A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the conviction of veteran Republican campaign operative Jesse Benton for steering an illegal Russian contribution to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Benton, who played leading roles in the presidential campaigns of Ron and Rand Paul and worked briefly as Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager, helped facilitate an improper $25,000 payment to the Trump camp and the Republican National Committee on behalf of Roman Vasilenko, a Russian national who had approached another GOP operative, Doug Wead, about his interest in meeting an American celebrity. When he was unable to get an audience with Oprah Winfrey, Steven Seagal or Jimmy Carter, the operative suggested Trump.

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House Republicans are taking their fight with the FBI and Justice Department to a new level — weighing punitive steps against both agencies that would have been unfathomable a decade ago.

Half a year into their majority, and with an increasingly restless right flank, the House GOP is ready for a confrontation after a spate of recent decisions it sees as either anti-Trump or pro-Biden. At the top of the list: Hunter Biden’s plea deal with federal investigators and Donald Trump's indictment over his handling of classified documents.

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GOP presidential candidates are slamming the FBI after a report from Special Counsel John Durham criticized the agency for its actions during the 2016 probe that scrutinized Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and its alleged ties to Russia.

“It’s a top law enforcement agency that didn't follow the laws,” GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley said on Fox News Tuesday morning. “To see what happened is unthinkable. Heads need to roll over this. Anybody that touched it or had a part in it needs to be fired and every one of their senior managers needs to be fired. The FBI has lost complete credibility when it comes to this and they have a lot of fixing to do to get the trust back of the American people.”

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Special counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the FBI’s handling of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia is reaching a critical peak: the launch of what’s expected to be the final trial in his long-running investigation.

Durham is seeking the conviction of Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who is charged with five counts of lying to the FBI in interviews as agents investigated potential Trump-Russia collusion in the probe that became known as “Crossfire Hurricane.” Danchenko was a leading contributor to the so-called Steele dossier, a compilation of salacious and unverified allegations about Donald Trump’s relationship with the Russian government. Danchenko pleaded not guilty to the five counts against him.

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A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Justice Department must make public an internal memo senior lawyers there prepared in 2019 about whether then-President Donald Trump’s actions investigated in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia amounted to crimes prosecutors would ordinarily charge.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Justice Department failed to meet its legal burden to show that the memo from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel was part of a genuine deliberative process advising then-Attorney General William Barr on how to handle sensitive issues left unresolved when Mueller’s probe concluded in March 2019.

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Former President Donald Trump has told the National Archives to grant journalist John Solomon access to non-public administration records, according to Solomon and a spokesperson for the former president.

Solomon said Trump specifically directed the Archives to give him access to documents related to the Russia probe that were declassified in the final days of his administration. And he said the Archives have been cooperative and accommodating.

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Jurors at the false-statement trial of Democratic attorney Michael Sussmann saw conflicting evidence Wednesday about whether the lawyer was acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign when he approached the FBI weeks before the 2016 presidential election with evidence of an alleged covert computer link between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia.

Prosecutors for special counsel John Durham showed the jury that Sussmann billed the Clinton campaign for computer thumb drives purchased days before he delivered two such drives to FBI general counsel James Baker while making a presentation about the potential server links. The single criminal charge in the case against Sussmann accuses him of lying by saying he wasn't acting on behalf of a client when he met Baker at FBI headquarters in Washington to alert the Bureau to the alleged computer traffic.

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Most people are probably not looking for a reason to revisit the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but if you are, then you’re in luck this week.

Beginning Monday morning in Washington, special counsel John Durham — the prosecutor who was appointed in 2019 by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation in the wake of the Mueller report — finally gets to present his case to a jury in federal court. Though it’s come to represent much more in the public imagination, the actual charge is quite narrow. The defendant is Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who worked at the outside law firm representing the Clinton campaign, and he is facing a single count of lying to the FBI’s top lawyer in the run-up to the election in order to instigate a criminal investigation into Trump.

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The special counsel probing the origins of the investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia has brought false-statement charges against a Washington-based foreign policy researcher and Russian emigre who was a key source for an intelligence dossier that played an important role in the early stages of the FBI inquiry.

The researcher, Igor Danchenko, 43, was arrested Thursday in Northern Virginia onan indictment that special counsel John Durham obtained charging the Russian-born researcher with five felony counts of making false statements to the FBI.

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday authorized the declassification of a set of documents connected to the investigation of his 2016 campaign’s contacts with Russia.

Trump has long declared his intention to make public more of the sensitive materials underlying the probe, which he has maligned as a “witch hunt,” despite findings that his campaign sought and relied upon materials obtained by Russia to aid his campaign against Hillary Clinton.

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A federal judge has closed the four-year-old criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, acknowledging the pardon that President Donald Trump issued last week to the only Trump administration official charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan — who’d been wrestling for months with a highly unusual request from Attorney General William Barr to drop the prosecution — said Tuesday that bid was rendered moot by Trump’s decision to grant Flynn a sweeping pardon for his alleged lies to the FBI and any other offenses he may have committed in connection with Mueller’s probe.

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Donald Trump will be a private citizen in January. But Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are poised to carry on the investigations and legal battles that helped define his presidency.

In the House, Democrats are still in court fighting to obtain Trump’s financial records and testimony from his first White House counsel Don McGahn, a key figure in the obstruction of justice case against Trump.

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Federal prosecutors are recommending a prison sentence of six months or more for a Treasury Department official who admitted leaking more than 2,000 highly confidential bank reports to BuzzFeed, which used the information for stories about special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Natalie Edwards pleaded guilty in January to a single felony charge of conspiracy to violate the Bank Secrecy Act by disclosing “Suspicious Activity Reports” to BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold.

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A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a pair of tweets President Donald Trump issued earlier this month that appeared to call for the declassification of all documents related to the probe of Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election won’t trigger any further release of information to the public.

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton lamented the president’s sweeping language, but said a clarification White House chief of staff Mark Meadows submitted to the court Tuesday amounted to a retraction of the tweets.

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The primary source for the Steele dossier is threatening legal action against President Donald Trump and top congressional Republicans, who helped publicly identify him and have labeled him a “Russian spy.”

Through his attorney, Igor Danchenko — a conduit from the former MI6 officer to sources in Russia who described illegal, lurid and unverified acts by then-candidate Trump — says the president, as well as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have put his life in danger and damaged his reputation by characterizing him as a spy despite lacking evidence to support the claim.

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Mark Warner is fine with flying below the radar.

In his last reelection bid six years ago, the Virginia Democratic senator survived a near-upset by his Republican challenger in a year that flipped the upper chamber to the GOP. This time he's comfortably ahead in the polls, on track to claim the Senate intelligence chair in 2021 — and, for the moment, staying out of the crossfire in Washington's Russia wars.

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What happened: The Justice Department "inadvertently" altered a document it filed in court in its ongoing effort to dismiss charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, prosecutors said Wednesday, attributing it to a wayward "sticky note" that was scanned onto a key piece of evidence department officials have cited in seeking to abandon the case.

The document is a set of undated notes from former FBI agent Peter Strzok summarizing a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting at which President Barack Obama, FBI Director James Comey and other national security officials discussed Flynn's contact with Russian officials. The scanned sticky note, however, included a date range of Jan. 4-5, 2017.

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Joe Biden never suggested prosecuting Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn under an antiquated law known as the Logan Act, former FBI Director James Comey testified Wednesday, contradicting a claim made by President Donald Trump during Tuesday's debate.

Comey's sworn claim to the Senate Judiciary Committee is significant because Trump and Flynn have in recent months asserted that Biden raised Logan Act prosecution of Flynn during a Jan. 5 2017 Oval Office meeting that included President Barack Obama, Comey and other senior national security officials.

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Former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee later this month, Chair Lindsey Graham announced.

Graham (R-S.C.), whose committee is conducting a review of the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, added that former special counsel Robert Mueller declined to appear before the panel.

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