i'm curious what sampling and questioning procedures allow rasmussen to consistently outlie the RCP rolling average. one might think that news of indictments and warranted searches so close to the president might negatively impact his numbers, but they've been pretty consistently headed north, especially that one outlier. remember, impeachment is not legal, it's political, so these numbers matter.

JL

donald makes decisions based on what he feels at the moment, which has about zero correlation (neither positively nor negatively related) with what move would be most astute. we know based on his statements that he likes how it feels to fire people. therefore it's an option, regardless of any likely consequences. since mueller has been threatened with firing pretty much since he took the job of special counsel, it's highly likely he does have a plan in place to account for such a contingency.

JL

Per Charles Pierce: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19744805/paul-ryan-retire-2018/?src=socialflowTW

Instead, he’s going back to Janesville to be the Dad he’s always wanted to be, home to his 5,786-foot Georgian mansion on Courthouse Hill, and its 13 rooms, six bedrooms and seven bathrooms, the little house on the Wisconsin prairie that Ryan was able to afford because he married money, the one that’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Paul Ryan has somehow amassed a fortune of between four and seven million dollars without holding any job except “Congressman” for the past 20 years.

Nice work if you can get it...

CW called it many columns....it's no fun in the house o' Reps if you are in the minority.

Looks like Ryan is not bullish on Republicans retaining control.

The Cohen raid is interesting on so many levels.

Interesting and informative. Brief.

Does SDNY refer to Southern District New York or Stormy Daniels-Not Yet?

Seriously, you do bring up some good questions.

Maybe an asshat who sold asshats on-line to red necks?
If legal push to trial shove, Trump only needs one asshat on the jury.

"What's really extraordinary about this is that Mueller doesn't seem to even be interested in flipping Cohen to testify against Trump."

Yep, Cohen is going to take a bullet for Trump...but there are a lot of bullets flying around, and likely as not, more on the way.

"Mueller can't just ignore crimes he may come across while looking at other questions, in other words. If they're within the scope of his investigation, he follows up on them. If they are not, he refers them to other prosecutors to deal with."

Like, maybe prosecutors in NY and NJ? Prosecutors who can't be fired by Trump...For non-Federal crimes where Trump has no pardon options.

"Nine-tenths of the iceberg of the Trump investigation is still below the waterline."

OK, the iceberg analogy implicitly brings up the Titanic, which according to marine architects would probably would have survived if it had just rammed the berg head on. Swerving just ripped out more compartments and doomed the ship. Same deal with Trumptanic. He should have had his lawyers get better lawyers to discretely work on a plea agreement as soon as he found out he had won the electoral vote. Trump's best move at this late date might well be to skip town (and country) on his next trip abroad. How much bullion can you stash in a golf bag? What secret service to do if the President just decides to run away? Is there anything in the handbook about this?

At this point, firing Mueller will accomplish what? Shutting down the investigation? Nope... the investigation will go on regardless so to what end would be the motivation for firing Mueller? That type of action on Trump's part would immediately become Exhibit A to an obstruction of justice charge against Trump, and the months and months that Benedict Donald has spent trashing a genuine American hero and the longest serving head of the FBI save J. Edgar Hoover will have been all for naught, in my opinion.

What am I not seeing? I can think of nothing except political suicide that would be accomplished by such an idiot move on Trump's part, exactly what I believe the firing of James Comey set in motion because just as Comey was ready for Trump, Mueller will be equally if not more so ready and waiting with copious notes, etc. What kind of asshat would commit "Political Suicide 2.0"? It would make no sense whatsoever, and I think we'll sooner see Paul Ryan declare he is not running for reelection and "Trump Warns Russia to Clear Airfield 2.0"... oh, wait.

Reports agree that three places were simultaneously raided by the FBI: Cohen's home, office and hotel room.

Rosenstein did not refer this investigation to the US Attorney in SDNY. In fact the Trump-appointed Geoffrey Berman is recused from the Michael Cohen investigation and played no role in the raids. So far it is unknown (1) why Berman is recused and (2) who did the recusing: Rosenstein or Berman himself.

The no-knock search warrant was signed by a Trump-appointed judge and Rosenstein himself signed off on the raids. However, it is not clear at this point who is handling the case. We only know it isn't Berman.

That the Special Counsel had anything to do with these raids is pure speculation. There has been no statement at all from Mueller's office, much less confirmation. Moreover, Mueller has very wide-ranging powers that allow him to include any crime exposed by his investigation so there's no reason for him to refer any part of that investigation elsewhere.

In response to the New York Times report, Preet Bharara, the former US attorney for SDNY said, "I need to see more specific reporting before I'm 100% convinced this is a full-on "referral" to SDNY... such a referral seems peculiar." So it is not impossible but nor is it very likely that this is what happened. So tying Mueller to these raids could just be poorly-informed overeagerness on behalf of the media or it could have a malicious basis, ie part of a plot to fire the Special Counsel, something Trump seems eager to do.

As regards the warrant itself, that required a much higher bar than just probable cause. There is no way that Rosenstein went to a magistrate for a search warrant against the lawyer for the President of the United States without much more than probable cause.

As Benjamin Wittes from Lawfare said,"You can thus assume there was A LOT of evidence in that warrant application. You can also assume the magistrate in question reviewed it carefully. In other words, you can assume that the evidence more than amply supports the action taken yesterday."

Preet Bharara also made the point that the DoJ may be providing the taint team before passing evidence onto other prosecutors.They could be from the Special Counsel's office, the SDNY or the NY AG's office. We may not know until Cohen is actually indicted and that could be quite soon since all three of those mentioned have current grand juries empanelled.