The Intel: Republican Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday that as many as 1,000 Russian internet trolls created fake news stories to get voters in swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to support Donald Trump in the November election. It’s right out of the latest plotline from “Homeland.”

“Russia’s goal, Vladimir Putin’s goal, is a weaker United States,” Warner said.

Warner and Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman, stood side by side vowing to conduct a thorough and bipartisan investigation of Russian influence over the US election.

“This investigation’s scope will go wherever the intelligence leads,” Burr said. While the investigation on the House side is meltdown, Burr told inquiring reporters, “We’ll answer anything about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation. We will not take questions on the House Intelligence Committee.”

The credibility of the House committee’s investigation has been called to question after Chairman Devin Nunes met with an undisclosed source on the White House grounds a day before briefing the president, who himself might be a target of the investigation. Both Nunes and the White House have failed to disclose who allowed him into the compound. Spokesman Sean Spicer has said for several days that he’s “looking into it,” although a single phone call could give him the name.

Brexit: Britain hit the bar on the Brexit door yesterday, sending the European Union an official letter of intent to leave the EU in 2019. Saying this was a point of no return, Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament, “Today, the government acted on the democratic will of the British people, and it acts too on the clear and convincing position of this house.”

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said there was “no reason to pretend this is a happy day.”

The British expect to negotiate their new relationship with the EU, but they have been warned that they cannot just cherry pick the best aspects of membership while avoiding its burdens. There’s pressures on both sides to come to agreement. Europe is Britain’s primary market for everything from fish to pharmaceuticals, and could end up facing customs checks and tariffs. In its favor, Britain is the biggest military member of the EU, and is the market for hundreds of thousands of cars built across the channel.

First Family, Family First: Facing criticism that her role as an unpaid adviser to her president-father was an ethical and potential security violation, Ivanka Trump has accepted a position as an unpaid special assistant to the president, which makes her a government employee.

Bridgegate: Two former associates of NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s administration who were found guilty of engineering traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge back in 2013 to punish a local mayor have been sentenced to prison. Bridget Anne Kelly, 44 a former top aide to Christie, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Bill Baroni, 45, a former top official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was sent away for two years. Federal judge Susan Wigenton called the incident “an outrageous abuse of power.”

Nation: Thirteen people were killed yesterday, 12 of them elderly, in the collision of a church bus with a pickup truck west of San Antonio — North Carolina legislators have reached agreement to repeal their infamous “bathroom” bill. — Two anti-abortion activists who tried to record employees of Planned Parenthood talking to selling fetal tissue for research have been charged with committing felonies in California. David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt have been charged with recording 14 Planned Parenthood employees without permission.

The video the two recorded purported to show that Planned Parenthood employees discussed the illegal sale of fetal tissue, but the organization said the video was edited to make them look bad, and investigations have found they did nothing wrong.

The Obit Page: William Powell, who as a teenager angry about the Vietnam war began researching and writing the manual of violence that became “The Anarchist’s Cookbook,” has died at age 66. The book was filled with diagrams and directions for homemade weapons like silencers and a grenade launcher and how to blow up a bridge. The book, still in print, has sold as many as two million copies. Instead of a revolutionary, Powell became a teacher.

The Wall: Contractors bidding to build 2,000 miles of wall for President Trump on the southern border have been given another six days to produce their proposals.

Specifications issued for the wall by the government say it must be 30 feet tall, six feet deep in the ground, and aesthetically pleasing from the American side. Finalists will each have to build a 30-foot section of wall near San Diego for the government to make its choice. It’ll be a Donald Trump wall beauty contest. Let’s see if he barges into the dressing room.

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