After The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed written by a current "senior official in the Trump administration" on Wednesday, readers rushed to decipher and deduce who the mysterious author might be.

Who would be so bold as to write that they are part of an internal "resistance" working to thwart President Trump's agenda? Could it be White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, tired of her relentless public defense of the president? Perhaps her husband, George Conway, a vocal critic of Trump's, wrote the op-ed and "fired it off from Kellyanne's email account," one communications official suggested.

A Twitter poll from Weekly Standard writer John McCormack had several officials in fierce competition — with 173 votes, 25 percent said first daughter and presidential adviser Ivanka Trump wrote it, while another 32 percent voted for U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Who would go so far as to call Trump "impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective?" Washington Post reporter Ishaan Tharoor said the "growing consensus" was that National Security Adviser John Bolton penned the piece, which could explain why the Times characterized the author as a "he" and why the op-ed chose to highlight Trump's handling of his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Until Times investigators "unearth the identity of an author [their colleagues] have sworn to protect with anonymity," as reporter Jodi Kantor said, or until the unnamed official resigns and steps forward, read the op-ed for yourself at The New York Times to make your best guess. Summer Meza

It was always too good to be true.

The story of a homeless man using his last $20 to buy gas for a stranded New Jersey woman warmed hearts and brought in more than $400,000 in a GoFundMe campaign about a year ago. But now, the man, the woman, and her husband have been arrested on charges that the whole thing was a scam, BuzzFeed News reports.

Late last year, Kate McClure said she'd run out of gas while driving to Philadelphia. A homeless man named Johnny Bobbitt came to her rescue, she said, so she and her boyfriend Mike D'Amico launched a fundraising campaign to pay him back. Things started looking sketchy when Bobbitt said he didn't get much of the money, eventually winning $75,000 in an August lawsuit against McClure and D'Amico, Forbes notes. And now, prosecutors say the whole story was fake.

In text messages sent just an hour after she launched the fundraiser, McClure told a friend she'd made the "buying gas" part of the story up, a New Jersey prosecutor said Thursday. Bobbitt was homeless, McClure said, but they'd allegedly staged a photo together to craft a scheme to split the money. All the money raised by the campaign has since been spent, with more than $100,000 withdrawn at or near casinos, BuzzFeed News says. And D'Amico, McClure, and Bobbitt have all been arrested on second-degree theft charges. GoFundMe has pledged to refund the 14,000 people who donated to Bobbitt. Kathryn Krawczyk

Get ready to one day see Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Academy Awards.

Apple, having previously set aside $1 billion to start producing original TV shows and films, has signed a multi-year deal for original movies with hit indie studio A24, Variety reported Thursday.

Some of A24's films include Moonlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017, as well as Room, Lady Bird, The Florida Project, The Disaster Artist, and The Witch. Founded in 2012, the studio has had at least one film nominated at the Oscars for the past three years, and in 2019, its movies Eighth Grade, Hereditary, and Mid90s are among those in contention for top awards. Apple did not buy A24 completely, though, as had been rumored.

The deal with Apple is not exclusive, so A24 will make an unspecified number of movies for Apple and other movies elsewhere. It's not yet clear whether these films will be released in theaters or premiere exclusively on an Apple streaming platform, Variety writes.

This news shows that Apple is committed to attracting some serious talent for its slate of originals: the company reeled in Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell, Chris Evans, and Charlie Day for its new Apple TV shows. Before this deal, Apple acquired the rights to two movies from the Toronto International Film Festival, Deadline points out.

Amazon and Netflix have both previously received Oscar nominations for their original films, and Netflix's Roma is thought to have a chance at Best Picture in 2019. No streaming platform has yet taken home that top prize — it remains to be seen who might get there first, but with Apple now in the mix, the race is on. Brendan Morrow

Roy Clark, country music star and Hee Haw host, has died at the age of 85, his publicist confirmed Thursday.

Clark died at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma due to complications from pneumonia, Variety reports. A country music legend, Clark was perhaps best known for his role on the popular variety show Hee Haw, which he co-hosted for more than 20 years from 1969 through 1993. Some of Clark's hit songs include "Yesterday, When I Was Young" and "Honeymoon Feeling," and although he was mainly known for playing the guitar and the banjo, his talents extended to several other instruments including the harmonica and the mandolin, Fox News writes. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

The tributes to Clark poured in on Thursday, especially from those in the world of country music. "My first [Country Music Association Awards] memory is sitting on my living room floor watching Roy Clark tear it up," country musician Keith Urban tweeted Thursday, one day after the 2018 CMAs. "Sending my love and respect to him and his family for all he did." Brendan Morrow

President Trump is the definition of a frenemy.

Trump truly does like Fox News' Sean Hannity, and willingly grants him interviews that pander to the president's agenda. But when the duo isn't on camera or enjoying a late-night phone call, sources tell The Daily Beast, Trump makes fun of Hannity for asking "dumb" questions that make the host look like a sycophant.

The three people The Daily Beast talked to asked to remain anonymous because, as one put it, Hannity is a "perfectly nice guy." But he's too nice to Trump — and the president easily gets sick of it. Trump has often "zero[ed] in on the low-quality laziness of the host's questions," The Daily Beast details, once mocking Hannity's voice and complaining that his "softball" interviews weren't very fun. One source even "recalled a round of ripping on the TV talker's interview style and cloying devotion to Trump that lasted long enough that the source glanced at their watch and started feeling sorry for Hannity."

Despite laying into CNN's Jim Acosta at a press hearing last week, Trump actually prefers confrontational interviewers, Trump ally Jeff Lord tells The Daily Beast. Trump did call on Acosta to ask a question, after all. However, in spite of all the insults Trump throws at Hannity behind the scenes, sources say he still "loves Sean." Read more at The Daily Beast. Kathryn Krawczyk

Democrat Jared Golden beat incumbent GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin in Maine's 2nd District on Thursday — and made a little bit of history along the way.

Poliquin actually secured 46.2 percent of the vote to Golden's 45.5 percent with 95 percent of precincts reporting, per The New York Times and Politico. But Golden still came out on top due to Maine's ranked-choice voting system. It's the first federal race decided by ranked choice, and Golden's win means Republicans have now been ousted from every single congressional seat in New England.

On Election Day, Golden was slightly behind Poliquin in total votes, but neither candidate reached a majority, the Portland Press Herald reports. Maine's ballots also asked voters to rank their second-choice candidate, leaving the race to be decided by voters who'd ranked an independent candidate first. Golden prevailed in the second-choice round, with 10,232 votes to Poliquin's 4,695.

Maine voters have twice supported ballot initiatives to institute the ranked-choice process, the Press Herald notes. But Poliquin still questioned the legitimacy of the election on Thursday, saying he "won the constitutional 'one-person, one-vote' first choice election on Election Day" in a statement. The two-term congressman also promised to challenge the election results in court.

Regardless of the court's decision, we'll still have Poliquin's remarkably bad campaign ad to enjoy for generations. Kathryn Krawczyk

The United States is considering extraditing one of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's political enemies in an attempt to get Turkey to "ease pressure" on Saudi Arabia, NBC News reported Thursday.

The Trump administration has been examining ways to extradite Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has been living in Pennsylvania with a green card for almost two decades, the report says. This effort is reportedly directly tied to the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Turkey says was murdered by Saudi government operatives in Istanbul. NBC News reports that Gulen's extradition would be a way to "placate Turkey over the murder."

A U.S. official reportedly says there has been pushback against the possibility. "The career guys were furious" at the suggestion, said the official.

Turkey formally requested Gulen's extradition in 2016, after blaming him for an attempted coup, NBC News reported at the time. If extradition isn't an option, the Trump administration has also weighed the possibility of making Gulen relocate to South Africa. Turkey disputes the report and says there is "no connection" between Khashoggi's murder and the Gulen case. Alternatively, the release of Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was sentenced to prison for evading sanctions, has also been considered, NBC News reports.

This news comes after Saudi Arabia once again changed its story about Khashoggi's murder, concluding the journalist was killed in an on-the-spot decision after previously calling his murder premeditated. News about Gulen's possible extradition drew immediate criticism, with NBC News' Benjy Sarlin summing it up: "So if I have this right," he wrote, "Trump looking into handing a prominent dissident over to an authoritarian regime to get them to ease up on a second authoritarian regime for murdering a second prominent dissident?" Brendan Morrow