Some of the latest breaking news this evening is the White House Deputy chief of staff is leaving that job. His name is jim carol, hes been deputy chief of staff to john kelly in the white house and hasnt been there i think like two or three months but hes already leaving. The news about the deputy chief of staff comes amid disputed reports that the chief of staff himself may be on his way out, as well. The news about john kelly having offered resignation comes after the, in fact, resignation of rob porter, who worked very closely with john kelly. The resignation followed news reports that made public the reason why mr. Porter had been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance during his 13 months in the white house handling all papers that crossed the president s desk. Domestic violence allegations against porter by his two ex wives, allegations he denies, the allegations were conveyed to the fbi as part of the background Check Procedure for the security clearance application along with corroborating evidence from porters exwives that included an emergency protective order taken out against him in virginia by his second wife and photograph evidence of injuries he says were inflicted on her by her then husband. That is is exactly the kind of thing that can keep you from getting a permanent security clearance. Not having a permanent security clearance is the reason you shouldnt be able to have that particular job of being white house staff secretary handling classified information as routine matter every day in close contact with the president. Nevertheless, once that information about those allegations from his exwives was given to the fbi, that was reportedly conveyed to the white house, to the white House Counsel, don mcgahn. Don mcgahn is emerging of every Trump Administration scandal. Honestly, hes in the middle of all of them. Mike flynn and russians to firing james comey to the Domestic Abuse staff secretary guy and everything in between don mcgahn is in all of it. So the allegations from porters exwives made to the fbi, those were conveyed to White House Counsel Don Mcgahn because he is the human siv through which all Trump Administrations must flow. That information from the fbi was reportedly conveyed to john kelly who has now according to the New York Times and abc news, he has now reportedly offered to resign from the white house. Now as i mentioned, those are contested reports. John kelly himself denied to nbc news Kelly Odonnell he offered resignation but there are mult multiple source reports that he has offered that resignation. Clearly, his continuing tenure in the white house is very much in question. Including some unusual and direct evidence obtained by the Washington Post today that at least someone from a senior staff member in the white house is trying to shove hard to get john kelly out of there. Were going to be talking with beth from the Washington Post later on in the hour tonight about that knife in the back reporting that the Washington Post has just done. Honestly, we had thought the possible resignation of yet another white house chief of staff would be the big political news story but its friday, dont count your chickens after they are hatched and laying eggs of their own and raising baby chicks. No counting. Its never over if its not friday. I should tell you this news that the deputy chief of staff is leaving the white house, john kellys deputy chief of staff leaving the white house, that makes him actually the third Deputy White House chief of staff to leave the Trump Administration and they only got there 13 months ago. Have we tried to even did we make did we try look, we squeezed them in in yellow front there. Reince priebus, another Deputy White House chief of staff and now yet another Deputy White House chief of staff. We need a bigger wall. Anyway, while we await news of whether the president is about to fire another chief of staff, as well, yet, another Deputy White House chief of staff is gone. And no sooner did that news arrive the Washington Post broke news another staffer resigned this evening and in his case, the second white house staffer in two days to resign because of Domestic Abuse allegations. Now, this is not the same story as rob porter, the white house staff secretary who left office yesterday. This is a new white house staffer who you may not have known of before tonight, his name is David Sorensen. We think hes in his early 30s. He was previously a spokesman for the Republican Party in maine and a top policy advisor to paul lepage in maine. Portland press herald describes him as having a quote reputation as an aggressive and sometimes combative political operative. When he came to the trump white house, it was in the role of a speech writer. His exwife claims he was violent and emotionally abusive during their turbulent two and a half year marriage and specific allegations are startling and dark. Sorensen allegedly, quote, ran a car over his exwifes foot, put out a cigarette on her hand, threw her into a wall, grasped her menacingly by the hair while alone on their boat in remote waters in an incident that left her fearing for her life. There was a photo of her hand bearing the scar. As was the case with rob porter, whose exwives shared their allegations of Domestic Violence with the fbi as the fbi conducted a background check, mr. Sorensens exwife described her exhusbands behavior to the fbi last fall as the fbi was conducting a background check for his white house job. Again, according to the post, he denies these allegations and says he was the victim here. He was the victim of Domestic Violence in the marriage, not the perpetrator but despite those allegations and his denial he did anything wrong, mr. Sorensen resigned today, just after another senior white house official resigned under similar circumstances. What else will happen before the end of this hour . I cant tell you but were not even to the biggest news of the night yet. The white house also put out word late tonight, within the last couple hours, and they released this letter from White House Counsel Don Mcgahn to announce it, and this letter says that the white house will block the release of a classified memo created by democrats to rebut those allegations made by republicans in the house last week about the fbis Counter Intelligence investigation into the Trump Campaign and russian interference. Again, the bottom line here is that the republicans prepared a classified memo about the investigation to make the investigation look bad. The white house took the totally unprecedented step of declassifying that memo and releasing it to the public a week ago after today. Democrats said we would like to have our say on this matter, too, because we think what the republicans are saying about this classified information isnt true and misleading and we can explain the truth. They produced their own memo about the same subject matter that had to go through the president , as well, if it was going to be released to the public, had to go through the same channels. The president did release the memo. He made the evaluation tonight on the democratic memo and that one is a no. Yes to the republican classified memo. That memo started to seem like a side show. Forgive me, it has started to seem like a stupid story. All right . A week ago we got to see what the republicans were so excited about having declassified it and releasing it to the public. There were lots of problems with the memo. It didnt prove their point. Let me tell you why that stupid side show story of the republican memo may be the most important thing in american politics and governance going forward. Because that memo is the stupid and yet super dangerous thing that explains what is actually the most Important News that has broken tonight and i say that knowing that there has been a lot of big important breaking news tonight. Out of everything going on right now on this incredible news day, this is a big one. Earlier this evening, New York Times first to report that the number three official at the Justice Department is stepping down. Her name is rachel brand. She was appointed by donald trump and confirmed by the senate and has only been in her job nine months but she and the Justice Department announced shes leaving the Justice Department right away. And she is going to work for walmart. Now, this is not the same story weve been seeing with the exodus of Justice Department and fbi officials since the president and white house and trump supporting republicans and conservative media have started picking them off, zeroing in on Law Enforcement officials by name and attacking them as bias and partisan and insufficiently protrump. The president and his supporters in congress and conservative media have already have gone after a lot of senior Law Enforcement officials, fired or forced out are the fbis director james comey and Deputy DirectorAndrew Mccabe and fbi chief of staff. Just this week we learned that the head of counterintelligence at the Justice Department who had also been singled out and hounded by the right wing media is, too, leaving his job. David said to be leaving for personal reasons. We learned thereafter that an assistant director is also leaving. Hes the assistant director for public affairs. Whatever you think of the leadership of Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department and chris wray at the fbi, weve seen senior officials targeted by name one by one and picked off, all either fired or leaving. All that reporting that sessions had said hey, you need to clean house here and the white house chief of staff contacted the Justice Department on issues like that, you may want to clean house here, they have been cleaning house. What just happened today with rachel brand, this is a different thing. Rachel brand as i said was a trump appointee and had only been in the number three job in the Justice Department for nine months. Shes had a distinguished legal career, including having been a Supreme Court clerk but it was a gigantic promotion for her. When she got that job as the russia investigation was exploding into a crisis for this presidency, once she got that gigantic job given where she was at in her career, she became Something Else besides the number three official in the u. S. Department of justice. She became the trap door underneath Robert Muellers special counsel investigation of the president and his campaign. And thats because Robert Mueller gets to run his own team, gets to run his own investigation but he doesnt have total independence and free reign under the regulations, mueller needs permission for important advances in his investigation. So if he wants to do Something Big and open a line of inquiry and if he wants to bring charges against a person, he cant just do that on his own and own say so. He has to advise the person overseeing his investigation at the Justice Department. He has to advise them in advance of his plans to do it and basically has to get their permission. The person in the oversight rule for the investigation is trumps appointed attorney general Rod Rosenstein. Funny, republicans who have been targeting him call him rosenstein. The same way they call the Democratic Party the democrat party. Its rosenstein to the extent they care. In theory, when there is a special counsel, the person who is supposed to oversee the special counsels investigation, the person supposed to provide oversight is supposed to be the attorney general. The top person in the Justice Department cant be true in this case before mueller was appointed, attorney general Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from all campaign related matters including the russia investigation following public reports about his own contacts with russian officials during the campaign, which he had conveniently forgotten about when asked about them under oath during his confirmation hearing. So Jeff Sessions recusal from the russia investigation in particular, that has been a repeated target of the president s anger and condemnation. The president tweeted about it and spoken about it to reporters, multiple news organizations reported about the president s continual expresses of anger to Jeff Sessions and about Jeff Sessions for having recused himself from the russia matter. The president has been quite blunt about the fact that recuse he thinks is unfair to him because he expects the attorney general to be in position to protect him from Something Like this russia investigation. At some point, though, President Trump and the white house i think woke up to the fact that the way they were treating the attorney general in this matter struck people as not the way Law Enforcement is supposed to work and at some point, i think they came to the realization that attorney general Jeff Sessions resigning and being replaced by somebody who wasnt recused or attorney general Jeff Sessions trying to unrecuse himself from the russia investigation would be at least politically impractical or possible criminal justice by the president. At some point they try to stop getting sessions out of there and zero in on another path to shelter the president from the russia investigation and zero in on Rod Rosenstein instead. According to four sources familiar with the situation in recent weeks, the president has been venting about Rod Rosenstein who oversees mueller in the special counsel investigation. At times trump gripes about wanting rosenstein removed. One source says the president makes comments like lets fire him, lets get rid of him. The president has targeted the attorney general for removing himself from overseeing the russia investigation. The president has then targeted the Deputy Attorney general who is overseeing the russia investigation. And thats where it becomes really important that we have had this whole nonsense about this republican memo. This forgive me, dumb republican memo attacking the fbi and Justice Department for how they have been conducting that investigation. And i know you feel like im so sick of hearing about the memo because i know that memo seems ridiculous, right . There is all this hype from the white house and congressional republicans. There were weeks of unbelievably over the top hype on the Fox News Channel about that bombshell memo and how it would upend everything and it would end the Mueller Investigation and result in mueller himself being indicted and trump would be declared innocent. They had all this hype and when the thing arrived and we got to see what it was they were so excited about, the whole country had a collectively where is the beef moment. This is what you were excited about . Well, now tonight we know what all that hype was about. It wasnt about what was actually in the memo. I mean, on the surface in terms of what was actually in the memo, the memo was basically nothing important. It was well, i should say there was no relation, there was no relation between how excited they were about the memo and what was actually in it. That memo undercut its own claims. The whole point of the memo at large was to say trump Foreign Policy advisor carter page should have never been at the fbi. It was when he was bragging about working with the kremlin. You would hope that that would interest them. If not that, what should interest them . The republican memo into a giant scandal was nonsense. In terms of the hype and buildup its a dud. We know what that was about because the president we learned today in the Washington Post, he doesnt read his president ial daily brief. He doesnt like anything written in terms of sources of intelligence but does like to get his information from the Fox News Channel. There are further reports Fox News Channel personalities may have actually directly helped coordinate strategy with the white house around the release of that memo. So if you want to know what the pres