It’s one thing when this kind of “short-circuit” creates a misleading memory about a baseball game. It’s quite other when eyewitness testimony puts an innocent defendant in prison for years, or even on Death Row, as happens with depressing regularity. And it’s a whole different level of concern when the fate of a presidency and the country may be at stake.

If Special Counsel Bill Mueller gets to interview the Director of National Intelligence, or the former Deputy Director of the NSA, their recollections of conversations with President Trump could well determine whether Mueller believes there’s a credible case to be made about obstruction of justice. The words, the body language, the tone are all critical element of a decision. (God knows we’ve already seen how this President’s absolute certainty about events often has a distinctly casual relationship to reality).