After billionaire activist George Soros criticized Facebook during a speech in January, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg asked communications staffers to investigate why he lambasted the company and if doing so benefited him financially, three people with knowledge of the matter told The New York Times.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Soros said Facebook and Google are each a "menace" to society and need to be regulated. At the time, Facebook was under scrutiny for its role in spreading Russian propaganda during the 2016 election. Not long after Sandberg made her request, Facebook hired Definers, a Republican-linked opposition research firm that distributed to reporters information on Soros funding advocacy groups critical of Facebook. The Times reported about this research in early November, and Facebook was accused of helping push anti-Semitic attacks against Soros; the company then fired Definers.

In a statement, Facebook said it was already researching Soros when Sandberg sent her email asking if Soros had shorted Facebook's stock. After the Times first reported about Definers, Sandberg denied knowing that Facebook had hired the company, but last week she said in a post that she did come across some of their research. Catherine Garcia

President Trump seems to have no idea how lawyers work.

In a series of tweets Thursday morning, Trump railed against his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday for what a judge called a "smorgasbord of criminal conduct." Among those crimes were campaign finance violations that Cohen said he committed on Trump's orders.

But Trump "never directed Michael Cohen to break the law," the president claimed in Thursday's tweets. Instead, Trump insinuated that if he suggested something illegal, Cohen should've known not to do it. Trump went on to claim Cohen's campaign finance charges "were not criminal," and that his ex-fixer "probably" wasn't guilty of them "even on a civil basis," which isn't exactly how the law works. Instead, Cohen pleaded guilty to these charges simply "to embarrass the president," Trump claimed.

Read Trump's haphazard explanation of what he claims is Cohen's elaborate prank below. Kathryn Krawczyk

In case you're having trouble keeping track of the criminal status of various associates to President Trump, Wikipedia is, as always, here to help.

After former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen on Wednesday was sentenced to three years in prison, Vox reporter Aaron Rupar pointed out that the Wikipedia page for Cohen and other Trump allies has a handy-dandy "criminal status" box, with Cohen's currently reading "pleaded guilty to all charges; sentenced to three years in jail and a $50,000 fine to the U.S. Senate."

Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, also has one. His reads, "Found guilty on 8 counts; pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy; scheduled to be sentenced on February 8, 2019 or March 5, 2019." Both Cohen's and Manafort's pages appear to have been graced with this box in August, following their convictions.

Another Trump associate who has this box on his Wikipedia page is former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who was recently released from prison and is under supervised release after pleading guilty to making false statements to the FBI. Brendan Morrow

Working for Tesla CEO Elon Musk sounds like a stressful and bizarre experience, as you might gauge from his erratic Twitter feed.

Wired on Thursday published a detailed account of what it was like to work at Tesla as the company ramped up production of the Model 3, speaking with dozens of current and former employees. What they describe is a ridiculously demanding work environment in which everyone lives in fear that they will be suddenly humiliated or fired by Musk at any given time.

For instance, one employee said that literally the first time he ever encountered Musk, Musk called him a "f---ing idiot" and fired him in an encounter that "lasted less than a minute." This kind of behavior was so common that one manager said they referred to it as "Elon's rage firings," and during meetings, he was apparently known to suddenly demote employees on the spot in addition to "bullying those who had failed to perform."

"The threat of firing became a drumbeat," Wired writes. One executive said that "every day you expected to be fired" and "there was this constant feeling of dread." According to the article, if anyone questions Musk, they can expect to be immediately let go, reassigned, or asked not to attend meetings anymore.

Musk's obsession with firing people got to the point that he would reportedly come in and say, "I've got to fire someone today," and other executives would have to try to talk him out of it. One former executive summed things up by saying, "Everyone in Tesla is in an abusive relationship with Elon." Tesla in multiple statements disputed the article's characterization of Musk, calling some anecdotes "overly dramatized." Read the full piece at Wired. Brendan Morrow

First lady Melania Trump is once again speaking out against the media, this time slamming some journalists and authors as being mere "opportunists."

Trump sat down with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Wednesday and was asked about the hardest part of being first lady. She pointed to what she called "the opportunists who are using my name or my family name to advance themselves." This, she explained, includes comedians, journalists, performers, and authors, although she did not name names.

Trump went on to say that this "doesn't hurt" but that it bothers her because they are "writing the history, and it's not correct." She kept up her media critique, saying the press likes to "focus on the gossip" when she'd like them to "focus on the substance and what we do, not just about nonsense."

The first lady has frequently offered criticism of the way she's covered in the press during her sporadic media interviews, telling ABC News in October that she specifically wore her now infamous "I really don't care, do you?" jacket as a statement to the media because she wishes they "would focus on what I do and on my initiatives than what I wear." She also said in that interview that she is the "most bullied person in the world." Watch Trump's interview with Hannity below. Brendan Morrow

On Thursday, Apple announced that it is building a new $1 billion campus in Austin, its third in the Texas capital. The new 133-acre campus will start with 5,000 employees and have the capacity for 15,000 employees. Austin's current Apple workforce of about 6,200 employees already makes it Apple's second-largest center of employment, after the company's Cupertino headquarters. "With the planned expansion," Axios notes, "Apple is on track to be Austin's largest private employer." The new campus will have jobs in engineering, research and development, sales, finance, customer support, and operations.

Apple also announced plans to set up new offices in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City, a part of greater Los Angeles famous for its movie and TV studios. Within the next few years, as it works to fulfill its promise to create 20,000 jobs in the U.S. by 2023, the company is also expanding its operations in New York, Pittsburgh, Portland, Boston, and Boulder, Colorado. Peter Weber

Other than former Major League slugger Jose Canseco, one of the few people to publicly say he's interested in serving as President Trump's next chief of staff was Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. On Wednesday, Trump told Meadows he's out of the running. "The president told him we need him in Congress, so he can continue the great work he is doing there," said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

There's mixed reporting on how seriously Trump considered Meadows as Chief of Staff John Kelly's successor. As of Tuesday night, Politico reports, former senior administration officials and outside conservatives were saying "there seemed to be a 50 percent chance he would get the job." But "others in Trump's circle" told The Washington Post that "this week's boomlet around Meadows was overstated and that he was never close to being offered the job."

Meadows had been asking Trump's allies about what legal and political challenges being Trump's chief of staff would entail, four people told the Post. But "conscious of the fallout from another candidate saying thanks but no thanks, the White House made sure to stress that it was Trump who told Meadows that he wanted him to remain in Congress," Politico reports.

Trump says he's considering about 10 candidates, and some of the people being named as live candidates include former Trump campaign deputy chairman David Bossie, former Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. "Trump told advisers on Tuesday that he liked the guessing game surrounding the position, and the number of names out there showed that people were interested in the position and in joining his administration," the Post reports. Below, you can watch former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) take himself out of the running live on CNN Tuesday night. Peter Weber