Big Day

You almost certainly heard already about yesterday's two big developments: Donald Trump's close friend and associate Roger Stone was indicted and arrested and also Trump completely caved on his government shutdown, which caused a whole lot of misery and was entirely for naught.

Stone was indicted for his collusion with Wikileaks, a conduit for Russian intelligence. This is the most important line in his indictment: "After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by [Wikileaks], a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information [Wikileaks] had regarding the Clinton Campaign."

In other words, who decided Stone should contact Wikileaks? Was it campaign chairman Paul Manafort? Or Trump himself?

If it's the latter, then Trump is now in much greater legal jeopardy and also more likely to be impeached. And, if he's a one-term President, he would almost certainly be criminally prosecuted if he ordered contact and could potentially end up in prison. (The statute of limitations might run out if he was elected to a second term, unless prosecutors obtain a sealed indictment against him before he leaves office.)

The bottom line is this: What did Trump know and when did he know it? If you know your twentieth century history, you'll know this was a question asked repeatedly about Richard Nixon.