And what about those tapes? Trump revived speculation about hidden White House tapes again on Friday, suggesting in the Rose Garden that he will advise the world about whether they exist in the “very near future.”

As I noted last month, I don’t think any tapes exist. Trump told me and other reporters over the years that he had a taping system in his Trump Tower office that he used to record journalists meeting with him. But when he testified under oath in the deposition for his suit against me, Trump acknowledged that he was “not equipped to tape-record.”

There’s another odd aspect to all of the back-and-forth about Trump’s multiple conversations with Comey: The president apparently never inquired about the substance of the FBI’s Russia investigation. That has prompted a former law enforcement professional and others to say that it reveals a troubling disregard for national security on the president’s part (which it does). Others noted that it also suggests that Trump may have already known quite a bit about the Russian affair — and therefore didn’t have many questions for Comey.

“The innocent ask a multitude of questions about what the detectives know, or why the cops might think X or Y or whether Z happened to the victim,” noted the former police reporter and creator of “The Wire,” David Simon, in a pair of Twitter posts. “The guilty forget to inquire. They know.”