"The case against [Michael] Sussmann centers on the question of who his client was when he conveyed certain suspicions about Mr. Trump and Russia to the F.B.I. in September 2016."

"Among other things, investigators have examined whether Mr. Sussmann was secretly working for the Clinton campaign — which he denies.... A spokesman for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who has the authority to overrule Mr. Durham but is said to have declined to, did not comment.... The accusation against Mr. Sussmann focuses on a meeting he had on Sept. 19, 2016, with James A. Baker, who was the F.B.I.’s top lawyer at the time... Because of a five-year statute of limitations for such cases, Mr. Durham has a deadline of this weekend to bring a charge over activity from that date.... Mr. Baker, the former F.B.I. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client. But in a deposition before Congress in 2017, Mr. Sussmann testified that he sought the meeting on behalf of an unnamed client who was a cybersecurity expert and had helped analyze the data. Moreover, internal billing records Mr. Durham is said to have obtained from Perkins Coie are said to show that when Mr. Sussmann logged certain hours as working on the Alfa Bank matter — though not the meeting with Mr. Baker — he billed the time to Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign."

From "Durham Is Said to Seek Indictment of Lawyer at Firm With Democratic Ties/The lawyer, Michael Sussmann, is accused of lying to the F.B.I. in a 2016 meeting about Trump and Russia. He denies wrongdoing" (NYT).

UPDATE: Sussmann indicted.

"Overwhelmed by pain and loneliness, [Barbara Bush] contemplated suicide. She would pull over to the side of the road until the impulse..."

"... to plow into a tree or drive into the path of an oncoming car had passed. 'I felt terrible. I would pull over and park so I wouldn't go hit a tree... I really wasn't brave enough to do that, but that's why I pulled over, so I wouldn't do that, or I wouldn't run into another car... I almost wonder why he didn't leave me.'..."

"The Matriarch Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty," quoted in The Daily Mail, "'I would pull over and park so I wouldn't go hit a tree.' Barbara Bush revealed how she fell into a deep depression and considered suicide while her husband George carried on decade-long affair with younger aide, explosive new bio reveals."

'Just seven years younger than Barbara and not a striking beauty, [Jennifer Fitzgerald] was flirty and solicitous and focused completely on him. Their surreptitious romance would last for more than a dozen years, inexplicable to those around him and impossible for anyone to manage', writes the author....

"Former FBI top lawyer James Baker just admitted involvement in FISA Warrant and further admitted there were IRREGULARITIES in the way the Russia probe was handled."

"They relied heavily on the unverified Trump 'Dossier' paid for by the DNC & Clinton Campaign, & funded through a big Crooked Hillary law firm, represented by her lawyer Michael Sussmann (do you believe this?) who worked Baker hard & gave him Oppo Research for 'a Russia probe.' This meeting, now exposed, is the subject of Senate inquiries and much more. An Unconstitutional Hoax."

Trump tweets this morning — here and here.

Here's the news as reported by Fox, "Former top FBI lawyer personally involved in FISA warrant for Trump aide, other Russia probe irregularities, transcript shows."

My "Meet the Press" conspiracy theory.

"Meet the Press," the conspicuous Sunday morning talk show, has had a regular practice, for as long as I can remember — and I've been blogging stuff from the show for 10+ years — of posting a same-day transcript. The text is up in the early afternoon, at which point I often have watched the show and written down a couple words that I can use for a search to get me to the part that I want to blog. Yesterday, I scribbled the words "ship" and "potentially," I also made a note, in my words: "blandification of the election." All day checked the MTP transcripts page, and now it's Monday morning and still no the transcript. Why?!

Yesterday was Chuck Todd's second time as host. Last week, his first time, the show was heavily larded with an interview with Barack Obama. That means yesterday's show was the first example of a normal show. Are they ashamed of it? They've put video up, including neatly captioned segments, like "James Baker: We Need People on Ground in Mideast." ("People," is that what we're calling "boots" now?) The preference for lots of little videos, with writing only in the form of captions that very briefly paraphrase what some guest supposedly said, makes me suspicious. I want to see the specific quotes, and I want to pick them apart.

Why deprive us of the words? Maybe it's just a device to make us watch an ad before we can get to the material. Maybe it's exactly what's frustrating me: They want to pick the bits they like and present them in their terms, with their paraphrase, controlling passive viewers and thwarting active commentators. Or maybe the new presentation is an effort to make Chuck Todd's MTP feel new and different, or at least not disappointingly dull.

Warren Christopher has died.

He was 85. I most remember him from his role in Florida recount in the 2000 election:

Mr. Christopher came under criticism at the time, and later in “Recount,” the 2008 HBO dramatization of the Florida vote dispute, over a lack of legal and political aggressiveness against Mr. Bush’s legal team, led by a former secretary of state, James A. Baker. The movie, in particular, portrayed Mr. Christopher as overly concerned with the niceties of the law while Mr. Baker was waging a bare-knuckled campaign on all fronts.

Mr. Klain said that was an unfair characterization. “Like all dramatic portrayals, they sought dramatic tension by exaggerating people’s personalities,” he said on Saturday. “People often confused Chris’s reserved style and personal sense of propriety with a lack of fierceness on behalf of his client. That would be a mistake.”

He said it was Mr. Christopher’s decision to challenge the Florida result, even as most Republicans and some prominent Democrats were urging Mr. Gore to concede. “People don’t remember how controversial that effort was. Without Chris’s stature and credibility, I’m not sure we would have gotten as far as we did,” Mr. Klain said.

I remember Christopher solemnly intoning: "We need to count all the votes." It was a mantra. And the other side had its mantra. James Baker would say: "The votes have been counted. They've been counted and recounted." Chez Althouse, we were for Gore, so Baker's "votes  have been counted" line drew hoots of derision. Analyzing the litigation calmly, afterward, I accepted the soundness of Baker's point. These were ballots designed to be read by machines, the ballots had gone through the machines twice, and there was no showing that the machines had malfunctioned. Switching to human readers introduced much more ambiguity and risk of deviousness than accepting the verdict of the machines. The machines, as they processed each card, didn't have political preference and awareness of which side was being helped.

The criticism of Christopher— that he was too nice and too proper — fails to take into account that he was arguing on the side that would strike many people as scarily chaotic and power-grasping. Baker was arguing for the security of the result delivered by machine.  Baker's attitude of belligerence was used to argue for ending the struggle. Transpose the Baker attitude onto the Christopher side of the argument — struggle, chaos, litigation, and the unknown. Would it have worked better than Christopher's mild demeanor?