WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions was pushed out Wednesday as the country's chief law enforcement officer after enduring more than a year of blistering and personal attacks from President Donald Trump over his recusal from the Russia investigation. Sessions told the president in a one-page letter that he was submitting his...
Rosenstein Expects to Lose Job, Heads to White House
WASHINGTON — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein headed to the White House Monday expecting to lose his job, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press. The development followed revelations that Rosenstein had made comments critical of President Donald Trump, including discussing possibly secretly recording the president and...
Trump Declassifies FBI's Russia Probe Documents
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday declassified a trove of documents related to the early days of the FBI's Russia investigation, including portions of a secret surveillance warrant and former FBI Director James Comey's text messages. Trump made the extraordinary move in response to calls from his allies in...
Manafort Pleads Guilty and Will Cooperate With Mueller
WASHINGTON — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort agreed Friday to cooperate with the special counsel's Russia investigation as he pleaded guilty to federal charges and avoided a second trial that could have exposed him to even greater punishment. The deal gives special counsel Robert Mueller a key cooperator who...
Manafort Expected to Plead Guilty, Avoid New Trial
WASHINGTON — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was expected to plead guilty Friday to reduced federal charges in a deal with prosecutors that will allow him to avoid a second trial scheduled to begin next week, a new court filing shows. The charges are related to Manafort's Ukrainian political...
What You Need to Know About Kavanaugh Hearings
WASHINGTON — The Latest on the Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (all times local): Kavanaugh Has Not Taken a Position 3:50 p.m. — Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says he has not taken a position on the constitutionality of investigating a sitting president. Yet his past writings...
White House Faces Brain Drain at Perilous Moment
WASHINGTON — Increasingly convinced that the West Wing is wholly unprepared to handle the expected assault from Democrats if they win the House in November, President Donald Trump's aides and allies are privately raising alarm as his circle of legal and communications advisers continues to shrink. With vacancies abounding in...
FBI Fires Peter Strzok in Wake of Anti-Trump Text Messages
WASHINGTON — The FBI has fired a longtime agent, who once worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, after he sent text messages criticizing President Donald Trump to a colleague. Former agent Peter Strzok (pronounced "struhk") was removed from Mueller's team a year ago after the text messages were...
Will Controversial MSNBC Audio Affect Nunes-Janz Race?
Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, talked about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Republican effort to impeach a top Department of Justice official, according to audio recordings revealed Wednesday by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. Now Andrew Janz, his Democratic opponent in the...
Longtime Manafort Deputy Rick Gates Admits Embezzlement
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The government's star witness in the financial fraud trial of Paul Manafort testified Monday that he embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the former Trump campaign chairman — and told jurors that he and Manafort committed crimes together. Rick Gates has been regarded as a crucial...