleading, inaccurate or simply false. The gravity of the disclosures might have called for a more restrained response, as the White House’s well of credibility is only so deep. But the president chose another approach — which clearly backfired, tweet after tweet.
Eugene Robinson:
An FBI investigation, it seems to me, would necessarily have to look into the president’s business relationships with Russians tied to the Putin regime. In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said publicly that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets” and that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The president now denies significant business involvement with Russians. Which is true?
If the FBI trains scrutiny on such Trump campaign figures as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, what will they find? And why does the subject of Russia so reliably send Trump into a Twitter rage?
This trail may lead somewhere or it may lead nowhere. But now it will be followed to the end.
Here’s Damon Linker’s take:
Whereas the Democrats repeatedly paused in their questioning about Russia to note that, yes, leaks are bad, and that they need to be investigated and punished, the Republicans appeared to live in an alternative reality in which the only issue worth discussing or investigating were the leaks and not the possibility of Russia actively working with the campaign of the man who is now president to ensure the defeat of his rival.
Imagine Democrats responding to the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg by focusing exclusively on the details of how and why their co-conspirators turned on them and expressing comparative indifference about their treasonous acts themselves and you get a taste of the surreality on display Monday morning.
Switching topics to the SCOTUS nomination, here’s Ari Berman’s analysis of Gorsuch’s record:
Few people in the Republican Party have done more to limit voting rights than Hans von Spakovsky. He’s been instrumental in spreading the myth of widespread voter fraud and backing new restrictions to make it harder to vote.
But it appears that von Spakovsky had an admirer in Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, according to e-mails released to the Senate Judiciary Committee covering Gorsuch’s time working in the George W. Bush Administration.
Matt Ford at The Atlantic:
His appearance at Monday’s hearing was largely introductory, with Democratic and Republican senators taking turns to make opening statements. Gorsuch sat patiently as, one after the other, lawmakers alternated between effusive praise for his qualifications and stern expressions of concern about his track record, like a slew of movie trailers to precede the blockbuster sessions to come.
And, on a final note, we close again with The New York Times:
Here’s a good question for Judge Neil Gorsuch, who sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday for the first day of his confirmation hearings to be a Supreme Court justice: Why are you here?
There’s only one honest answer: “I shouldn’t be.”
Under other circumstances Judge Gorsuch would be a legitimate nominee by a Republican president. The problem is how he got to this point in the first place.