More details are emerging about the four Secret Service employees entangled in an alleged bribery scheme carried out by two men accused of masquerading as Department of Homeland Security law enforcement agents.

An affidavit filed Wednesday night in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. revealed that one of the Secret Service agents involved in the bribery scheme was a special agent assigned to First Lady Jill Biden’s protective detail. Another was a Uniformed Division officer at the White House.

RealClearPolitics has learned that another Secret Service special agent involved in the alleged bribery is assigned to President Biden’s detail, those agents who accompany the president nearly everywhere he goes and stand by his side during the most sensitive of discussions and private moments. A second Uniformed Division officer caught up in the bizarre scheme was assigned to protect Vice President Harris’s residence, according to sources familiar with the matter.

All four have been placed on administrative leave while an investigation takes place. RCP is not releasing their names because of privacy concerns. Usually, the Inspection Division and the Office of Professional Responsibility handle investigations into possible employee misconduct. U.S. Secret Service leaders decided that the bizarre and serious nature of the allegations requires a more specialized approach.

A group of Democratic strategists is trying to spread a novel organizing tactic in this year’s election. Technically, it’s called “paid relational organizing,” but it boils down to this: paying people to talk to their friends about politics.

Democrats think it helped them win the Senate in 2020 — and are hoping the get-out-the-vote strategy will help limit the pain of a brutal 2022 election environment.

Conversations with friends, family members or neighbors are more likely to earn a voter’s support than chats with a stranger at their front door, which is the traditional way campaigns have run paid canvassing programs in the past. And an important test case for deploying the strategy at scale came out of the Georgia Senate runoffs in 2021 when now-Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-Ga.) campaign, flush with nearly unlimited cash but only two months to spend it, used a paid and volunteer relational program to get people talking to acquaintances instead of strangers about the election.

In particular, the Ossoff team hired 2,800 Georgians, specifically targeting those with little or no voting history themselves to do this outreach to their own networks. The campaign was making a bet that many of the friends and family of their highly political volunteers were already engaged in the runoff election, but that this group could expand the electorate with relational outreach into their networks — which were likely to include more irregular voters or non-voters like them. The campaign folded this data into their vast field program, tracking conversations and whether those contacted had voted. They could even notify organizers, based on their own network, which voters were tagged as “only reachable by you.”

Washington, Moscow and most of the world expected Russia to demolish Ukraine’s military within days.

But not Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who has orchestrated and led the fight that has left Russian forces bloody, beaten and in messy retreat.

If a single person can be credited with Ukraine’s surprising military successes so far — protecting Kyiv, the capital, and holding most other major cities amid an onslaught — it is Zaluzhnyy, a round-faced 48-year-old general who was born into a military family, and appointed as his country’s top uniformed commander by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2021. Zaluzhnny and other Ukrainian commanders had been preparing for a full-on war with Russia since 2014.

Unlike, say, “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf, who led U.S. troops in the first Persian Gulf War, or David Petraeus, who presided over the Iraq war and was nicknamed “King David,” Zaluzhnyy has largely avoided the spectacle of a celebrity commander — deferring that role to Zelenskyy, a former actor and comedian who has captured the public’s imagination.

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday revived President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for federal executive branch employees, lifting a district court’s January injunction that had halted the requirement and ordering the lower court to dismiss the case.

The majority on a three-member panel said that under the Civil Service Reform Act – which Congress passed in 1978 to streamline the process of settling workplace disputes brought by federal employees – the lower court did not have jurisdiction to issue the injunction on the mandate.

The opinion was written by Clinton-appointed Judge Carl Stewart, who was joined by Judge James Stewart, another Clinton appointee. Circuit Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote a dissent disagreeing with the majority’s interpretation of the CSRA.

Lawyers for the mandate’s challengers did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment as to whether they planned to appeal the 5th Circuit’s decision. If they do, they could take the case directly to the Supreme Court or put it first in front of the full appellate court, which is dominated by conservative judges.

One of two men accused of posing as federal law enforcement employees and ingratiating themselves with Secret Service agents had visas for travel to Iran and Pakistan, and told others that he had ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, a federal prosecutor alleged Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Rothstein said the government wanted Haider Ali and Arian Taherzadeh — who were arrested Wednesday on charges of impersonating federal law enforcement, specifically with the Department of Homeland Security — held in jail while they await trial, alleging that they posed a flight risk and possessed firearms.

Taherzadeh, 40, and Ali, 35, were charged in what prosecutors described as a ruse that started in February 2020 and ended only after a postal inspector came across the pair in an unrelated case. Federal law enforcement officials did not say what motivated the men or what they wanted in return as they, according to prosecutors, “ingratiated themselves with and infiltrated” Secret Service agents and DHS personnel who lived in their D.C. apartment building. So far, the men are charged only with “false impersonation of a federal officer,” though Rothstein said Thursday that the government would probably add a charge of “conspiracy.”

“We have not verified the accuracy of his claims, but Mr. Ali made claims to witnesses he had ties to ISI, which is the Pakistani intelligence service,” Rothstein said.

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN)Pakistan's Supreme Court has ruled that a decision to block a vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Imran Khan was unconstitutional, with legislators now set to vote on Saturday.

The Supreme Court reached the unanimous decision after special proceedings that stretched to four days while Khan and his loyalist President Arif Alvi had steamrolled a process to start early elections. The Supreme Court also quashed Khan's order to dissolve parliament and call for early elections, calling it of "no legal effect."

A vote of confidence for Khan will now be held on Saturday at 10:30am local (1:30a ET).

Khan had called the election in a dramatic attempt to cling to power after the deputy speaker of parliament blocked a vote of no-confidence against him last Sunday, which had appeared almost certain to succeed.