Former FBI Director James Comey admitted Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he got a friend to leak memos of his conversations with President Trump to the press. Comey said he didn't personally share his written accounts of his talks with Trump regarding the Russia probe "for a variety of reasons," but got a friend to pass them along to a reporter because he believed it might "prompt the appointment of a special counsel." Shortly after the memos surfaced, Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, was tapped to lead an independent investigation into the Trump team's ties to Russian election meddling.

Comey said Trump's tweeting prompted him to decide to leak the memos. He said he woke up in the middle of the night after Trump threatened Comey in a tweet with "tapes" of their conversations, realizing that he needed to get his version of events "out into the public square."

Comey indicated the friend who did the leaking was a professor at Columbia Law School. Politico's Gabriel Debenedetti connected the dots back to Columbia Professor Daniel Richman, whose bio describes him as "an adviser" to Comey. Becca Stanek

Colin Kroll, the co-founder of Vine and HQ Trivia, was found dead Sunday inside his New York City apartment. He was 34.

Kroll was discovered by police officers after his girlfriend called and asked for a wellness check, CNN reports. The cause of death has not yet been determined.

HQ Trivia, a trivia game app, was launched in 2017. Kroll became CEO of HQ Trivia's parent company, Intermedia Labs, earlier this year after his business partner Rus Yusupov was forced out, Recode reports. Recently, Kroll was accused by an HQ Trivia employee of "inappropriate and unprofessional behavior;" the matter was investigated and "yielded no concerns," the company told Recode. Catherine Garcia

A new report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee, the first to study millions of posts from the 2016 presidential campaign provided by Facebook, Twitter, and Google, says that Russians working at the Internet Research Agency posted on every major social media platform photos, videos, and messages to help get President Trump elected, and continued the effort to support him once in office, The Washington Post reports.

The Post obtained a draft of the report, compiled by Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project. Researchers found that at certain points, like during presidential debates, disinformation campaigns ramped up, with different groups receiving targeted messages: for example, conservatives saw posts about gun rights, while black voters saw false information about how to vote.

"What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump," the report says. "Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged those groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract, and ultimately discourage members from voting."

The tech companies were all extremely slow to realize what was going on, the report says, even though the Russians slipped up several times, like paying for ads with rubles. Social media, the report states, went from a "natural infrastructure for sharing collective grievances and coordinating civic engagement to being a computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike." Read more about the report at The Washington Post. Catherine Garcia

More than 40 people, including several children, were injured on Sunday evening when an explosion destroyed a restaurant in Sapporo, Japan.

The blast caused a fire to break out in the restaurant, and shattered the windows in a nearby apartment building. Debris also fell on several cars parked on the street.

Police said the cause of the explosion, which took place in the Hiragishi district, is under investigation. One witness told NHK he smelled gas after hearing the explosion. Catherine Garcia

Friday's federal court ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as ObamaCare, is unconstitutional will be upheld by the Supreme Court, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller forecast on Face the Nation on Sunday.

Miller conceded there would be no immediate change in ACA administration nationwide, but he answered CBS host Margaret Brennan in the affirmative when she summarized his comments as "predicting that this goes to the Supreme Court and that the Supreme Court ultimately strikes down" the ACA.

"I believe that's the likeliest outcome, because ObamaCare has always been unconstitutional," Miller said, pointing to the individual mandate provision, which is core to Friday's decision.

It's that very focus on the mandate which has led most legal experts — including conservatives and libertarians who oppose the ACA as a policy matter — to conclude the Friday ruling probably will not hold up under appeal. Read about their reasoning here at The Week. Bonnie Kristian

President Trump does not have the votes in either house of Congress to get the border wall funding he wants, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Meet the Press on Sunday, arguing congressional Republicans should force Trump to accept this fact to avert government shutdown.

"Republicans just have to have the guts to tell President Trump he's off on the deep end here, and all he's going to get with his temper tantrum is a shutdown. He will not get a wall," Schumer told host Chuck Todd.

"If the president wants to debate the wall next year, he can," he continued. "I don't think he'll get it, but I don't think he should use innocent worker as hostages for his temper tantrum to sort of throw a bone to his base." Watch an excerpt of Schumer's comments below. Bonnie Kristian

President Trump will not grant an interview to Special Counsel Robert Mueller if Rudy Giuliani has anything to say about it.

"There are reports now that the special counsel is interested again in interviewing the president," said Fox News host Chris Wallace when Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, joined his show for an interview Sunday. "Has his office reached out to you about sitting down for an in-person interview with the president?"

"Yes, there are several unpaid parking tickets back in 1986 [or] '87 that haven't been explained," Giuliani quipped. Pressed by Wallace for a more serious answer, Giuliani declared the Mueller investigation "a joke" and said Trump would grant the interview "over my dead body — but, you know, I could be dead."

Watch Giuliani's full interview below, and read more here at The Week on why an attorney would be wary of letting his client speak to federal investigators. Bonnie Kristian