NBC News: “The Mueller probe has led to criminal charges against 33 people, including three of those original four [Manafort, Flynn, Papadopoulos], and engulfed the Trump administration in a legal and political morass unlike anything the country has witnessed since the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and before that, Watergate.”

“But a central question remains unanswered, and it’s one that could hold the key to what happens over the next few months: What did FBI officials know in the summer of 2016 that dissuaded them from telling Trump they were investigating his top aides? The world may soon know the answer. Government officials and others familiar with the situation tell NBC News that Mueller is nearing the end stages of his investigation, and a report by the special counsel is expected to be submitted to the Justice Department as early as mid-February.”

Time: “When the U.S. government put out its latest sanctions list on Dec. 19, the man named at the top did not seem especially important. Described in the document as a former Russian intelligence officer, he was accused of handling money and negotiations on behalf of a powerful Russian oligarch. The document did not mention that the man, Victor Boyarkin, had links to the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump.”

“A months-long investigation by TIme, however, found that Boyarkin… was a key link between a senior member of the Trump campaign and a powerful ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

“Boyarkin told Time this fall that he was in touch with Trump’s then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in the heat of the presidential race on behalf of the Russian oligarch.”

Said Boyarkin: “He owed us a lot of money. And he was offering ways to pay it back.”

Garrett Graff: “We have rapidly entered a territory of the worst-case scenario for the United States here, where the thing that you most try to avoid in politics is a situation where the head of state of your country can be blackmailed by a foreign power or foreign adversary.”

“We now know that [the Russians] actually did have, for the last two years, compromising material and potential leverage on Donald Trump, which is that Russia knew that Donald Trump and his campaign and his associates had been lying about the extent of their business dealings with Russia, and that the Trump Tower Moscow project was both more serious and continued longer than they had said publicly.”

Law & Crime: “One of the Russian companies indicted by Robert Mueller over its alleged involvement in an infamous trolling operation during the 2016 presidential election filed a motion on Thursday chock full of jabs at the special counsel’s legal knowledge and respect for the rule of law.”

“And in the process, they casually note that Mueller has apparently collected a ‘nude selfie’ of someone.”

“A mobile phone traced to President Trump’s former lawyer and ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials,” McClatchy reports.

“During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague.”

However, Cohen insisted again in a tweet that he’s never been in Prague.

“The Justice Department is one of several government entities that would be affected by a partial government shutdown, but not everyone is expected to pack their bags and go home,” CNN reports.

“While the Justice Department oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Mueller’s office will be able to continue working even if there is a partial government shutdown.”

“US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information on its enemies in America and across the globe,” BuzzFeed News reports.

“The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year of the Obama administration — in the midst of what multiple US intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.”

“Up until November 2016, they could have had a conversation about Trump Tower Moscow, and it went nowhere.”

— Rudy Giuliani, in an interview on CNN, suggesting that the Trump Organization may have been seeking help from the Russians through the 2016 presidential election.

“The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of posts on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its Facebook operations, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee,” the New York Times reports.

“The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day.”

“A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office,” the Washington Post reports.

“The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details on how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for meddling in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.”

Donald Trump was the third person in the room in August 2015 when his lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker discussed ways Pecker could help counter negative stories about Trump’s relationships with women, NBC News has confirmed.

Trump was first identified as attending the meeting by the Wall Street Journal.

“Jessica Denson, a former staffer for President Donald Trump’s campaign, is fighting an order to pay nearly $25,000 for violating a nondisclosure agreement, according to court papers,” BuzzFeed News reports.

“The award to the Trump campaign came out of arbitration — non-public proceedings the campaign pursued against Denson after she filed two lawsuits against it. Denson was ordered to pay $25,000 to the campaign in October, but the award wasn’t made public until Denson’s lawyers included it in court filings in New York County Supreme Court in late November.”

Washington Post: “Again and again and again, over the course of Donald Trump’s 18-month campaign for the presidency, Russian citizens made contact with his closest family and friends, as well as figures on the periphery of his orbit.”

“Some offered to help his campaign and his real estate business. Some offered dirt on his Democratic opponent. Repeatedly, Russian nationals suggested Trump should hold a peacemaking sit-down with Vladi­mir Putin — and offered to broker such a summit.”

“In all, Russians interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and presidential transition, public records and interviews show.”

For members: How the Russians Compromised Trump

Marcy Wheeler: “Speculation has been building for months about the report that special counsel Robert Mueller is obligated to write under the regulation governing his appointment. When will it come out? Will Rudolph Giuliani really write a ‘rebuttal’ on President Trump’s behalf? Can the acting attorney general — whom Trump seems to have named to the job in a bid to exert more control over Mueller — or his replacement prevent the report from being made public, effectively burying whatever the investigation has found?”

“But Mueller has already been submitting his report, piece by piece, in indictments and other charging documents. He has hidden it in plain sight in the court dockets of individuals and organizations he has prosecuted. Many of those court papers have included far more detail than necessary to prove the culpability of defendants who have agreed to plead guilty. This isn’t just legal overkill on Mueller’s part — it’s the outlines of a sweeping narrative about the 2016 election.”