The deal that paid $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to buy her silence about an alleged affair with President Trump was never valid or, if it was, should be immediately rescinded, Trump's lawyers argued in court filings Saturday.

If a judge agrees, Daniels will no longer be bound to silence, but her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, would likely be unable to compel Trump to give sworn testimony as to what he knew about the deal and when. Saturday's filing also drops the $20 million in damages Trump lawyers once claimed Daniels could owe for breaking the deal but requests the $130,000 be repaid.

Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 payment, has pleaded guilty to eight counts of financial crimes. One of those counts, "excessive campaign contribution," refers to the payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, which Cohen said he made "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."

"I have been practicing law for nearly 20 yrs," Avenatti tweeted after news of the filing broke. "Never before have I seen a defendant so frightened to be deposed as Donald Trump, especially for a guy that talks so tough. He is desperate and doing all he can to avoid having to answer my questions. He is all hat and no cattle." Bonnie Kristian

Sometimes President Trump's early-morning rants are even too absurd for his favorite morning show.

Trump called into Fox & Friends on Friday to complain about two weeks of public impeachment hearings and the women involved with them, and then, unsurprisingly, spun to talking about the border wall. But when he started ranting about some deterrents he's apparently added to his plans, he didn't have all the show's hosts onboard.

After acknowledging that it's been easy to break through the pieces of the wall that have already been built on the border, Trump claimed the "wall is electrified" — something that hasn't been reported yet. Host Brian Kilmeade's face immediately sunk, and he looked to his seemingly unconcerned co-hosts as Trump explained it's so "if anyone touches it," border agents can "get there within minutes." "You electrified the wall?" a seemingly shocked Kilmeade then asked, but Trump ignored the question and kept talking.

At the end of the very lengthy interview, the Fox & Friends squad tried to decipher just why Trump calls in all the time. Kilmeade chalked it up to "stress relief." Kathryn Krawczyk

President Trump had a few more things to say about women this morning.

Trump called into Fox & Friends on Friday for his regular bout of "stress relief," as host Brian Kilmeade called it, launching into a rant about ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who testified in a public impeachment hearing last week. It was Trump who did that ousting more than six months ago, and yet he still had some complaints about how Yovanovitch apparently decorated the embassy during her tenure.

In multiple sentences, Trump explained how Yovanovitch apparently refused to hang up his picture at the embassy in Ukraine. "She said bad things about me, she refused to defend me," Trump complained. "This was not an angel, this woman." Then, stopping himself before saying "she wouldn't hang" his picture again, Trump relayed his interpretation of a conversation with a GOP lawmaker who interviewed Yovanovitch at her hearing. "Why are you being so kind?" Trump apparently asked. "'Well, sir, she's a woman. We have to be nice,'" he claims they responded.

Next up, Trump went after one of the women who's firmly on his side: White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. Conway's husband George Conway is one of Trump's top antagonists, and Trump on Friday blamed Kellyanne for that, saying "She must've done some bad things to him, because that man's crazy." Kathryn Krawczyk

President Trump was having such a doozy of a morning that even the Fox & Friends team didn't seem to know what to make of it. Trump had phoned into the show only to give a lengthy and convoluted interview, at one point even hawking debunked conspiracy theories about Ukraine and prompting co-host Steve Doocy to gently try to get him to walk the comments back.

"It's interesting, it's very interesting, they have the server, right, from the DNC, from the Democratic National Committee," Trump began. Co-host Brian Kilmeade intervened to clarify, "Who has the server?"

"The FBI went in and told them 'get out of here, we're not giving it to you,'" Trump said by way of answer. "They gave the server to Crowdstrike, or whatever it's called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. And I still want to see that server … Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?"

Doocy intervened: "Are you sure they did that?" he asked carefully. "Are you sure they gave it to Ukraine?"

"Well, that's what the word is," Trump said.

The president appeared to be referring throughout to a debunked conspiracy theory that alleges the Ukrainians, not the Russians, meddled in the 2016 election. Nevertheless, the U.S. intelligence community has unanimously agreed that it was Russia that was behind the DNC hack; experts recently have gone as far as to say that efforts to redirect blame toward Ukraine are actually being engineered by Moscow.

Fiona Hill, the Russian expert who testified Thursday at the impeachment inquiry, had warned Republicans to "please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests," including the "fictional narrative" about Ukraine. Listen to Trump's comments below. Jeva Lange

Everybody has a dream. And if you have the top-rated late night talk show, your network might even bankroll it for you.

No matter what you think of Stephen Colbert's politics, his knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth in unimpeachable. New Zealand "is such a beautiful country, such a magical place, that I'm not surprised it was used as the locations for Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit trilogies," he said on Thursday's Late Show. "And as you may know, writer and director Peter Jackson cast me in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I had the very important role of Lake-town spy. So when I was back in New Zealand, I sat down with my friend Peter and talked with him about the next logical step in the Lord of the Rings movie franchise."

Colbert's pitch to Jackson involved the human protagonist of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Aragorn. "What about this for a backstory?" Colbert asked. "My character is actually Aragorn's slightly hotter twin brother, Darrylgorn." Jackson declined to direct this literary abomination, of course, but he agreed to make a cameo. And Colbert had a trailer for his Darrylgorn spinoff ready to roll. It is quite silly, and it doesn't even make any sense, really — Aragorn would have been about 10 years old during the Hobbit movies Colbert's adult character appeared in, for example.

But that's beside the point. This is a self-referential, winking labor of love. The three Lord of the Rings movies and three Hobbit movies were box office hits, "and now, after 1,179 minutes, the real saga finally begins," the voiceover to the trailer intones. Watch below. Peter Weber

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz did uncover a flaw in the FBI's initial application to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016, CNN and The Washington Post report, and Horowitz will include it in his final report on the origins of the investigation of Russian campaign interference and President Trump's campaign. Horowitz is expected to release his report Dec. 9 and testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee two days later.

A low-level FBI lawyer may have made "substantive change to an investigative document" used to secure a FISA court warrant to monitor Page's communications, and "the alterations were significant enough to have shifted the document's meaning," CNN reports. But, the Post adds, the line lawyer's "conduct did not alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application" had "a proper legal and factual basis." In fact, Trump campaign officials have "corroborated Special Counsel Robert Mueller's finding that the Trump campaign planned some of its strategy around the Russian hacks, and had multiple contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals in 2016," CNN notes.

The unidentified FBI lawyer "altered an email to back up" an erroneous claim about having purported documentation, the Post reports, and "the employee was forced out of the FBI after the incident was discovered." Horowitz reportedly shared this information with U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a parallel investigation of the origins of the Russia probe, "and Durham is expected to pursue the allegation surrounding the altered document to see whether it constitutes a crime," the Post reports. Peter Weber

Numerous witnesses at the House impeachment hearings have testified that President Trump was refusing to grant a crucial meeting and unfreeze U.S. military aid to Ukraine until its new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announced investigations into Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and the gas company Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Zelensky almost complied, but Trump released the money two days before the announcement.

On Thursday's Late Show, Stephen Colbert informed guest Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) that what Zelensky wouldn't do, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will undertake instead. "There is news that just broke," he said, "that Lindsey Graham is launching a probe of the Bidens, Burma, and Ukraine. First question: What the hell?" He noted that Harris is on the Senate Judiciary Committee with Graham. "What do you make of this?" he asked.

"It's the same thing that they've been doing, which is to create a big distraction from the facts and the evidence," Harris said. "The Burisma, the Biden probe — it's a bunch of B.S." Colbert pointed out that even Republican impeachment witnesses like Kurt Volker said there's nothing there and you can't impugn Biden's character with this. Harris said Graham's investigation shows Republicans "know they have to create this big distraction" to keep America from focusing on "the fact that we have a criminal living in the White House."

Graham was, not too long ago, in agreement about Biden's character and rectitude, especially when it comes to his family.

Harris said she's skeptical her GOP colleagues will vote to convict Trump in the Senate, and explained why she wants Vice President Mike Pence to testify. Watch below. Peter Weber