Given all the breathless reporting of the previous months, a listener might reasonably infer that Trump was under investigation — a contention the leaders of Congress knew at the time to be false.

Some were upset at the impression Comey left. The same day Comey testified, March 20, Grassley tweeted, “FBI Dir Comey needs to be transparent + tell the public what he told me about whether he is or is not investigating @POTUS.” And what Comey told Grassley, of course, was that Trump was not under investigation.

But then the next day, March 21, Schumer, who had been briefed by Comey on March 9 that the president was not under investigation, took to the floor of the Senate. He called on lawmakers to delay the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch until the Russia matter was resolved. Republicans held up President Obama’s Court choice for nearly a year, Schumer said, but “are now rushing to fill the seat for a president whose campaign is under investigation by the FBI.”

Schumer appeared to be speaking carefully; he said Trump’s campaign was under investigation. But then he became much less careful with his words. “You can bet if the shoe were on the other foot and a Democratic president was under investigation by the FBI, the Republicans would be howling at the moon about filling a Supreme Court seat in such circumstances,” Schumer said.

“After all, they stopped the president who was not under investigation from filling a set with nearly a year left in his presidency,” Schumer continued. “It is unseemly to be moving forward so fast on confirming a Supreme Court Justice with a lifetime appointment while this ‘big gray cloud’ of an FBI investigation hangs over the presidency.”

Schumer’s point was entirely clear: President Trump was under investigation. Of course, Comey told Schumer less than two weeks earlier that was not the case.