Par for the Course:   The Justice Department yesterday released the once-secret application for surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The FBI suspected him of working with the Russians.

Entire pages of the 400-page document justifying the FBI’s suspicions are blacked out, but it’s clear they provided the FISA court a trove of information. Republicans and the President have long-questioned the basis for the Page surveillance.

Trump attacked the FBI this morning, tweeting about the documents that, “As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!” He’s at war with his own Justice Department.

Spending Saturday at his New Jersey golf club, Trump was more worried about criminal investigations than his game. He tweeted, “Primarily, Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) – almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client – totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!”

Of course, that tweet is all about his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who audio taped at least one phone conversation with Trump about a payoff to a former Playboy model who says she had an affair with the President.

In his tweets, Trump assumes that the special Counsel investigation is all about whether his campaign coordinated and colluded with the Russians to beat Hillary Clinton. It may lead to that, but it started as an investigation into Russian election influencing. Nonetheless Trump tweeted yesterday, similar to previous complaints, “No Collusion, No Obstruction – but that doesn’t matter because the 13 Angry Democrats, who are only after Republicans and totally protecting Democrats, want this Witch Hunt to drag out to the November Election. Republicans better get smart fast and expose what they are doing!”

Don’t Worry: A survivor of the Branson, Mo. duck boat disaster said the operator of the boat told passengers not to bother with their life jackets. Tia Coleman told a local television station that, “The captain had told us, ‘Don’t worry about grabbing the life jackets, you won’t need them,’ ” She said, “So nobody grabbed them because we listened to the captain.” She went on, “However, in doing that, when it was time to grab them, it was too late,” Coleman said, “I believe that a lot of people could have been spared.”

Only Coleman and her 13-year-old nephew were the survivors among an extended family of 11 people on board the boat when it sank in a violent storm.

Crime Beat: A Florida grand jury indicted four men for first-degree murder and armed robbery in the shooting death of emerging rap star XXXTentacion.

Court records say the car driven by XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, was blocked by an SUV as Onfroy was leaving a motorcycle shop last month. Two masked men got out of the SUV with a gun intending to rob XXXTentacion, who had a Louis Vuitton bag containing $50,000 in cash, police said. They ended up shooting and killing the 20-year-old rapper and taking the money.

The Obit Page: Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer-winning LA Times food critic who hunted down the best food trucks and most exquisite restaurants in Los Angeles, died of pancreatic cancer at age 57. While critics before him had focused on the high end of the food trade, he explored the street food, hole-in-the wall joints, and the unexpected places where there was great food.

If Your Mother Says She loves You: Check it out. That’s the first rule of journalism. Yesterday we quoted a Donald Trump tweet that turned out to be a fake. The complaint about The NY Times  and the Michael Cohen recording was so craftily written in his voice that we thought it was real, and it was not. It was so much like Trump that only one of our readers noticed and questioned whether Trump wrote it.  Live and learn.

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