Carrie Johnson

Updated at 4:30 p.m. ET

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein remained in his job on Monday afternoon after a visit to the White House that sparked a flurry of reports suggesting he might resign or be fired.

A person close to Rosenstein said he was expecting to be fired after the New York Times story on Friday about his early tenure in office. The deputy attorney general oversees the special counsel's Russia investigation, which has made Rosenstein's job security part of the long-running political battle over the probe.

Updated at 8:47 p.m. ET

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein denied an explosive report on Friday that said he discussed secretly recording President Trump at the White House and that he might seek to recruit members of the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump.

Rosenstein called the story "inaccurate and factually incorrect."

President Trump wrote on Tuesday that he ordered the release of classified materials about the ongoing probe into Russian election interference because "really bad things were happening."

The White House said Trump is taking this action out of a desire for "transparency," but former law enforcement and intelligence officials warned the directive threatens to expose sensitive sources and methods.

Updated at 2:49 p.m. ET

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty on Friday and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Manafort entered his guilty plea to two felony counts during an hourlong hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C. The plea took place three days before he was to face trial on charges related to his lobbying work for Ukraine and alleged witness tampering.

Updated at 8:15 p.m. ET

Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is close to reaching a plea deal that would avert a trial scheduled to start later this month in Washington, D.C.

No details were immediately available about the charges to which Manafort might plead guilty or whether he might cooperate with prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person asked not to be identified.

The tentative deal was first reported on Thursday evening by ABC News.

Updated at 4:09 p.m. ET

A federal judge has imposed a gag order in the case of accused Russian agent Maria Butina after concluding her defense lawyer "overstepped" the line in a series of news media interviews.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan also ordered that Butina, 29, continue to be detained pending trial after affirming the Russian woman presents a serious flight risk.

Updated at 6:30 p.m. ET

The man whose case helped launch the sprawling investigation of Russian election interference that has engulfed the White House was sentenced to 14 days in prison on Friday.

George Papadopoulos, 31, pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the presidential campaign.

A federal judge also sentenced Papadopoulos to one year of supervised release and imposed a fine of $9,500.

President Trump was asked Friday whether he thinks Attorney General Jeff Sessions should investigate The New York Times column attributed to an administration official who wrote that Trump is unfit for office.

Yes, Trump said.

"I think so," he told reporters. "It's national security. I would say Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was because I really believe it's national security."

Prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have impaneled a grand jury to look into the case of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired from the bureau after investigators found he "lacked candor."

The Justice Department's internal watchdog referred McCabe to the U.S. attorney's office to determine whether he should face criminal charges in addition to having lost his job.

Prosecutors and grand jurors are reaching that determination now.

The U.S. attorney's office said on Thursday it would not confirm or deny any investigations.

Seven Senate Democrats want the Justice Department to review whether Rudy Giuliani is complying with the law mandating that American advocates must register when they're working on behalf of foreign clients.

Go right ahead, Giuliani said.

"Let them knock themselves out," the former New York mayor told NPR.

Lawyers for a Russian woman charged with being a foreign agent are pushing for her to be released from pretrial detention — and accusing prosecutors of "smearing her character" with allegations she was prepared to trade sex for a job.

Maria Butina has wrongly been tarred as "some type of Kremlin-trained seductress, or spy novel honeypot character, trading sex for access and power," her lawyers wrote in a new court filing on Friday.

Updated at 5:37 p.m. ET

Attorney General Jeff Sessions answered needling by President Trump on Thursday with a vow that as long as he runs the Justice Department, it won't be swayed by politics.

Sessions' statement was a rare broadside in response to TV and Twitter criticism by Trump of the department, which he and supporters accuse of perpetuating a "witch hunt" in the Russia investigation and going soft on Democrats.

Updated at 2:13 p.m. ET

Court documents unsealed on Thursday reveal that a single holdout on the jury prevented Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort from being convicted of all 18 charges facing him this week.

Jurors concluded that Manafort was guilty of eight counts in the case. The newly revealed jury verdict form has handwritten notes of "no consensus 11 to 1" on the other 10.