... A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a Republican operative who had been pardoned by Donald Trump in the waning days of his presidency. The District of Columbia Circuit Court rejected an appeal by Jesse Benton, a former senior aide to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, of his November 2022 conviction for orchestrating a scheme to conceal a $100,000 donation from a Russian national to his GOP consulting firm -- and pocketing most of it. ...

As much as I would like this to be fiction, I gotta, you cannot make this stuff up.