Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs  — Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is asking witnesses to turn in their phones in order to access encrypted messaging applications, sources tell CNBC.

Exclusive: Trump invokes War of 1812 in testy call with Trudeau over tariffs  —  Trudeau: No sign of US common sense prevailing  —  (CNN)President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a testy phone call on May 25 over new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration targeting steel …

Ivanka Trump Was In Contact With A Russian Who Offered A Trump-Putin Meeting  —  Her contact, a Russian Olympic weightlifter, said a meeting between Trump and Putin could expedite a Trump tower in Moscow.  —  Amid intense scrutiny of contacts between Donald Trump's inner circle and representatives …

Scoop: Trump has commuted Alice Johnson's life sentence  —  President Trump has signed a commutation for Alice Johnson, currently serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, according to a source with direct knowledge.  CNN reported earlier today that the White House had prepped …

Pruitt Aide Resigns Amid Scandals  —  A top aide to Scott Pruitt, Millan Hupp, resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a source briefed on the matter and correspondence reviewed by The Atlantic.  Her last day will be Friday.  —  Hupp, who worked as the director …

Stormy Daniels suit: My old lawyer was a ‘puppet’ for Trump, Cohen  —  Suit claims the attorneys tried to arrange for her to appear on Sean Hannity's show and deny affair  —  Stormy Daniels says in a new lawsuit that her former attorney betrayed her and became a “puppet” …

APNewsBreak: Secret Obama-era license let Iran tap dollars  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran access — albeit briefly — to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so.

DOJ watchdog finds James Comey defied authority as FBI director, sources say  —  The Justice Department's internal watchdog has concluded that James Comey defied authority at times during his tenure as FBI director, according to sources familiar with a draft report on the matter.

Paul Ryan Dismisses Trump's Charges of a Spy in His Campaign  —  WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan agreed on Wednesday that the F.B.I. did nothing wrong by using a confidential informant to contact members of the Trump campaign as it investigated its ties to Russia, contradicting President Trump's assertions …

No, Democrats haven't shown they're going to win the House  —  WASHINGTON — The lesson of Tuesday night's primaries for Democrats: They still have a lot of work to do if they want to win control of the House in November.  —  They managed to avert the total disaster of getting “locked out” …

Cambridge Analytica director ‘met Assange to discuss US election’  —  Brittany Kaiser also claims to have channelled payments and donations to WikiLeaks  —  A Cambridge Analytica director apparently visited Julian Assange in February last year and told friends it was to discuss what happened during …

Group that advises gov't watchdog is disbanded, members say  —  NEW YORK (AP) — Members of a group of outside experts required by law to meet twice a year with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday that the group has been dissolved by CFPB head Mick Mulvaney.

The Post has mapped more than 52,000 homicides in major American cities over the past decade and found that across the country, there are areas where murder is common but arrests are rare.  —  Christopher Dickson felt justice had been served.  For weeks, he'd bragged around his neighborhood …

Republicans think Trump's culture war is the answer to winning in November  —  President Trump's instinct for exploiting America's deep cultural divisions could help Republicans nullify the Democratic resistance in the midterm elections, saving the party's vulnerable congressional majorities.

The New Yorker Staff Has Unionized  —  The era of white-collar organized labor is fully upon us: the editorial staff of The New Yorker wants to unionize.  This morning, organizers sent a letter to the magazine's editor, David Remnick, asking that the institution and its corporate owner …

The Astonishing Tale of the Man Mueller Calls ‘Person A’  —  In the early years of the century, as Paul Manafort made his way across Moscow and Kiev, he was followed by a diminutive man.  With a generous slackening of the tape, the man measured just above 5 feet.

Bid to recall Judge Aaron Persky appears successful in Santa Clara County  —  Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky was on his way to being voted out of office Tuesday, two years after he set off national outrage by sentencing a Stanford athlete to six months in jail …

‘Utter chaos’: ICE arrests 114 workers in immigration raid at Ohio gardening company  —  A swarm of immigration agents arrested more than 100 workers at an Ohio gardening and landscaping company Tuesday morning, one of the largest of several recent workplace raids carried out as part …

Trump Transition Team Goes to War Over Rogue FBI Agent … At the time, it was one of the more controversial moments of Robert Mueller's probe: Late last year, news broke that a federal agency turned over tens of thousands of private emails of Trump transition team officials to the special counsel's team …

State Department spokeswoman notes D-Day in answer on ‘strong relationship’ with Germany  —  Nauert invokes D-Day while praising US-Germany relations  —  Washington (CNN)State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Tuesday cited the D-Day invasion during an answer about the current state of US-German relations.

There will be no Trump collapse  —  I've tried everything to avoid thinking about the next election — family travel, yard work, crossword puzzles.  But now it's only five months away, barely longer than the gestation period of a North American beaver, or the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Dem Senator Joe Manchin: ‘Im Open to Supporting’ Trump in 2020  —  Joe Manchin is an anomaly in the U.S. Senate.  The West Virginia politician is known for being a centrist Democrat in a state President Donald Trump won by a landslide, and has done what few others in his party have: teamed up with Trump on multiple occasions.

Steve Mnuchin Blacked Out Schedule on Days of Controversial Trips … Before stepping off a military jet in Kentucky last summer where he viewed a solar eclipse at Fort Knox, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was doing something else in secret.  —  Mnuchin and his wife's trip on August 21 …

Trump Defends Melania Trump and Spreads Conspiracies About Her in the Process  —  WASHINGTON — President Trump, who has long reveled in conspiracy theories, spent at least part of Wednesday morning lashing out at the news media about its coverage of the first lady, Melania Trump …

Former college student who claimed rape admits it was all lies  —  A young Long Island woman who spent over a year insisting that she was raped by two Sacred Heart University football players officially admitted in court Tuesday that she's been lying the entire time.

Trump seeks to reorganize the federal government  —  A soon-to-be released report will recommend combining safety-net programs under HHS while also recommending big changes at other agencies.  —  The Trump administration is preparing to release a sweeping plan for reorganizing the federal government …

Democrats Must Reject Howard Schultz and His Radical Centrist Ideology  —  Howard Schultz is the quintessential corporate Democrat.  As CEO of Starbucks, Schultz preached (and, arguably practiced) the gospel of “conscious capitalism” - a creed that insists corporations can do well for their shareholders, by doing good for the world.