What Just Happened?

“What a year this week has been.”

There were a lot of things that happened during the week of May 14th, 2017: The Yankees continued to hold onto first place in the American League East, we found a virus that could supposedly kill all of humanity, and Chris Cornell died. But maybe the one thing that the history books will remember: This could be the week that Donald Trump’s presidency really began to unravel.

On Monday, May 15, 2017, the Washington Post broke a huge story: President Trump apparently revealed highly classified information to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister (the Sergeis). Then on Tuesday, without giving us enough to time to catch our breath, we learned that Israel was allegedly the source of the intelligence leaked by Trump (this report came via the New York Times). About an hour after that story broke, the Gray Lady let the hits keep on coming: They reported that former FBI Director James Comey had kept memos which detailed how Trump asked him to end the Bureau’s investigation into his campaign’s connection to Russia. One small step for Trump, one giant leap towards a credible accusation of obstruction of justice.

On Wednesday, it was announced that the Department of Justice was appointing a special counsel to head up the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, with Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort being specifically mentioned. Thursday was relatively quiet, considering how busy the past few days had been; there was a story about the Trump campaign having undisclosed talks with the Russian government and a story about Benjamin Wittes, a friend of James Comey’s, but nothing too crazy.

Then on Friday, May 19, 2017, all hell broke loose. A report of the conversation President Trump had with “The Sergeis” broke in the New York Times. Trump told the Russians that he fired the “nut-job” Comey to make the Russia investigation go away, taking another leap towards clear evidence of obstruction of justice. McClatchy also broke a not-so-small story that detailed how Congress was looking into Trump’s coverup of the Russia probe (this will sound familiar to Richard Nixon scholars), but the Washington Post — not to be outdone — found out that the Russia investigation had identified a “person of interest” a current White House official. Couple this with Senator Lindsay Graham’s statements earlier in the afternoon that the Russia investigation had evolved from “counterintellignce” to “criminal,” and you had a line of bad stories for the White House that’s a mile long.

While we were all enjoying our weekends, CNN got to work on Saturday and spoke to sources close to Comey, all of whom agreed that he felt Trump was trying to push him away from the Russia investigation. There was also a hilariously wrong story written about articles of impeachment being drafted by the Supreme Court (written by none other than teen romance writer and new expert on the impeachment of Donald Trump, Louise Mensch).

Giving us a break on Sunday, the Washington Post reported on Monday that Trump had tried to get intelligence officials to publicly discredit the Russia probe, and also tried to get them to shut it down in private (we are now swimming in Nixon’s pool, drinking a margarita). This followed Trump himself casting all doubt aside and leaking likely classified information about Israel on live television earlier in the afternoon.

With these big stories, it’s easy to miss the smaller ones, like the fact that Mar-a-Lago — where Trump travels to just about every weekend — is totally unsecure and susceptible to hacking, or that the Trump Administration is purposefully trying to sabotage Obamacare. We’re in a whirlwind folks, and it’s hard even for journalists and newsy people to keep up.

The key big story to remember about last week (and going into this week) is that there is significant evidence that the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia is heating up and that’s making the President lash out. Do your best to keep up and hug a journalist when you have a chance.

H/T to nycsouthpaw for the sub-head.