Good morning. The United States bombarded sites in Iran overnight. I’m going to start, though, with President Trump’s campaign of retribution and payouts.
On the beachNew details emerged yesterday in the Justice Department’s criminal case against James Comey, Trump’s former F.B.I. director and longtime nemesis, by way of a new court filing by Comey’s lawyers that seeks to dismiss the charges against him. They’re spicy. As you probably remember, prosecutors have charged Comey with threatening Trump’s life. In 2025, Comey posted a photograph of seashells laid out on a North Carolina beach in the shape of the numbers “86 47.” Prosecutors say that “86” is gangster speak for murder. Trump is the 47th president.
Comey, for his part, says “86” is tavern jargon, a piece of slang that means to eject a disorderly customer. His lawyers have urged the judge to dismiss the case against him as a vindictive and selective prosecution, and their filing yesterday was based on internal government documents turned over in the case. Those documents, write Devlin Barrett and Alan Feuer, provide “one of the most glaring examples to date of the degree to which Mr. Trump now directs federal law enforcement actions.” The Secret Service questioned Comey about the posting, and an agent received a “direct request” from Trump to forward him details from the interview, according to the documents. That summary was sent to Air Force One, even as Trump told Fox News that same day that he was “not going to get involved” in the case. Secret Service agents tailed Comey’s car from North Carolina to Virginia. The “# 3 guy at DOJ ‘wanted to ping’” Comey’s phone without a traditional warrant, according to the filing, a request that’s typically used only when an emergency — a dangerous, fleeing suspect, for instance — requires immediate action. The agents who were following Comey even lost him briefly. He had turned off the highway to visit the gravesite of his son who died in 1995. What’s the deal?The man Trump has tapped to lead the Justice Department, and thus oversee the Comey case, is Todd Blanche. He’s the president’s former personal lawyer. But Blanche’s confirmation faces some headwinds on Capitol Hill. Last night, Senate Republicans delayed a vote on Blanche’s nomination after two key figures on the Judiciary Committee threatened to block it over a deal Blanche cut, as acting attorney general, to settle Trump’s lawsuit with the I.R.S. In June, Blanche said he would drop a proposed $1.8 billion fund to compensate what the Trump administration calls victims of Biden-era actions by the Justice Department. A provision that shields Trump and his family from tax investigations would remain in place, he said, potentially providing a $100 million windfall for Trump and his family. Blanche has thus far refused to put on paper the details of his promise to kill parts of the deal, angering the two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Cornyn said he didn’t know what the holdup was, Glenn Thrush and Michael Gold report, and he did not rule out the possibility that Trump wants to keep the tax-immunity deal. “I can see why he wants it, because it provides immunity from audits no other taxpayer would get,” Cornyn added. An ally allayedIn the meantime, payouts from the fund appear to continue without a formal structure, despite Blanche’s public retreat. The government will make a seven-figure payment to an anti-abortion activist convicted by a Tennessee jury in 2024 of conspiring to prevent access to an abortion clinic, his lawyers announced yesterday. The lawyers had argued that the Biden administration weaponized the Justice Department against the activist. Trump pardoned him last year. Devlin and Alan were on this story, too, and report that Blanche’s management style often prompts criticism that “he continues to act like Mr. Trump’s personal defense attorney, rather than a senior law enforcement official with responsibilities to taxpayers, the rule of law and the public.” A federal judge in Minnesota made just that critique in June. Quashing a number of grand jury subpoenas of Democratic officials there, the judge wrote that Blanche’s department had used “criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the president’s political and personal adversaries.” Related: Trump asked the Supreme Court to step in and overturn an $83.3 million jury award against him for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of a decades-old sexual assault.
100— That is how many times, at least, that Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment rights yesterday. Senators were grilling him on Capitol Hill as part of a committee investigation into the origins of Covid-19. Fauci accused the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Rand Paul, of having an “unhinged obsession with me.” Read more about the bitter hearing.
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Should men ever wear shorts at the office? No, says a fashion writer. Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens discussed the Fauci hearing. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today.
We’ve made these links free for you. ‘No Influencers’: A Nantucket store owner said a sign banning the social media obsessed from his property was meant as a joke. People took it seriously. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a man who has been charged with a felony after giving customs agents a code that erased his phone. Going dry: California wine growers are burning their vines as younger people turn to canned cocktails, seltzers and nonalcoholic beers and spirits. The busker: Glen Hansard, the Irish singer-songwriter and actor who fronted the band the Frames and had Oscar-winning success with the 2007 film “Once,” died early yesterday morning in a motorcycle crash in Dublin. He was 56.
The A.I. boom is marking the landscape. From the American Midwest to the Persian Gulf, hundreds of major data centers will be turned on in the coming years. They are set to deliver computing power for A.I. that has no technological precedent. A.I. companies are recruiting thousands of electricians and construction workers to help build these data centers. And the Trump administration is repurposing large chunks of federal land to house the centers. Yesterday, the Energy Department said it would redevelop a retired Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky to host a new campus.
N.B.A.: As the league’s investigation into Kawhi Leonard’s controversial endorsement deal continues, the crew of the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” unpacks another oddity in the saga, this time involving a Rhode Island soccer project. Watch the episode here. Memorabilia: A thrifter bought a Lakers warm-up jacket with Wilt Chamberlain’s name on it for $3 at Goodwill. It resold at an auction last week |
