Aretha Franklin's farewell and funeral

Isiah Thomas, a former NBA player with the Detroit Pistons and longtime friend of Aretha Franklin's, spoke of how she welcomed him to Detroit with open arms, taught him how to deal with celebrity, to pay his bills, and most of all, how she was always a strong, constant presence for his mother -- even before the two women met.

Growing up, "The music, 'I Say a Little Prayer for You,' meant a lot to us," Thomas said, telling a story how his mother would hum the lyrics in the kitchen while his father was out of a job.

Later, when Franklin would sit next to his mother at Pistons' games, Thomas would look up at them and "wonder if they knew how many nights they got my mom through and how many tears she shed listening to Aretha's music."

He added: "And to have my mom sitting right next to Aretha in the stadium was such a powerful and inspiring moment for me."

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Father of Kentucky secretary of state indicted in connection with her 2014 Senate campaign

A federal grand jury indicted Gerald Lundergan, 71, of Lexington, Kentucky, on charges of using corporate funds for her campaign and then conspiring to cover them up. According to the Justice Department, Lundergan was charged by the grand jury with several counts, including one count of conspiracy and one count of making corporate campaign contributions.

Political consultant Dale Emmons, 66, of Richmond, Kentucky, was also indicted by the grand jury. He has been charged with conspiracy, making corporate campaign contributions and "causing the falsification of documents with the intent to obstruct and impede," a Justice Department release announcing the indictment said.

While the indictment never names the candidate Lundergan contributed to, Alison Lundergan Grimes, his daughter, ran unsuccessfully in 2014 as a Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who serves as Senate majority leader.

In a statement posted to Facebook on Friday, Lundergan Grimes said she believes her father will be "vindicated."

"Today, the Department of Justice announced charges against my father stemming from my 2014 campaign for the United States Senate. These allegations started as a result of a politically motivated complaint filed against my campaign nearly five years ago. That complaint was already investigated and completely dismissed by the bipartisan Federal Election Commission. I love my father, and I have faith in the judgment and fairness of the people of Kentucky, and believe when all of the facts are in, my father will be vindicated," the statement read.

CNN has reached out to an attorney for Gerald Lundergan and to Emmons.

According to a Justice Department release, "the indictment alleges that Lundergan used the funds of S.R. Holding Company Inc. ... , a company he owned, to pay for services provided by consultants and vendors to a campaign for U.S. Senate in the 2014 election cycle." The release states that the candidate in question was a member of Lundergan's family.

Payments described in the indictment allegedly amount to more than $194,000, the release states.

The Justice Department noted on Friday that the indictment accuses Lundergan and Emmons of hiding their actions from individuals tied to the campaign and alleges that because of this the campaign "unwittingly" filed false reports to the FEC, which "failed to disclose the source and amount of the corporate contributions."

CNN's Abby Phillips and Manu Raju contributed to this report.

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'ER' actress Vanessa Marquez killed in California police shooting

Police were called to the 1100 Block of Fremont Avenue in South Pasadena just before 2 p.m. local time on Thursday to perform a welfare check. Upon arrival, Marquez, 49, was having seizures and appeared to be suffering from mental issues, officials told CNN.

After about 90-minutes of trying to offer Marquez medical help, police said she armed herself with what appeared to be a handgun and police opened fire.

The weapon turned out to be a BB gun, investigators said.

Marquez played nurse Wendy Goldman on "ER" for three seasons, from 1994-97. Though her character never had major storylines, she was sometimes involved in episode subplots, some of which had a light-hearted bent.

Marquez's other credits included 1988's "Stand and Deliver" and "Seinfeld."

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Who is Sam Patten?

Patten, 47, reached a plea deal with the Justice Department. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the felony charge and has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Patten's personal website describes him as a "strategic advisor" who has worked in politics on four continents. He has taken on numerous roles for campaigns and organizations over the last two decades, including as Eurasia director for the pro-democracy organization Freedom House in Washington, as well as a consultant for politicians in Ukraine, Georgia, Iraq and Nigeria, among other countries.

In the early to mid-2000s, Patten worked in Moscow for another pro-democracy organization, the International Republican Institute, along with Konstantin Kilimnik, who has been charged by Mueller's office with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Business records list Patten as an executive of the company Begemot Ventures International with Kilimnik in 2015, which is touted as "a strategic and political advisory firm that helps its clients win elections, strengthen political parties ... and achieve better results" on its website, which does not list any clients.

Prosecutors have said in separate court filings that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik is also a close business associate of President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who also did political work in Ukraine and has been found guilty on eight counts of financial crimes.

Patten performed various services for Cambridge Analytica, the company that became embroiled in controversy earlier this year due to its sweeping collection of Facebook data, as well as its parent company SCL Group.

Brittany Kaiser, a former director at Cambridge Analytica, described Patten in testimony before the British Parliament as a "trusted senior consultant" to SCL Group. She said Patten did work for SCL in Nigeria and that he helped to organize an event on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Patten confirmed his involvement with Cambridge Analytica to The Daily Beast, saying he assisted the firm's US projects in 2014 and also "several overseas campaigns." He declined to provide further detail, citing a nondisclosure agreement.

On Facebook, Patten posted a photograph of himself in 2014 with Oregon congressional candidate Art Robinson, whose campaign paid Cambridge Analytica about $20,000 that year.

Separately, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica for its data services in 2016.

Friday's charging documents state that Patten worked with an unnamed Russian to place op-ed articles in US media in 2017 and was paid more than $1 million for the Ukrainian opposition bloc work, including meeting with members of the executive branch, Senate Foreign Relations Committee members and other members of Congress.

The Ukrainian opposition bloc is a largely pro-Russian party. The group emerged in 2014 in opposition to the wave of Ukrainian protests and demonstrations that ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

In 2014, Patten wrote an op-ed for The Hill in the lead-up to the Ukrainian elections in which he called for "political balance" that did not ostracize the opposition bloc.

"Groups such as the Opposition Bloc, which consists of figures from eastern Ukraine, must perform well in the elections," he wrote.

An archived page on Patten's personal website also notes that he helped steer the re-election campaign of Vitali Klitschko, a Ukrainian politician who was elected mayor of Kiev in 2014.

Court documents show that Patten has also crossed paths with Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian-American lobbyist who has promoted Kremlin-aligned interests in Washington and who was present at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with senior Trump campaign officials.

In a deposition for a civil lawsuit, Akhmetshin said he was retained to provide opposition research on a former Russian politician, Ashot Egiazaryan, and that he "approached" Patten about the matter.

Akhmetshin said Patten did him a favor in 2011 by letting him "know that Mr. Egiazaryan is coming to Washington. That's the nature of courtesy."

Patten has no prior criminal history, his plea agreement said. His defense attorney declined to comment following the hearing.

In a 2017 interview with an academic researching SCL Group, Patten reflected on his experience in international political consulting and said, "I've worked in Ukraine, Iraq. I've worked in deeply corrupt countries, and our (US) system isn't very different."

Despite his lobbying work for the pro-Russian opposition bloc, Patten's website states that he previously worked with Russian opposition leader and Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered in 2015 two days before a planned demonstration.

Patten has also openly critiqued Russia's human rights record.

In 2010, as a senior program officer at Freedom House, Patten testified before Congress and denounced Russian government officials and called for the US to increase its support of Russians pushing for government reform.

"When confronted with evidence of their criminality, their misrule and their abuse of human rights, Russian Government officials generally do one of three things: They will obfuscate, they will offer stale comparisons, or they will ratchet up the level of vitriol in their rhetoric," Patten told members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission at the time.

CNN's Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.

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Video shows Austin bomber blow himself up as officers closed in

The video, released by the Texas Department of Public Safety, shows just how close several officers were to being injured when the homemade bomb went off the morning of March 21.

Conditt was driving his SUV around 2 a.m. CT as tactical teams followed him near Round Rock, just north of Austin.

The video eventually shows one police van in front of the bomber's vehicle when another bumps it from behind. The SUV glances off the van in front and slides into the median between an access road and the highway.

An officer sprints up to the front passenger door and swings three times in an attempt to break the window. Another officer begins to take a potential shooting stance near the right rear of the SUV.

The imaging in the black-and-white video shows an explosion in the driver's seat area that sends debris to the left, out into the road. What looks like a piece of metal flaps from the door area.

"Got an explosion. Got an explosion inside the vehicle," an officer, apparently in an air unit, says.

Officials said no officers were seriously injured.

Conditt, 23, was responsible for making seven devices, killing two people and wounding several others in Austin and near San Antonio over nearly three weeks. The series of bombs led to the deaths of two African-Americans and injured several others, including a Latina, raising fears of possible hate crimes.

Police later labeled the attacks domestic terrorism.

The video was shown Friday morning at an open meeting of the Texas Department of Public Safety commissioners.

CNN's Jamiel Lynch contributed to this report.

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Police: Austin bomber left 25-minute confession video on phone

"It is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his life that led him to this point," the interim chief said. "I know everybody is interested in a motive and understanding why. And we're never going to be able to put a (rationale) behind these acts," Manley told reporters Wednesday night.

The video made by Mark Anthony Conditt, whose string of package bombs killed two people and wounded five in Texas, was found on his cell phone when police recovered his body Wednesday morning. The cell phone was in Conditt's possession at the time of his death, police said.

Manley says that Conditt did not make any terror- or hate-related references in the confession.

Hours after he made the video, police found Conditt leaving a hotel. They followed him until they made a move to stop him from getting on an interstate and Conditt ended up in a ditch.

Authorities say Conditt, 23, killed himself with his last explosive device.

Federal agents went to the bomber's home Wednesday while police interviewed his roommates, attempting to determine whether any bombs remained and if Conditt acted alone.

Latest developments

• Authorities think they have accounted for every bomb Conditt made, Manley said.

• The interim chief said the bomber indicated in his video that he would have continued his attacks if police hadn't been getting close to finding him.

• Conditt, 23, lived in Pflugerville, a city just outside Austin, officials said.

• Officers detained and questioned Conditt's two roommates Wednesday. Neither person was under arrest, Austin police said.

• An arrest warrant for Conditt and a criminal complaint charging him with one count of unlawful possession and transfer of a destructive device were filed Tuesday night, authorities said. An affidavit detailing the reasons for the warrant and charge is under seal, they said.

• An aunt of Conditt's said her family is "devastated and broken at the news that our family could be involved in such an awful way."

• Austin police on Wednesday morning conducted a "follow-up investigation" at the FedEx facility where an intact bomb was found a day earlier, the agency tweeted. The building was temporarily evacuated, but police said normal business "will resume."

• Conditt was an Austin Community College student from 2010 to 2012 but did not graduate, the school said.

No more bombs found

Fred Milanowski, the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Houston office, said one room in the house in Pflugerville where Conditt lived had components for making similar bombs to the ones that exploded in a string of incidents this month. There was also similar homemade explosive material in the room.

No finished bombs were found, he said.

In response to a question from CNN on how the bomber could have kept his activities from his roommates, Milanowksi said there was a room with a lock on it, but he didn't specify whether it was the same room where the bombmaking material were found.

Neighbor Mark Roessler said agents were there Wednesday morning and stopped him when he walked down his driveway to see what was going on.

Roessler said he very seldom saw Conditt and usually only in passing.

"He was a quiet, very polite, respectful young man," he said. "Conversations that I had with him and with the family were all nothing that would ever lead you to believe that anything like this could ever be possible."

Conditt blew himself up as police approached, police say

An arrest warrant was issued Tuesday night for Conditt's arrest.

Authorities tracked him to a hotel in Round Rock, about 20 miles north of Austin, after reportedly identifying him using receipts, internet searches, witness sketches and, ultimately, surveillance video that revealed he'd delivered packages days earlier to an area FedEx store, officials said.

Authorities were outside the hotel early Wednesday when Conditt got in his vehicle and drove away. They followed him until he was forced into a ditch on the side of Interstate 35 in Round Rock, north of Austin, and detonated a bomb, police said. The blast injured a SWAT officer.

Another SWAT officer fired a gun at Conditt, Manley said; it wasn't immediately clear whether Conditt was shot.

Manley later said that Conditt's wounds from the explosion were significant.

Video and an intact package may have helped ID Conditt

Video of a man dropping off two packages Sunday at a location described by CNN affiliate WOAI as a FedEx store south of Austin appears to have played a major role in helping investigators identify Conditt.

The surveillance images show a man wearing gloves, a black T-shirt and a cap taking two packages into the shop. WOAI published the surveillance images, and Austin Mayor Steve Adler told CNN that police believe the person in the images was responsible for the bombings.

Police haven't explicitly said what happened to the packages in that video. But early Tuesday, in the last known blast before Conditt killed himself, a package exploded on an automated conveyor at a FedEx sorting center near San Antonio, slightly injuring a worker there.

Also Tuesday, an unexploded package bomb was discovered at another FedEx facility near Austin.

"Police say that they used that (video) as the final piece to put all of this together, really in the past 24 hours," Tony Plohetski, an investigative reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, told CNN's "New Day."

FedEx said it provided authorities with "extensive evidence" from its security system on the packages and the person who shipped them.

The explosions

The first three explosions in Austin involved cardboard packages left in front yards or on porches. The parcels weren't delivered by the US Postal Service or services such as UPS or FedEx, police have said.

Those blasts -- one on March 2 and two more on March 12 -- killed or wounded three African-Americans and one Hispanic woman. They happened in east Austin areas where most residents are minorities, and some there expressed concern the attacks might have been racially motivated.

The first explosion killed Anthony Stephan House, 39; the second killed Draylen Mason, 17; and the third critically injured a 75-year-old woman. Police have not ruled out the possibility that those bombings could be hate crimes.

In the fourth blast, on Sunday, a device was triggered by a tripwire, injuring two white men in an area where most residents are white.

The fifth explosion happened early Tuesday at the FedEx sorting facility near San Antonio.

"There was no reason given (in Conditt's cell phone video) why he selected those individuals," Manley said Wednesday night.

Conditt's family 'devastated'

One of Conditt's aunts released a prepared statement Wednesday, saying his relatives were "devastated and broken at the news that our family could be involved in such an awful way."

"We had no idea of the darkness that Mark must have been in," the statement reads. "Our family is a normal family in every way. We love, we pray, and we try to inspire and serve others.

"Right now our prayers are for those families that have lost loved ones, for those impacted in any way, and for the soul of our Mark. We are grieving and we are in shock. Please respect our privacy as we deal with this terrible, terrible knowledge and try to support each other through this time."

This story has been updated to correct Mark Anthony Conditt's age to 23, based on public records. Earlier, police identified the suspect as a 24-year-old man.

CNN's Jason Morris reported from Austin, and CNN's Jason Hanna, Steve Almasy and Faith Karimi wrote and reported in Atlanta. CNN's Nick Valencia, Dave Alsup, Jamiel Lynch, Emily Smith, Doug Criss, MaryLynn Ryan, Nick Watt, Eliott C. McLaughlin, David Shortell, Nicole Chavez, Joe Sutton, and Janet DiGiacomo contributed to this report.

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Antonov An-225: World's biggest unfinished airplane lies hidden in warehouse

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) — On the outskirts of Kiev, somewhere between the city's Nyvky and Sviatoshyn metro stations, sits a drab industrial building that you could drive past a thousand times without guessing it contains an extraordinary secret.

Inside can be found the unfinished chapter of one of the greatest feats of Soviet aviation ever conceived. The only clue is the building's size. It's gargantuan.

It needs to be. Because it contains something equally vast -- the largest airplane that was never completed.

The aircraft is an Antonov An-225, conceived by Soviet engineers in the dying days of the Cold War as a gigantic, gravity-defying workhorse that would help communism's ongoing race into space and assert the East's dominance of the skies.

The Antonov AN-225 is the biggest airplane in the world. Mriya's wingspan measures 290 feet, that's longer than five semi-truck trailers set end-to-end.

Only one An-225 was ever built by the Kiev-based Antonov company, which came up with the design. Romantically named Mriya, (Ukranian for dream), it first took flight in 1988 and has been in service ever since, drawing crowds of admirers wherever it spreads its huge wings.

Construction was begun on a second plane, a sister for this aerial leviathan. But while Mriya is breaking world records in the skies, her twin still lies in pieces, only able to dream about leaving the ground.

The fate of Mriya's hidden sister is a fascinating story about big ambitions and even bigger frustrations caught up in the turbulent history of modern Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The story isn't over though. Antonov remains optimistic it'll get the second An-225 off the ground.

It recently granted CNN Travel an exclusive tour of the half-built aircraft, an intriuging glimpse at the legacy of one of the marvels of the modern aviation world.

Cathedral of mechanics

The An-255 is stored in a huge hangar alongside other semi-built aircraft.

Pavlo Fedykovych

Reaching the unfinished An-225's hangar involves being escorted by car through the vast industrial landscape west of Kiev that Antonov occupies. Entering the building is like stepping into a cathedral of mechanics -- it's surprisingly calm and tranquil.

The cavernous, endless space swallows up the machinery and airplane parts within. Workers can occasionally be glimpsed in the distance, but the sound of their activity is lost, absorbed by the giant metallic structure.

Towering over everything is the massive fuselage of the unfinished An-225. It's a beast of a thing. If ever completed, it will have a length of 84 meters (276 feet) -- a whole 9 meters longer than the world's largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380 superjumbo.

It's an impressive sight, although it is slightly depressing to see this potentially majestic airplane in pieces. The wings that would give it a span of 88.4 meters are unattached, stretching off to one side. The nose gear, a mechanism the size of a house, is also nearby.

So how did it get here?

The story of the An-225 begins back in the 1960 and '70s when the Soviet Union was locked in a race into space with the United States.

By the end of the 1970s, the need arose for transporting large and heavy loads from their places of assembly to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the sprawling spaceport in the deserts of Kazakhstan that was the launchpad for Yuri Gagarin's pioneering space voyage of 1961.

The cargo in question was the Buran spacecraft, the Soviet Union's answer to NASA's Space Shuttle. Since there were at the time no airplanes capable of carrying it, the Antonov company was ordered to develop one.

What emerged was the An-225 megaplane -- the biggest and most powerful airplane ever to successfully enter service. And on December 21, 1988, three years after she was first conceived, Mriya safely transported the Buran spacecraft to Baikonur.

'Elephant dance'

Mriya was built to carry Soviet space shuttle Buran to its launchpad in Kazakhstan.

SVF2/Universal Images Group Editorial/UIG via Getty Images

To this day, Mriya remains the heaviest aircraft ever built. Powered by six turbofan engines, she has a maximum payload weight of 250 tonnes, which can be carried inside or on its back. It boasts the largest wingspan of any airplane in operational service.

Because of its size, pilots need special training to cope with the challenges of maneuvering the An-225. One of the airplane's quirks is its ability to perform a so-called "elephant dance," a term used in aviation when the nose gear "kneels" to make cargo loading easier.

With Mriya declared a success, the Soviet Union forged ahead with plans to build three more An-225s. Construction of the second began in 1989 amid equally high expectations.

Then history intervened.

In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, taking with it the Soviet space program. In the chaos that followed, production continued on the second plane, but it was eventually halted in 1994.

While its manufacturer Antonov successfully transitioned from communism to capitalism, the end of Soviet funding for the ambitious megaplane project meant the unfinished aircraft was in limbo.

The changing geopolitical landscape meant that Mriya was no longer relevant. With the technological rivalry of the two global superpowers ending abruptly, the race to build bigger and more powerful engineering status symbols was at an end.

The An-225's impressive capabilities suddenly were deemed excessive for the modern aviation world -- and certainly one gargantuan aircraft was enough. With very few oversized payloads needing transportation, another Antonov, the 170-tonne capacity An-124 Ruslan, was doing most of the work.

Furthermore, when Ukraine was plunged into a revolution in 2014 that set it at odds with Russia, it lost a key supplier of parts and equipment, putting another question mark over the second An-225's future.

Jigsaw puzzle

Antonov says the second An-225 is 70% complete.

Pavlo Fedykovych

Antonov, however, says finishing the build should be relatively simple.

Growing private sector interest in space exploration, tourism and communications -- and the prospect of heavy payloads in need of transportation -- may yet decide the aircraft's fate.

"When there is a need to solve such a problem, there will be a demand for the completion of the second aircraft and the investors will appear," says Gennadiy Silchenko, Antonov's An-225 program director.

Today, the second An-225 is about 70% completed. All the essential components of its superstructure have been manufactured, including the fuselage, wings, nose gear and tail.

Surveying the giant jigsaw puzzle of airplane parts, Silchenko insists they could be quickly assembled should sufficient funding -- between $250 million and $350 million -- arrive.

Once the investment is in, he says, the existing parts will be connected, the control panel developed and the horizontal stabilizer finished. Then the second An-225 would be ready for conquering the skies.

Because it's been kept in a state of conservation, Silchenko adds, the completed aircraft will be as-new, with no limitations on its capabilities.

Assembly nearly happened in 2016, when China expressed an interest in completing the construction, but because of difficulties of transporting the aircraft parts to Chinese soil, it never happened.

Silchenko says that while the company is still open for different options, the aircraft could be successfully put together and completed only in Kiev.

Should it ever leave Kiev, the second An-225 would certainly cause a sensation -- if the adulation of its sister aircraft is anything to go by.

Cult following

The completed An-225 attracts crowds wherever it flies.

Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images

Because of its design and size, Mriya has a cult following among plane lovers who frequently gather to see it land and take off during commercial flights.

A crowd of more than 15,000 spectators came to Perth Airport in western Australia to witness the plane arrive during a visit in May 2016.

Among reasons for its popularity are the mind-blowing 240 world records the An-225 holds, including transportation of the heaviest commercial cargo and carrying the largest single piece of cargo.

It's also won hearts for participating in humanitarian operations. In 2010, it transported 110 tonnes of equipment and supplies to the Dominican Republic to help with relief efforts in neighboring Haiti after a devastating earthquake.

Needless to say, Mriya has also come to the attention of Hollywood. A CGI-generated aircraft inspired by the An-225 appeared in sci-fi apocalypse movie "2012." A similar rendering starred alongside Vin Diesel in "Fast and Furious 6." The airplane also served as the inspiration for Jetstorm, a shape-shifting robot in the 2007 "Transformers" film.

With performances like that, maybe an encore is overdue.

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Ohr says Steele told him Russian intel believed they had Trump 'over a barrel'

Bruce Ohr, who testified behind closed doors this week to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, said dossier author Christopher Steele shared the information with him at a July 2016 breakfast, the source said.

Ohr said that his wife, Nellie Ohr, who was a contractor for Fusion GPS -- the firm that employed Steele to dig up dirt on Trump -- also attended the breakfast, along with an associate of Steele's. Ohr couldn't recall in his testimony who the associate was, the source said, but he knew it was not Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.

The Associated Press first reported Steele's comments to Ohr at the breakfast.

Ohr, a 30-year Justice Department veteran, has been attacked repeatedly by Trump and his conservative allies for his connection to Steele and the opposition research dossier containing salacious and unverified information on Trump and Russia. The President called for Ohr to be fired ahead of his congressional testimony.

Little is known publicly about the extent of the relationship between Bruce Ohr and Steele, but some House Republicans who are vocal critics of the Russia investigation have seized on it as proof of an untoward connection between government officials and the roots of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The comments from Steele reflect what he wrote in his dossier, which Republicans charge was political opposition research inappropriately used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Republicans have seized on the connections between Ohr and Fusion GPS and Steele to suggest there was a coordinated effort to push the Steele dossier within the FBI, according to another congressional source.

In addition to the July 30 meeting, Ohr and Steele spoke multiple times in 2016 and into 2017, and Ohr reported those conversations back to the FBI.

Steele and Ohr knew one another from their work before 2016. They met in the mid-2000s, people who know Ohr said, as both fought against the evolving threat of Russian organized crime for their respective countries.

The July 30, 2016, meeting between Steele and Ohr came one day before the FBI officially opened its counterintelligence investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. But the investigation was opened because of conversations involving former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and not the dossier, FBI and congressional officials have said.

Ohr's communications with Steele were blessed by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, though he did not inform his supervisor, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, about the meetings, according to the source with knowledge of Ohr's testimony.

Ohr also told lawmakers and staff he didn't read any of his wife's work or the documents that were given to him from Steele, the source said. Ohr told lawmakers that he turned over two USB keys to the FBI -- one from his wife and one from Simpson. He said he didn't look at the information on them, according to the source.

CNN's David Shortell contributed to this report.

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Trump Foundation asks for dismissal of NY attorney general's lawsuit

Attorney Alan Futerfas said in a court filing Thursday that the foundation acted legally and did not violate its non-profit status by contributing to or advocating for the Trump campaign.

The defendants in the case -- Donald Trump; his children Donald, Ivanka and Eric;and the Donald J. Trump Foundation -- argue the suit was the product of "pervasive bias" on the part of former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and is without merit. They moved to dismiss the case in a motion filed in the New York Supreme Court.

"The NYAG himself -- the head of the entity that brought this Petition -- solicited financial donations to his own campaign for re-election based on his promise to 'lead the resistance' and attack the President and his policies, describing the President as out to 'hurt' New Yorkers. The NYAG, as an entity, has issued scores of press releases trumpeting its fight against the President as evidence of its reason d'etre (sic) and its success as an agency."

Futerfas also writes, "the record leaves no doubt that the lead investigator of Mr. Trump was an open and notorious adversary of Mr. Trump, and his office shared and continued that posture."

Schneiderman is the former New York attorney general who often took on the Trump administration by fighting its policies in court. He resigned in May after four women accused him of physically assaulting them while in relationships. He has denied the allegations.

Attorney General Barbara Underwood ultimately brought the suit in June, alleging a pattern of persistent illegal conduct over more than a decade, including extensive unlawful political coordination with the Trump presidential campaign. The attorney general is asking a court to dissolve the Trump Foundation and wants $2.8 million in restitution plus additional penalties.

Futerfas notes that Schneiderman served on the "Leadership Council" of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and takes aim at the Clinton Foundation, noting the attorney general's office "investigated the (Trump) Foundation at the same time they flatly ignored credible and serious allegations of impropriety at the Clinton Foundations."

He adds that the attorney general's office announced the investigation of the Trump Foundation "7 weeks before the election -- while coincidentally ignoring a significant press report ... that the Clinton Foundation omitted millions of dollars from state tax filings."

Futerfas further argues against the factual basis of the suit, arguing that the Trump Foundation did not violate its non-profit status because the foundation neither contributed to nor advocated for the Trump campaign, attorneys said.

The filing Thursday defends the Iowa veterans' fundraiser event central to the attorney general's suit, saying it was a campaign event and the foundation simply received donations for the purpose of distributing them to other charities. The foundation "served as a passive recipient of donations through a website which were entirely disbursed to veteran's organizations."

"The Veteran's Fundraiser was not a foundation event, and the foundation did not sponsor, fund, or incur expenses with respect to Mr. Trump's televised fundraiser event."

The presentation of the five large poster-board replica foundation checks was "not analogous to the Foundation publishing a statement on a candidate's behalf."

According to the lawsuit, Trump signed a false filing dated October 20, 2016, saying that the foundation held the fundraiser to raise money for veterans organizations. "This statement was false because, in reality, the Fundraiser was a Trump Campaign event in which the Foundation participated," the suit said.

Further, Futerfas says, candidate Trump acted legally in his capacity as an individual.

"Federal Tax Laws do not preclude officers and directors of charitable organizations from engaging in political campaign activity in their individual capacities," he said.

Candidate Trump, as an individual, encouraged donations to veteran's organizations at a televised event "without any financial support from the Foundation," at which he "urged the public to make donations to veterans' organizations."

Responding to the defense filing Thursday night, Amy Spitalnick, communications director and senior policy adviser to the New York attorney general, said on Twitter, "As our lawsuit detailed, the Trump Foundation functioned as a personal piggy bank to serve Trump's business and political interests. We won't back down from holding President Trump and his associates accountable for their flagrant violations of New York law."

She later added, "How hard is it for women to get credit for their work? @NewYorkStateAG Barbara Underwood filed suit on June 14th against the Trump Foundation, yet Trump's lawyer is trying to argue that the suit is the doing of the former AG who resigned May 7th." The tweet also had a female shrug emoji.

The attorney general's suit contends the Trump Foundation used the tax-deductible donations in at least five instances that benefited Trump or businesses he controls, including a $100,000 payment to settle legal claims against his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The lawsuit contains a note from Trump, which alleges that he personally directed his accounting staff to draw the $100,000 payment from the assets of the foundation to pay a legal settlement at his resort.

The suit also alleges a $158,000 payment to settle legal claims against his Trump National Golf Club in 2008 from a hole-in-one tournament; and a $10,000 payment at a charity auction to purchase a painting of Trump that was displayed at the Trump National Doral in Miami.

The attorney general says in the lawsuit that any personal, legal or business transactions not having to do with the charity should have been made from his personal or business accounts.

CNN's Evan Simko-Bednarski and Kristina Sguelia contributed to this report.

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Ugandan pop-star-turned-MP Bobi Wine allowed to leave the country, official says

The pop-star-turned-MP boarded a KLM flight out of Entebbe Airport, Wine's lawyer, Nicholas Opiyo, said Friday on Twitter.

The day before, Opiyo tweeted that Wine had been "violently arrested" and "bundled into a police ambulance" as he was on his way out of the country to seek medical treatment in the United States.

In a statement issued Friday, Uganda's Police Force said they had to prevent Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, from traveling in order to give him a medical check-up so they could investigate allegations that he was tortured.

"As a result, Hon Kyagulanyi was halted from departure and was taken to Mulago National Referral Hospital (Kiruddu Complex) in company of specialist doctors from the same hospital for the purpose mentioned above," the statement said.

Wine has been allowed to leave the medical facility because he underwent a medical examination, police statement said.

Human rights group Chapter Four Uganda, where Opiyo serves as executive director, has tweeted that "medical records obtained without free & full consent of the legislator cannot be used as evidence."

Wine was first arrested by the military on August 15 after rioting broke out between rival parties ahead of a local parliamentary election.

His youth movement has rattled the regime of President Yoweri Museveni, and he has been in and out of court since then, most recently having been freed on bail Monday.

Wine was heading to the airport Thursday when police arrested him and took him to a government-owned hospital, according to his legal team.

Another of his attorneys, Robert Amsterdam, alleged Uganda's special forces tortured the MP in the ambulance that took him to the hospital, while a doctor watched. Police also prevented MP Francis Zaake from leaving Uganda on Thursday, saying he was a suspect in a criminal case.

Onyango, the police spokesman, denied the MPs were tortured in custody and accused them of attempting to flee the country.

"He (Wine) was put in an ambulance well equipped with all the equipment you can think of, so they were really basically handled in a professional way," Onyango told CNN.

Pockets of protests broke out in Kampala on Friday, as angry youths took to the streets to protest the MP's arrest.

Police and soldiers moved through the city, particularly downtown Kamwokya, where Wine's studio is located, to quell demonstrations by his supporters, who had blocked roads in the neighborhood with rocks and tyres.

Musicians around the world such as Chris Martin, Angelique Kidjo, Damon Albarn and others joined the campaign to #FreeBobiWine.

Anna Cardovillis reported from Nairobi and Stephanie Busari and Bukola Adebayo wrote and reported from Lagos

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Trump plans post-midterms foreign travel, but leaves Asia for Pence

The trips could provide an escape for Trump should Democrats post wins in the congressional contests. Past presidents have used foreign travel to shift the spotlight after bruising midterm losses, including President Barack Obama, who traveled to Asia immediately after disastrous losses for Democrats in 2010, and George W. Bush, who made a round-the-world journey in 2006 after Republicans lost control of the House and Senate.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump would attend centenary events in Paris on Nov. 11, the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. He will also make a stop in Ireland.

Later that month, Trump will attend the G20 meetings in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, and make a stop in Colombia. Trump was originally meant to visit Colombia in April but scrapped the trip to remain in Washington and oversee military strikes in Syria.

Instead of traveling to Asia, however, Trump will dispatch Vice President Mike Pence to sit in at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit and the East Asia Summit, in Singapore, and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, in Papua New Guinea.

Trump attended those meetings last year, and Obama and Bush attended during most years of their presidencies. The last time a US president didn't attend was 2013, when Obama canceled a planned trip amid a government shutdown.

Sanders said Pence "looks forward to meeting with our allies and partners from across the region to advance security, prosperity, and freedom for all."

Trump has conducted contentious meetings on foreign soil in the past year, including G7 talks in Canada that ended with him reneging on a final agreement after he departed the summit. He also attended a NATO summit in July that was marked by his angry insistence that other countries aren't spending enough on their militaries.

In Argentina, he will likely come face-to-face with several of the same leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Chinese President Xi Jinping is also expected to attend.

Trump will also have the chance to engage again with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20. He has said he's open to a second meeting with Putin after a heavily criticized summit in Helsinki, Finland, in July.

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Settle in with these weekend reads

Inside John McCain's surprise request for Obama

The late Arizona senator's decision to ask his political rival to eulogize him was unexpected and extraordinary, writes CNN Senior White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny. Here's what was behind it.

Where a presidential run is a risk

This might be the best country for women in politics -- unless they run against the current President. The last woman who tried to challenge him is now sitting in jail.

The fate of people thrown into 'slaughterhouse' jails

In an attempt to turn the page on one of the darkest chapters in Syria's seven-year war, officials released the death notices of more than 800 unaccounted-for prisoners. The notices don't reveal much about the exact causes of death, but survivors and activists paint a grim picture.

Opinion: Mike Pence's plan to outlast Trump

Pence wasn't always the conservative evangelical he professes to be today -- but he has long believed he was destined for the presidency, write Michael D'Antonio and Peter Eisner. In the first installment of a three-part series, the two write that to understand how a seemingly pious politician like Pence could join Donald Trump, one should trace the long path of his ambition.

The employment discrimination case that could test LGBTQ rights

Aimee Stephens was fired when she came out at work as transgender. Her lawyers say she's protected by a federal employment sex discrimination law. Her former employer says otherwise. Now, her case could become a test for transgender rights before the next US Supreme Court -- and her supporters fear a high court with Brett Kavanaugh may not be friendly to their side.

Opinion: Why Serena Williams was really banned from wearing a catsuit

In a recent interview, tennis officials announced they would ban Serena Williams' catsuit from the French Open. It begs the question, writes journalist David Love: Is the issue Williams' catsuit, or is she too black for tennis?

Why chocolate chip cookies are so addictive

A lot of us probably have memories of warm chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven. And if you can't stop after eating just one, you're not alone. Here's why we crave them.

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The unethical female journalist: A Hollywood trope that won't go away

Who's who in the NBC News vs. Ronan Farrow saga

Political documentaries reap windfall from Trump era

Just the next few weeks will see the opening of "Active Measures," director Jack Bryan's meticulous examination of the relationships and history linking President Trump to the Russian government; and "America Chaos," James D. Stern's first-person account -- as a Hillary Clinton supporter -- of the factors leading to Donald Trump's surprising election as the 45th president.

Those projects will be augmented by several more, including high-profile premieres in September at the Toronto International Film Festival: Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9," a date tied to the 2016 election; Errol Morris' "American Dharma," about Trump administration alumnus Steve Bannon; and Alexis Bloom's "Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes," a profile of the late patriarch of Fox News Channel, which has become in the eyes of many political and media observers a near-indistinguishable extension of the Trump communications operation.

Toronto received an overall increase in submissions this year, covering a gamut of topics, said Thom Powers, who programs TIFF's documentary lineup.

"As we're watching them, usually some thematic cluster will appear," Powers said. "This year, one of those thematic clusters is clearly around politics."

In "American Chaos," Stern travels the country talking to Trump supporters, after proclaiming during the campaign that "America's not gullible enough to elect a man" with his credentials.

During one of the more telling exchanges, Stern asks an older white man to identify the year to which the Trump slogan "Make America Great Again" hearkens back. He puts the time at 1957, seemingly oblivious to the fact that those years might not be viewed in the same way by women and minorities.

The film, notably, continues through election night, as a clearly crestfallen Stern watches the results, finally proclaiming, "Maybe we'll survive this too."

If "American Chaos" is a ground-level view of the campaign, "Active Measures" seeks to provide a bird's-eye perspective of how Russians cultivated Trump through the years, while documenting Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy of using espionage to undermine democracies from within.

The film interviews a who's who of political and media figures, including Hillary Clinton, the late John McCain and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who describes Trump as being "the perfect mark for the Russians."

For those who have followed coverage of the Trump-Russia story, much of this will be a rehash. But the film is skillfully assembled into what feels like a thriller, making the case articulated by investigative journalist Craig Unger (among those featured), author of "House of Trump, House of Putin," that Trump Tower became a "money-laundering paradise."

This has already been a huge summer for documentaries, with "RBG" -- the CNN Films presentation about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- the Mr. Rogers biography "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and "Three Identical Strangers" all amassing the kind of box-office returns such films rarely generate.

The popularity of those films is "reflective of a general rising trend in documentaries," Powers said, adding in regard to movie distributors, "I know they are coming to the festival hungry to find new films that can build on the successes of the summer."

In "American Chaos," Stern says he embarked on the project in part so he could "tell my kids why this is happening."

If the factors that went into Trump's election are complicated, the impetus behind the current tide of documentaries stemming from it is pretty simple: Not only do the filmmakers have something to say, but from a bottom-line perspective, there's an audience for them.

"Active Measures" and "American Chaos" premiere Aug. 31 and Sept. 14, respectively, in select theaters. "Fahrenheit 11/9," "American Dharma" and "Divide and Conquer" will play in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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