The Morning Briefing: Mueller's 'Leak,' Iran Busted and Much, Much More

Good Tuesday morning.

Here is what’s on the President’s agenda today:

The president receives his intelligence briefing
President Trump presents the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the U.S. Military Academy football team
The president welcomes the crew and passengers of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 to the White House

Important: VP Pence Physician Behind Ronny Jackson Attacks

Mueller has some questions…

The New York Times has “obtained” a list of four dozen questions Special Counsel Mueller wants to ask President Trump. I wonder how the Times got their hands on these questions….

The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers. They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Here is The New York Times‘ list of questions. Chuck Ross at The Daily Caller has broken them down into categories:

Five questions relate to Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who was forced to resign on Feb. 13, 2017. Eighteen questions focus on James Comey, who Trump fired as FBI director on May 9, 2017. Eight questions center on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and 13 regard possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Professor Alan Dershowitz spoke to CNN’s Anderson Cooper about what Mueller’s list reveals about the witch hunt strategy.

“They’re really designed to let him ramble and talk,” he explained, “and I suspect that’s the strategy of the special counsel because they know that may be President Trump’s weakness.”

“If they were to ask him direct tough questions, to which he could answer yes or no,” he concluded, “that might not give them the advantage they’re seeking.”

Related:

Manafort seeks court hearing on leaks

Israel is a badass

Israel’s Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu revealed yesterday in a blockbuster presentation to the world that the Israelis located a secret nuke warehouse in Iran, infiltrated it and stole tens of thousands of documents. I guess they weren’t holding up their side of the “deal” Obama brokered. Amazing. The United States has confirmed the authenticity of the documents.

U.S. officials and congressional insiders view the disclosure Monday by Israel of Iran’s ongoing efforts to develop a nuclear weapon as game over for the landmark nuclear deal, telling the Washington Free Beacon that new evidence of Iran’s top secret nuclear workings makes it virtually impossible for President Donald Trump to remain in the agreement.

Senior Trump administration officials confirmed the findings as authentic and praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s for disclosing thousands of secret documents proving Iran lied about its past work on a nuclear warhead, telling the Free Beacon the revelation was a “powerful presentation” by Israel outlining why the Iran deal must be fixed or killed.

The Obama-Iran echo chamber folks were spinning all over Twitter yesterday.

hasn’t US always known Iran lied which is why we and allies pursued Iran nuclear deal? https://t.co/4RyAEhgvha

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) April 30, 2018

Of course, it makes perfect sense we would give billions of dollars and make a deal with known liars and terrorists.

While the administration’s analysis of the document cache is “ongoing,” officials said they “agree with the Israelis that…. this information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s past efforts to develop nuclear weapons deliverable by a Shahab-3 ballistic missile.”

In addition, the new “information indicates plans for Iran’s nuclear weapons program included building five nuclear weapons,” the official said. “It demonstrates once again that Iranian leaders have for years lied to the world and their own citizens when they claim Iran has never pursued nuclear weapons.”

Yeah, I think we’re done here.

Caravan update

The U.S. border operators have allowed some of the migrant-asylum-seeker-caravan-posse in for processing. The system is backed up and a few hundred people are still waiting on the Mexico side of the border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection didn’t say how many caravan members were allowed in Monday, but organizers said there were eight.

About 140 others were still waiting in Mexico to turn themselves in at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing, the nation’s busiest, said Alex Mensing, project organizer for Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which is leading the caravan.

The Department of Justice has filed complaints against 11 migrants for entering the U.S. illegally.

Most of the defendants allegedly entered the U.S. illegally, which is a misdemeanor. One defendant is accused of having entered the U.S. after having previously been deported, which is a felony.

Defendants, according to the probable cause statement, were seen near an area known to border patrol agents as “Goat Canyon,” roughly four miles from the San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego, California.

Two of those facing new complaints are Salvadorans, six are Hondurans and three are Guatemalans.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Fox News’ Catherine Herridge that more than a dozen known or suspected terrorists try to enter the U.S. every day.

“People think of border security in very different ways but to me it’s very simple: border security is national security,” Nielsen said. “What we see at the Department of Homeland Security, we see 15 terrorists either planning to travel or actually traveling to the United States each day, known and suspected terrorists. So that means they are coming through our legal land, port and air but they could be coming across that (southwest) border.”

Watch the whole interview.

Historical picture of the day: