Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand speaks during the opening of the summit on Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking on Feb. 2 at the Justice Department.

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Jose Luis Magana/AP

Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand speaks during the opening of the summit on Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking on Feb. 2 at the Justice Department.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Updated at 7:11 p.m. ET

The No. 3 official at the Justice Department will be stepping down after less than a year, leaving a key vacancy in the succession of people who are tasked with overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Justice Department announced Friday evening that Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand will be leaving her job in the coming weeks to take a position in the private sector. A source told NPR that Brand, who was sworn in last May, has been in talks about becoming the top lawyer at Walmart.

Other sources said Brand has chafed for months at the limits of her post at DOJ. President Trump has repeatedly attacked the law enforcement agency and sought to cast doubt on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Her role at the Justice Department was doubly important because Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the Russia investigation, given his role with the Trump campaign. That left Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein overseeing Mueller’s investigation, and Trump and GOP allies have attacked Rosenstein at times.

Scrutiny of Rosenstein from conservatives allied with Trump escalated last week after a Republican memo authored by House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., detailed how Justice Department and FBI officials including Rosenstein authorized surveillance on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who had contact with Russians.

Asked last Friday after the memo’s release whether he still had confidence in Rosenstein, Trump responded, “You figure that one out,” raising the specter he might fire the deputy attorney general. However, the White House quickly denied any plans to remove Rosenstein. But if he was let go, that would have left Brand next in line to oversee Mueller’s investigation, among Rosenstein’s other responsibilities.

“The men and women of the Department of Justice impress me every day,” Brand said in a statement. “I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish over my time here. I want to thank Attorney General Sessions for his leadership over this Department. I’ve seen firsthand his commitment to the rule of law and to keeping the American people safe.”

Sessions also praised her work, calling her a “lawyer’s lawyer.”

“I know the entire Department of Justice will miss her, but we join together in congratulating her on this new opportunity in the private sector. She will always remain a part of the Department of Justice family,” Sessions said in a statement.

Brand is an expert in national security and helped defend the administration’s efforts to renew a foreign surveillance law. But she had a relatively small staff and a portfolio of issues that focused mostly on civil litigation, civil rights and other issues. In recent months, Brand delivered speeches in the administration’s fight against human trafficking.

Her office oversees the Antitrust Division, the Civil Division, the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Tax Division, the Office of Justice Programs, the Community Oriented Policing Services, the Community Relations Service, the Office of Dispute Resolution, the Office of Violence Against Women, the Office of Information and Privacy, the Executive Office for United States Trustees and the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

Brand was also a top Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, helping pick nominees for federal judgeships. And she previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

“Rachel Brand is a lawyer of the highest caliber and integrity. I was proud to work for her in the Bush administration when she ran the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy and was proud to call her a colleague at [George Mason University’s] Scalia Law School,” national security expert and adjunct law professor Jamil Jaffer told NPR. “I’m certain that she’ll do great things going forward and will be in public service again in the near future.”

The news of Brand’s departure was first reported by the New York Times.

Yu Darvish, the top pitcher on a listless free-agent market, on Saturday agreed to sign with the Chicago Cubs for $126 million over six years, sources told Yahoo Sports.

Darvish, 31, fills a gap in the Cubs rotation left by Jake Arrieta’s free agency. He’ll join Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks and Jose Quintana in a talented and deep Cubs rotation that is hoping to pitch its way back to the World Series in 2018. If Darvish performs well, according to reports, incentives could make his Cubs deal as much as $150 million. He would need to win multiple Cy Youngs for that to happen. The Dodgers, reports say, were also interested in bringing back Darvish and had a similar offer, but he opted to join the Cubs.

In the past three months Darvish had been rumored to be negotiating with more than a half-dozen teams, among them the Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, New York Yankees, Texas Rangers, Minnesota Twins and Dodgers. He spent part of his offseason working out with Clayton Kershaw near Dallas.

Kershaw recently said he’d spoken only vaguely with Darvish about potential destinations.

“We don’t talk a ton about where he’s at,” Kershaw said. “Obviously, I’ve made my sales pitch. So, we’ll just see what happens. We don’t talk about what offers he’s gotten or anything like that. I don’t want to pressure him too much. But, looks good playing catch, I’ll say that.”

An All-Star in each of his four full seasons (he missed all of 2015 and part of 2016 because of Tommy John surgery), Darvish in 131 career starts is 56-42 with a 3.42 ERA. His 2017 season showed a slight decline from seasons past, both in Texas and then, after a mid-summer trade, in Los Angeles. He was, at times, the pitcher who was second – to Max Scherzer – in the 2013 AL Cy Young balloting, and then oddly vulnerable in the strike zone.

In the 2017 postseason alone, he limited the Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago Cubs to two runs over two starts and 11 1/3 innings, then, in the World Series, amid suspicions he was tipping his pitches, twice failed to pitch out of the second inning against the Houston Astros. In Game 7 at Dodger Stadium, he was booed from the field, having recorded five outs and allowed five runs.

In three months with the Dodgers, and at the club’s urging, Darvish attempted to adjust his mechanics and slightly alter his approach. In his final three regular-season starts, his ERA was 0.47 with 21 strikeouts and one walk. What lasts in Los Angeles, however, are the two failed World Series starts, two losses that, coupled with a dismal Game 5 start from Clayton Kershaw, doomed the Dodgers.

Six years ago, the Rangers paid more than $110 million to acquire Darvish — $60 million in salary and the rest to Darvish’s team in Japan, the Nippon Ham Fighters, for whom Darvish pitched seven seasons and established himself as the best pitcher in the Pacific League. Darvish made two postseason starts for the Rangers, one each in 2012 and 2016, and lost them both. When it appeared the Rangers would not challenge for a playoff berth, they dealt Darvish at the trade deadline for three minor leaguers, including outfielder Willie Calhoun, one of the Dodgers’ top prospects.

While it has been several years since Darvish carried both the workload and raw results of a true No. 1, the long and elegant right-hander led a starter market that also included Arrieta, Lance Lynn and Alex Cobb, along with Japanese right-hander Shohei Ohtani, who signed with the Los Angeles Angels and has hopes of being a two-way player. In 2017, Darvish did make 31 starts and throw 186 2/3 innings, his highest totals since 2013. Among major league pitchers with at least 180 innings, he ranked 14th in ERA, ninth in WHIP, eighth in strikeouts per nine and 12th in strikeouts per walk.

David Price (seven years, $217 million with the Boston Red Sox), Kershaw (seven years, $215 million with the Dodgers), Scherzer (seven years, $210 million with the Washington Nationals) and Zack Greinke (six years, $206.5 million with the Arizona Diamondbacks) are the highest-paid pitchers.

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

During Trump’s briefing, a veteran intelligence official typically describes intelligence highlights contained in a shortened, written version of the PDB. Trump has rarely, if ever, requested that the document be left behind for him to read, according to people familiar with the meetings.

Pompeo has said the president is briefed on current developments, as well as upcoming events – such as visits by foreign leaders – and longer-term strategic issues.

“The president asks hard questions,” he said in public remarks last month. “He’s deeply engaged. We’ll have a rambunctious back-and-forth, all aimed at making sure we’re delivering him the truth as best we understand it.”

Trump’s admirers say he has a unique ability to cut through conventional foreign policy wisdom and ask questions that others have long taken for granted. “Why are we even in Somalia?” or “Why can’t I just pull out of Afghanistan?” he will ask, according to officials.

The president asks “edge” questions, said one senior administration official, meaning that he pushes his staff to question long-held assumptions about U.S. interests in the world.

Another person familiar with the briefing process said that, at times, Trump has been dismissive of his briefers. He has shaken his head, frowned and complained that the briefers were “talking down to him,” this person said.

Trump has at times demonstrated a deep distrust of the intelligence community. He has accused Obama-era intelligence chiefs of rooting against his election and exaggerating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to delegitimize his presidency.

The Washington Post reported last year that intelligence officials in some cases have included Russia-related intelligence only in the president’s daily written assessment, steering clear of it in the oral briefing in order not to upset Trump.

The last U.S. president who is believed not to have regularly reviewed the PDB was Richard Nixon. The historical record contains no references to him having read the document, although Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, received a copy each day, according to David Priess, a former CIA briefer and author of “The President’s Book of Secrets.”

“It is not unprecedented for someone to get only an oral briefing of the PDB,” Priess said. “But it is the exception rather than the rule. And a rare exception.”

The intelligence community prides itself on tailoring the briefing document and the oral briefing to each president’s style. Obama preferred to receive the PDB on a secure iPad to review before asking questions of his briefers.

President George W. Bush typically read the PDB first thing in the morning, with his briefer present to review the highlights and answer questions, according to former officials who briefed him.

Neither Obama nor Bush reviewed the briefing book every day, and at times they skipped a session, especially when traveling

President Ronald Reagan read the PDB every day but chose not to have a briefing from a CIA officer, said John Poindexter, who served as Reagan’s national security adviser. Reagan often discussed the briefing document in morning Oval Office meetings with his top advisers, Poindexter said.

Trump indicated early on that he had little interest in immersing himself in detailed intelligence documents.

“I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page,” he told Axios shortly before taking office.

During the transition, the CIA offered to give Trump the same daily intelligence briefing that Obama received, a tradition for presidents-elect. But Trump declined a daily update, opting for less frequent briefings.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person,” Trump said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview in December 2016. “I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years – but eight years. I don’t need that.”

At the time, Obama warned it was never wise to skip insights from intelligence professionals.

“If you’re not getting their perspective – their detailed perspective – then you are flying blind,” he said in an interview on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

During the first year of Trump’s presidency, the format of his intelligence briefings changed.

In the early days, he received the traditional briefing sometime between 9 and 10:30 a.m., according to his publicly released schedules. Within a few months, his intelligence advisers began augmenting the sessions with maps, charts, pictures and videos, as well as “killer graphics,” as Pompeo put it at the time.

“That’s our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we’re trying to communicate,” Pompeo told The Post in May.

The early briefing sessions had a more freewheeling quality, according to current and former administration officials. Five or more White House aides might join Trump for the briefing, in addition to his briefer and intelligence officials.

The meetings were often dominated by whatever topic most interested the president that day. Trump would discuss the news of the day or a tweet he sent about North Korea or the border wall – or anything else on his mind, two people familiar with the briefings said.

On such days, there would only be a few minutes left – and the briefers would have barely broached the topics they came to discuss, one senior U.S. official said.

“He often goes off on tangents during the briefing and you’d have to rein him back in,” one official said.

After he joined the administration in July, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly slashed the number of people who could attend the intelligence briefings in an effort to exert more discipline over how the president consumes information, current and former officials said.

The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former reality show star who went to work in the White House and then went back to reality television after being fired, said on CBS’ “Celebrity Big Brother” on Thursday that she wouldn’t vote for President Trump again “in a million years, never.” Newman said she found it hard to separate her long-time loyalty for Mr. Trump when she worked in the White House.

“If we become friends, you’ll see how loyal I am, like maybe to a fault,” Newman said. Alluding to Mr. Trump, she added “it’s just been so incredibly hard to shoulder what I shouldered for those two years because I was so loyal to a person. And I didn’t realize that by being loyal to him, it was going mean I was going to lose 100 other friends.”

Newman compared her relationship with Mr. Trump with fellow “Celebrity Big Brother” contestent Keshia Knight Pulliam’s relationship with Bill Cosby. Starting at age 5, Pulliam starred as the youngest Huxtable child on “The Cosby Show.” Pulliam went to court on the first day of Cosby’s sexual assault trial to support him. 

Pulliam pushed back against that comparison because Mr. Trump is “running a whole country of people.”

“We helped Cosby out — his impact on the black community is just as significant,” Newman said. “I mean people looked up to the Cosbys. It’s the same thing. I will stand up to that 100 percent.”

When Pulliam specifically asked her about the “hate the campaign kind of incited,” Newman answered “when you’re in the middle of a hurricane, it’s hard to see the destruction on the outer bands.”

Newman later told contestent Ross Matthews that the “cattiness” on “Celebrity Big Brother” was similar to the atmospheres on “The Apprentice.” Matthews, for his part, said in the confessional that he is doing “investigative journalism” in asking about the White House.

Newman said working in the White House was “100 percent” worse than being on a reality show because “this wasn’t a game show.”

“I made choices, I just have to live with them,” she said tearfully.

Newman said she chose to work at the White House because she saw it as a “call of duty.”

“I felt like I was serving my country, not serving him,” Newman said. “I was haunted by tweets every single day, like what is he going to do?”    

She said she tried to be “that person” who spoke with Mr. Trump, but “it was like, keep her away.” She said she doesn’t know who is advising the president. 

“It’s not my circus, not my monkeys — I’d like to say not my problem, but it’s bad,” Newman said. She said it’s “not going to be okay … it’s so bad.” When asked if she would vote for Mr. Trump again, Newman said “god no. Never. Not in a million years, never.”

Some of Newman’s comments came out earlier Thursday in the show’s promo. In response, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said they take her claims “not very seriously. Omarosa was fired three times on ‘The Apprentice’ and this was the fourth time we let her go. She had limited contact with the president while here. She has no contact now.”

Newman had a somewhat tumultuous tenure in the White House and was fired by chief of staff John Kelly at the end of 2017. While her firing probably would have made headlines anyway, she exited in a particularly dramatic fashion. According to CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett,  Newman made an appeal to Ivanka Trump after being fired, but Ivanka did not take any action. 

Newman then found her way to the White House residence, where she tripped the alarms. Kelly became angry, and had her escorted from the building, although it is unclear who escorted her from the building. 

A former White House official told CBS News at the time Newman had been a problem since before the inauguration. She had personal access to the president, although there were a number of people who tried to prevent her from being hired. Eventually, she landed at the Office of Public Liaison but was still given an “Assistant to the President” title. Kelly’s predecessor, Reince Priebus, also wanted to fire her. 

After she was fired, Mr. Trump thanked her for her service in a tweet.

The next episode of “Celebrity Big Brother” will air Friday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and CBS All Access. Thursday’s episode will be able to stream on CBS All Access. 

What is CBS All Access?

CBS All Access is available on your mobile device, Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV, PS4, Xbox or Windows 10. If you don’t have CBS All Access already, you can watch “Celebrity Big Brother” with a free, one-week trial.

How to sign up for CBS All Access

Signing up is easy. You simply browse over to the CBS All Access landing page and pick the plan you want to purchase. The seven-day free trial is available for new customers only.