Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified Friday that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton approved the dissemination of materials alleging a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank to the media, despite campaign officials not being “totally confident” in the legitimacy of the data, Fox News reports.

“The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian ‘dossier’ used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory,” the Washington Examiner reports.

“Special counsel John Durham accused a lawyer for the Democrats of sharing with the CIA in 2017 internet data purported to show Russian-made phones being used in the vicinity of the White House complex, as part of a broader effort to raise the intelligence community’s suspicions of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia shortly after he took office,” CNN reports.

New York Times: “But the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies.”

“Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t.”

Philip Bump: Why Trump is once again claiming that he was spied upon in 2016.

“For years to come, there are many people on the right, in the media and voters at large that are gonna be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Trump, because this is not gonna end well.”

— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), on CNN, during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Well, if President Trump runs for reelection, I believe he would defeat Joe Biden, and I don’t want Kamala Harris to have the power as vice president to overturn that election.”

— Rubio, on CBS News over the weekend.

“For the first time, Hillary Clinton is sharing the speech she would have made if she had won the 2016 presidential election,” the Today Show reports.

“The former first lady and secretary of state grows emotional in an upcoming MasterClass lesson as she shares the speech that she had hoped to give on Nov. 8, 2016, when she ultimately lost the election to former President Donald Trump.”

“I think I’m going to take it to my grave. It took me a while to reconcile that it was not all my fault.”

— Huma Abedin, quoted by The Guardian, on how a laptop belonging to her and then-husband Anthony Weiner contributed to Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.

Corey Lewandowski previously denied the Trump campaign had paid actors to appear at the future president’s 2016 campaign-launch announcement at Trump Tower, but Lewandowski recently admitted to Insider that people were indeed hired to show up.

“The U.S. intelligence community has developed new information about Konstantin Kilimnik, whom they call a Russian spy, that leads them to believe the associate of ex-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort passed internal Trump campaign polling and strategy information to Russian intelligence services,” NBC News reports.

“The officials did not disclose when or how the U.S. came into possession of the new intelligence about Kilimnik, including whether or not the information was developed during the Trump or Biden administrations.”

The U.S. Treasury Department said Thursday that Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate and ex-employee of Paul Manafort, “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy,” during the 2016 election, Just Security reports.

It’s the first definitive statement from the U.S. government on the matter.

Washington Post: The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence.

“I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous many, many millions of people.”

— Donald Trump quoted by NBC News in March 2016, warning what would happen if he failed to secure the Republican presidential nomination.

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 and Joe Biden’s in 2020 were by the same electoral vote margin, 306 to 232, according to the preliminary tally.

But in the Electoral College, which is the official count, Trump won just 304 electoral votes in 2016 because two Texas electors cast their votes for John Kasich and Ron Paul.

There were no “faithless electors” in 2020, so Biden won 306 electoral votes.

Ivanka Trump sat for a deposition Tuesday with investigators from the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office as part of its lawsuit alleging the misuse of inaugural funds, CNN reports.

Jonathan Chait: “White women voted for Trump. Or so you have probably heard. In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, the finding from early exit polls that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump formed the basis for a million social-media posts, op-eds, and rally placards. That this “fact” is not true is not even close to the biggest problem with its ubiquitous place in progressive social-justice discourse.”

“The 53 percent figure turned out to be erroneous, and corrected analyses eventually pegged Trump’s share of the white female electorate closer to 47 percent. Nonetheless, the impulse that propelled so many writers to blame white women for electing Trump proved strong enough to survive even after the factual basis was undercut. Indeed, left-wing opinion writers continued churning out polemics based on the erroneous 53 percent figure for years.”

Jenna Ellis has been one of President Trump’s most ardent defenders since joining his campaign as a legal adviser and surrogate a year ago, but CNN finds in early 2016 she was deeply opposed his candidacy.

Said Ellis in a 2016 radio interview: “Why should we rest our highest office in America, on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything.”

Said Ellis in a Facebook post: “I could spend a full-time job just responding to the ridiculously illogical, inconsistent, and blatantly stupid arguments supporting Trump. But here’s the thing: his supporters DON’T CARE about facts or logic. They aren’t seeking truth.”

“President Trump and his intelligence chief have pushed for quick declassification of a document disputing the 2017 intelligence community finding that Russia acted to help Trump get elected in 2016,” Reuters reports.

“But their effort faces strong objections from inside the intelligence agencies… One reason for their opposition is the proximity of the Nov. 3 election.”

Associated Press: “The president’s attempts to recycle attacks he used on Hillary Clinton that year have so far failed to effectively damage Democrat Joe Biden. And Trump has found himself dwelling more and more in the conservative media echo chamber, talking to an increasingly smaller portion of the electorate.”

“Fueled by personal grievance, the president has tried to amplify stories that diehard Fox News viewers know by heart but have not broken through to a broader public consumed with the sole issue that has defined the campaign: the president’s management of the pandemic. Though firing up his base to turn out in huge numbers is a vital part of his campaign’s strategy, Trump’s insistence on fighting the last war has sounded alarms within the Republican party.”