He could not hold in his mind what the actual subject of discussion was, he could not understand the distinction between a completed investigation of one matter and an uncompleted investigation of another, merely recurring to some half-remembered obsession of his own, and he was unable to remember the name of the President of the United States, repeatedly calling the president by the name of the person he was addressing.

He's got quite serious brain degeneration.

McCain is my senator. He's never been entirely coherent imo but I wouldn't have said it was because he was impaired. It was immediately apparent today, something's wrong. I disagree with most of his policy and a lot of what he says but I always thought he was a good guy.

Seems obvious they're either going to fire Mueller whenever he starts figuring it all out or just totally ignore/refute whatever he comes up with.

They're not RNC talking points, they're Trump talking points. His only concern seems to be the fact that he was not personally under investigation. As if that makes everything else okay.

The only surprising thing about all this is that Trump had the gumption to ask Pence and Sessions to leave the room before trying to lean on Comey.

Maybe someone had just told him that LBJ story about how he'd follow people into the bathroom and stand behind them while they pissed.

It's as accurate as people predicting he gets impeached.

Maybe something was wrong today or maybe it was pure partisanship and trying to get an angle to feed the idiots. None of them refuted what Comey said, they all just tried to find other angles to possibly change the interpretation of what Comey said so that it doesn't look as bad.

TBH I have fallen for McCain's shtick where he says something and you are just so desperate for that ONE person in the Republican party that isn't a hack and you desperately want to believe it and yet his actions betray him every time.

So you're saying you believe your own predictions to be inaccurate?

just an admission that he's trolling

For all we know, Mueller shares Dershowitz's view that the President cannot legally be guilty of obstruction of justice because he has the power to pardon whoever he damn well pleases.

And even if he doesn't share Dershowitz's view on the point, my guess is that he will conclude that Trump violated important norms but that his conduct didn't rise to the level of legal liability for obstruction.

My attempt to decipher McCain's point is this - you closed the case on Clinton and said nothing was wrong, but this case is still open and you haven't said nothing is wrong. Why? That is a double standard.

The fun part about this is it's evidence of consciousness of guilt.

McCain's point was the Russians interfered in the election- the election had two candidates Hillary and Trump. Why is Trump's election campaign considered to be under investigation while Hillary's is not when they were both a part of what was a crime (Russian hacking)

It's serious reaching and Comey had already said that Trump wasn't under investigation at that point

does anyone have cliffs of the hearing? Is it a nothing burger?

Comey has previously said that the Russians' aim was 'to hurt her [Clinton] and help him [Trump].'

Senator McCain clearly has no idea what is going on and is at the point of wandering the streets of an evening asking random passers-by, 'Excuse me, do you know where I live?'

He has a better chance of getting re-elected than he does of being impeached.

No

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN18Z0HC

It seems like there's a real legal question about whether the president can even "obstruct" federal law enforcement. It's his constitutional job to run the executive branch. The point is that it's obviously improper for the president to foil FBI investigations into the crimes of his cronies, and a president who does that should be immediately removed from office. Asking for the personal loyalty of the FBI is also impeachable territory. The Mueller investigation is useful for indictments against people other than Trump and statements that are politically harmful to Trump and his defenders.

Right, we shouldn't really be treating McCain's questioning as incoherent rambling when its clear he's cowered into doing Trump's bidding in plain sight.

Do these committees plan out their questions together? I can imagine some of these people having a list of questions only for them to be covered by politicians that went before them. Then they have to bull**** to fill time.

I think Mr Comey suggested that it's within the letter of the law for the president to ask members of the executive -- such as the attorney-general or the FBI director -- to investigate or not investigate something, but that it goes against custom.

The problem that Trump presents for the United States is that much of what Americans take to be constitutional is merely customary, and whereas in Britain it's understood that the executive can't breach custom (that being the nature of an 'unwritten constitution', although in fact it is written, it's just not all written in the same place, it's everywhere in our statutes and legal precedents and legal commentaries), in the US a sufficiently ruthless person can drive a coach and horses through what were taken to be established norms.

Ahh yes.. the public cloud is now removed

So Trump's lawyer says Comey needs to be investigated for leaks and Trump is clear.