Welcome to Courtside, everyone, a discussion of legal issues.

This week, what to make of recent revelations that Donald Trump's Justice Department

was electronically spying on members of the opposition in Congress, notably Adam Schiff and

Eric Swalwell.

And evidently, spying on one of their children, they went to Apple, evidently, and tried to get information about these two in their electronic records, who they called, who called

them, how long they spoke on the phone and the like.

Now, this story is moving incredibly fast.

Literally, as I was recording this, we learned that the Trump Justice Department didn't just go after, evidently, Swalwell, Schiff, and others in Congress. They went after the White House counsel, Trump's own lawyer himself, his top lawyer, Don McGahn. And all of this was motivated by the fact that Donald Trump was aghast

about reports in the newspapers, documenting discussions between the Trump administration's high-level

officials and the Russian government, including the Ambassador Kislyak. And these are, of course,

highly sensitive discussions.

Trump was aghast, and he wanted those sources identified and prosecuted,

and that's when the Justice Department evidently launched its investigation, including to Apple.

This is a bombshell story.

It's really significant.

I mean, not to sound extreme, but this is how tyrannical governments

operate. It's like Putin and Nixon sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, coming up with Trump and Sessions

and Barr doing all of this stuff. And of course, it's early yet in the story.

We have to see exactly what it holds.

But it does suggest that one thing we've always suspected,

which is that Donald Trump's public tweets and private paranoia and bluster,

all of it created a sense in the administration that Donald Trump demanded abuses of power.

...