This article is part of David Leonhardt’s newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday.

The president of the United States accused one of his congressional critics of treason yesterday morning and said that the critic should be arrested. And yet it might not even have been the most outrageous thing that the country learned about President Trump yesterday.

That distinction could also belong to the news, broken by Times reporters, that during a phone call with the prime minister of Australia, Trump pressured him to produce information discrediting Robert Mueller’s recent investigation. White House aides took the unusual step of restricting access to the transcript of the phone call, in a sign they believed it was problematic. It was the same step they had taken after Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s president.

The Australia call is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to shift attention away from Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, on Trump’s behalf, and instead to suggest that American intelligence agencies did something wrong by investigating Russia. Alarmingly, William Barr, the attorney general, appears to be overseeing the effort, meeting with foreign officials to ask for help.