The World's Best Bar: London's Dandelyan Wins Top Spot at 11th Annual Spirited Awards

Dandelyan plucked the top honor as the “World’s Best Cocktail Bar” at the 2017 Spirited Awards in New Orleans during Tales of the Cocktail. The London watering hole, which was founded by Ryan Chetiyawardana at the Mondrian Hotel, beat out some top shelf competitors, including New York’s Dante, Singapore’s Tippling Club, and Boston’s The Hawthorne. Dandelyan also picked up two other major awards: “Best International Hotel Bar” and “Best International Bar Team.”

Two other nominees in the “World’s Best Cocktail Bar” category were also popping Champagne. Melbourne’s Black Pearl was named “Best International Cocktail Bar” and Washington D.C.’s Columbia Room won “Best American Cocktail Bar.”

In the bartending category, Shingo Gokan of Shanghai’s Speak Low was named “International Bartender of the Year” and PDT’s Jeff Bell gave an emotional speech after being named “American Bartender of the Year.” Bell quoted a lovely compliment given by his mother, “you’re the most amazing human ever because you do what you love.”

But the best speech of the night went to 75-year-old Munich restaurateur and bartender Charles Schumann, who was given the “Lifetime Achievement” award. “A cocktail is perfect when there’s nothing more than can be left out,” he said to an appreciative crowd. Schumann, whose speech lasted about eight minutes, wouldn’t leave the stage until he had shared every last drop of cocktail wisdom with the audience of bartenders and other spirits professionals. “There are two ways to enjoy a good drink,” Schumann decreed. “First by mixing. And second by drinking.”

For a complete list of the winners of the 2017 Spirited Awards, see below.

GLOBAL CATEGORIES

World’s Best Cocktail Bar: Dandelyan (London, United Kingdom)

Best Bar Mentor: David Wondrich

Best New Spirit or Cocktail Ingredient: ITALICUS, Rosolio di Bergamotto (Italy)

World’s Best Cocktail Menu: Trick Dog (San Francisco, United States)

World’s Best Spirits Selection: Canon: Whiskey and Bitters Emporium (Seattle, WA)

Helen David Lifetime Achievement Award: Charles Schumann

AMERICAN CATEGORIES

Best American Bar Team: The NoMad Bar (New York, NY)

American Bartender of the Year: Jeff Bell of PDT (New York, NY)

Best American Brand Ambassador: Misty Kalkofen (Del Maguey)

Best American Cocktail Bar: Columbia Room (Washington, DC)

Best American High Volume Cocktail Bar: Sweet Liberty Drinks & Supply Company (Miami, FL)

Best American Hotel Bar: The Hawthorne at the Commonwealth Hotel (Boston)

Best American Restaurant Bar: Dante (New York, NY)

Best New American Cocktail Bar: BlackTail (New York, NY)

INTERNATIONAL CATEGORIES

Best International Bar Team: Dandelyan (London, UK)

International Bartender of the Year: Shingo Gokan of Speak Low (Shanghai, China)

Best International Brand Ambassador: Camille Ralph Vidal (St. Germain)

Best International Cocktail Bar: Black Pearl (Melbourne, Australia)

Best International High Volume Cocktail Bar: Trailer Happiness (London, UK)

Best International Hotel Bar: Dandelyan at The Mondrian (London, UK)

Best International Restaurant Bar: Tippling Club (Singapore)

Best New International Cocktail Bar: Swift (London, UK)

WRITING CATEGORIES

Best Cocktail & Spirits Publication: Hot Rum Cow

Best Cocktail & Spirits Writer: Wayne Curtis

Best New Cocktail & Bartending Book: Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki by Martin & Rebecca Cate

Best New Spirits Book: Bourbon: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of An American Whiskey by Fred Minnick

Gotham Season 4 Premiering Sept. 21, The Orville on Sept. 10

Gotham Season 4 premiering Sept. 21, The Orville on Sept. 10

FOX has announced that Gotham Season 4 will now premiere on Thursday, Sept. 21 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT), followed by the time period premiere of Seth MacFarlane’s new space adventure series, The Orville (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT). The Orville debuts with a special two-night premiere on Sunday, Sept. 10 (8:00-9:00 PM LIVE to all Time Zones) and Sunday, Sept. 17 (8:00-9:00 PM ET LIVE to All Time Zones), immediately following NFL ON FOX doubleheaders and THE O.T. Both Gotham and The Orville time period premiere were previously scheduled for Sept. 28.

Gotham Season 4 will witness the emergence of the criminal landscape for which Gotham City is best known, with Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) at the forefront of the fight against the most depraved and unhinged villains. While Gotham City fights for normalcy, a new hero will rise, as Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) begins to assume responsibility for the city’s well-being.

Gotham is based upon the characters from DC Comics and is produced by Warner Bros. Television. Executive producer Bruno Heller wrote the pilot, which was directed and executive-produced by Emmy Award nominee Danny Cannon. John Stephens serves as an executive producer and showrunner on the series.

From Emmy Award-winning executive producer and creator Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, Ted), The Orville is a live-action, one-hour space adventure series set 400 years in the future that follows the exploits of The U.S.S. Orville, a mid-level exploratory spaceship. Its crew, both human and alien, face the wonders and dangers of outer space, while also dealing with the problems of everyday life.

The series stars MacFarlane as Ed Mercer, the ship’s Captain, and Adrianne Palicki (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Friday Night Lights) as his ex-wife, Kelly Grayson, who’s assigned as his First Officer. The series also stars Penny Johnson Jerald (24, The Larry Sanders Show) as Claire Finn, Scott Grimes (American Dad!, Justified) as Gordon Malloy, Peter Macon (Shameless, Bosch) as Bortus, Halston Sage (Neighbors, Goosebumps) as Alara Kitan, J. Lee (American Dad!, The Cleveland Show) as John Lamarr, Mark Jackson (That Royal Today) as Isaac, Chad L. Coleman (The Wire) as Klyden and Norm Macdonald (The Middle, Saturday Night Live) as Yaphit. Seth MacFarlane, Brannon Braga, David A. Goodman, Jason Clark and Liz Heldens are executive producers. Jon Favreau directed the pilot.

John Mayer Defends Justin Bieber After He Cancels Tour

Fans may be upset about Justin Bieber canceling the remaining dates on his Purpose world tour, buy his fellow musician John Mayer took to Twitter to defend the singer on Monday, July 24.

Justin Bieber's Biggest Scandals Ever

“When someone pulls remaining dates of a tour, it means they would have done real damage to themselves if they kept going,” wrote the “Gravity” singer, who was forced to take a long break from touring himself as he battled a throat condition in 2012. “We’ve lost so many great artists lately. I give Justin [two thumbs up] for realizing it was time to call it. You should too.”

As previously reported, the “Despacito” singer, 23, announced on Monday that he is not going to finish his tour, canceling the remaining 14 shows.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, Justin Bieber will cancel the remainder of the Purpose World Tour concerts,” a rep for Bieber’s tour told Us Weekly in a statement. “Justin loves his fans and hates to disappoint them. He thanks his fans for the incredible experience of the Purpose World Tour over last 18 months. He is grateful and honored to have shared that experience with his cast and crew for over 150 successful shows across six continents during this run. However, after careful consideration he has decided he will not be performing any further dates. Tickets will be refunded at point of purchase.”

Stars With Justin Bieber's Hair!

The “Sorry” singer announced on Instagram back in March that he was canceling all meet and greets for the tour.

“Want to make people smile and happy but not at my expense and I always leave feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted to the point of depression,” he wrote. “The pressure of meeting people's expectations of what I'm supposed to be is so much for me to handle and a lot on my shoulders.”

John Mayer's Famous Girlfriends

TMZ caught up with the singer near the beach in Santa Monica on Monday afternoon, just hours after his announcement, and Bieber smiled as he said he was looking forward to “just resting, getting some relaxation” and riding some bikes.

“Sorry for anybody who feels disappointed or betrayed,” he told his fans in a video posted on the website. 

Court cuts World Cup inspector's ban

A Swiss court reduced a ban on former Chilean soccer president and World Cup bid inspector Harold Mayne-Nicholls on Friday, clearing the way for his return to the sport this month.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said it had cut his ban from soccer-related activities to two years from three.

Mayne-Nicholls, who headed world soccer body Fifa's panel tasked with deciding 2018 and 2022 World Cup venues, was originally banned in July 2015 for seven years, on charges of seeking personal favours from a group close to Qatar's successful bid for the 2022 event.

That was later trimmed to three years and Friday's decision cut it further.

Marvel’s The Defenders Review: Episodes 1-4

Here is our Marvel’s The Defenders review; what’s coming when the superheroes team up on Netflix

At the San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, Netflix showed a new trailer for Marvel’s The Defenders and we got a chance to chat with the stars of the show. We also got a look at the first four episodes. Here is our The Defenders review in advance of the show’s premiere on the streaming service on August 18. Our The Defenders review does have some spoilers, so if you want to go in completely fresh, wait until you’ve watched. You’ve been warned.

The Defenders features Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), Kristyn Ritter (Jessica Jones), Mike Colter (Luke Cage), Finn Jones (Danny Rand/Iron Fist) and Sigourney Weaver (Alexandra).

We’ve gotten to know the characters that will become The Defenders in over 60 episodes of television, so we’ve been waiting a long time to see them as a team. Well, there is more waiting to be done. For a show that boasts only eight episodes, it takes an awfully long time to see the superheroes (though Jessica would hate that description) team up. Though we see the first meetings of a few here and there (as you’ve seen in the trailers), we don’t get the final group together until the end of episode three. One could argue that for a show that releases all their episodes at once, this might not seem like a bad decision. You’re not waiting weeks to get watch the next chapter in the story. You can certainly binge watch them all in one night. The thing is, The Defenders takes a very, very meandering path to get there. Sure, that path is full of Sigourney Weaver and cameos from Foggy (Elden Henson), Misty Knight (Simone Missick), Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), Trish (Rachel Taylor) and Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss), but it’s not enough to keep you from yelling at the screen, “Oh, just get them together already!”

When we begin, we learn that things have been rough for our heroes.The show starts out with an insanely dark fight with Danny and Colleen in Cambodia that ends up bringing him back to New York. He’s been chasing The Hand, and a dying combatant tells him that what he’s looking for will be found there. Chasing The Hand is what brings Danny in contact with Luke. As you may know from the comics, Danny and Luke have a best buds relationship, and as the show goes on, their chemistry is apparent. We find Luke on his way out of jail and trying to find out what’s been happening to the young men of Harlem. Jessica is busy trying to shed her hero status and drinking like a fish again. However, when a case lands on her doorstep and it becomes clear that it’s more than a missing persons thing, she heads off to find out what’s going on and gets herself arrested. Surprise, surprise, Matt ends up as her lawyer. These two do not like each other at all, and Matt isn’t exactly in a great state either. He has given up the hero life and is working pro bono cases, though the fighting is a drug to him and he can’t stay away.

The thing that works so beautifully here is the banter between the members of the group, and we get to see very little of it until the fourth episode. I suppose that, if you look at the entire Netflix superhero library as a whole, after we’ve seen the entire thing down the line, it won’t seem that slow, but I kept wondering when they were just going to get on with it. The scenes where they come together are wonderful, making it all the more obvious that it should have happened far sooner.

That said, the actual threat works, at least so far. Weaver’s Alexandra is riveting as always, and her involvement with the big bad of the season is fascinating. (We won’t spoil it for you.) The scene featuring the return of an Elektra with no memory was fun, but mostly because she was so difficult to watch in the second season of Daredevil. Yung did her best, of course, but there was no arc for her character the way there is in the comics. It never made sense that Matt loved her so deeply, the way she was presented. Obsession, sure, but love? That failing in the earlier show makes his feelings about her in The Defenders lack any sort of real punch. Seeing Yung get a chance to work with a character that isn’t constantly snarking was refreshing. It will be interesting to see where the second half of the season takes them both.

One thing that stood out was the color. Yeah, I know that usually when you mention things like lighting, it’s because the rest of the show was boring. Not so, despite my few complaints. As fans who’ve watched the other shows know, each character has a color that is used in the lighting, for instance, Jessica’s predominant color is purple. In The Defenders, when we see the characters solo, we see their particular color. When they finally join forces in a restaurant, all the colors are mingled in the background. Interestingly, Alexandra is constantly swathed in clothing and surroundings that are white, silver, grey and a little gold. The whole thing is a clever nod to the comic book origins of the characters. Though they aren’t in costume (well, maybe Jess and her jeans could be considered one), they still get a theme.

For fans, this is definitely worth a watch, though getting to the actual story might be frustrating for some. When the team up finally does happen, it’s pretty satisfying. If you haven’t seen all the other series, fear not. A lot of time is spent explaining. Hopefully we can let that go in the second half.

Blind ninja. Smart-ass detective. Bulletproof ex-con. Kung Fu billionaire. Marvel’s The Defenders centers on four outsider heroes that have to put aside their personal issues and come together when a villainous sect threatens to destroy New York City as we know it. The Netflix original series launches globally on August 18, 2017.

WWE Battleground 2017 Results: News, Notes After Great Khali Returns, Jinder Mahal Beats Randy Orton

WWE Battleground 2017 figures to be WWE's most American pay-per-view since the Great American Bash as the top programs pit honest, hard-working Americans against evil foreigners

While WWE bathes in a pig pen filled with stars and stripes, fan response has been lukewarm with slow ticket sales for the Philadelphia pay-per-view. Earlier this week it was reported tickets were still available in the second and third rows, with WWE even slashing its ticket prices by as many as 50%.

And while ticket sales have stalled, Cena's return has helped SmackDown Live's viewership, which has risen in each of the last three weeks since July 4.

Comic-Con: The New Justice League Sneak Peek is Here!

For the second year in a row, Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Films have released a brand-new trailer for the upcoming Justice League at San Diego Comic-Con. You can watch the new Justice League sneak peek below!

Justice League stars Ben Affleck as Batman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Connie Nielsen as Queen Hippolyta, Billy Crudup as Henry Allen, Amber Heard as Mera, Kierset Clemons as Iris West, with J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon, and Amy Adams as Lois Lane.

Fueled by the hero’s restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Justice League sees Bruce Wayne enlist the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.

Directed by Zack Snyder (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Man of Steel), the screenplay is by Chris Terrio from a story by Snyder and Terrio. Filmmaker Joss Whedon is set to helm the upcoming additional photography for the sequel and oversee the completion of its post production following a family tragedy with Snyder. Justice League is produced by Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Jon Berg and Geoff Johns. The executive producers are Jim Rowe, Wesley Coller, Curt Kanemoto, Chris Terrio and Ben Affleck.

Justice League will open in theaters on November 10, 2017.

For trailer video click:

https://youtu.be/g_6yBZKj-eo

Home Alone Actor John Heard Passes Away at 72

John Heard, who played Kevin’s dad Peter McCallister in the Home Alone movies, died Friday in Palo Alto, California, according to TMZ. The actor was found dead in a hotel by the maid service. He had minor back surgery on Wednesday at Stanford Medical Center. Heard was 72.

Heard also starred in film such as Chilly Scenes of Winter, Heart Beat, Cutter’s Way, Cat People, C.H.U.D., After Hours, Big, Beaches, Awakenings, Rambling Rose, The Pelican Brief, My Fellow Americans, Snake Eyes, and Animal Factory.

The actor was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1999 for guest starring on The Sopranos. He also starred in Battlestar Galactica and had recurring roles in CSI: Miami and Prison Break.

Heard is survived by his children John Matthew, Annika and Max Heard.

Rob Kardashian Returns to Social Media With Daughter Dream Following Blac Chyna Legal Drama

Rob Kardashian is returning to social media with a very special someone.

On Friday evening, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star took to Twitter where he shared a brand-new photo of Dream Kardashian.

In the candid photo, Rob's daughter looked right into the camera as she sat inside a pink playpen.

While Rob didn't caption the picture, the post serves as the Arthur George sock designer's first original post since his legal drama with Blac Chyna kicked off.

Less than two weeks ago, Dream's mom was granted a temporary restraining order against Rob after he went on a social media rant against his ex.

"Posting pictures of Dream is not a violation of the restraining order. Mr. Kardashian was ordered to stay away from [Blac Chyna], not to contact her, not to share intimate photos or medical information about her and not to cyberbully her," Chyna's attorney Lisa Bloom told E! News. "We are looking forward to the next hearing to secure permanent orders against Mr. Kardashian to ensure his long term compliance."

Since the order was placed, E! News has learned that Rob is getting counseling. In addition, he told family members that he is extremely regretful about his recent actions.

"Rob did apologize to the family and has major regrets over the way he acted," a source recently told us. "He is very remorseful and upset with himself over what he did."

According to the source, the reality star did get caught up in the moment and acted impulsively without thinking things through. "Now, he is embarrassed and knows he needs to be better for Dream," the insider added.

Instagram has since deactivated Rob's account. In the meantime, both parties have another court date on their calendar for this August where their family dynamics could be changed again.  

"There's no excuse and he is taking responsibility. He also realizes that there could be consequences and that he won't be able to see Dream. That is what's most important to him and not being able to be with her is what scares him the most," another source shared with us. "He is trying to learn from this and move forward. He just wants to be a good dad and focus on that."

Apple Adds Pixar and Disney Characters To Its Very Fun Clips Video App

Apple released Clips, an iPhone and iPad app designed for easy creation and sharing of quick, fun videos with cute extras, back in April this year. It’s been highly popular with downloads of the free app reaching up to a million in its first four days.

Today, Apple's updated the app with more features in version 1.1 of Clips.

All the original, simple functionality is there: launch the app and you can shoot video of yourself or your surroundings. Photos, too. You can filter the camera to make you look like a comic book, and record dialogue which is miraculously represented as text in real time on screen.

Then you can decorate the footage with animated overlays and emoji. You can even add start and end boards with customisable captions. When you’re done, you can share your masterpiece on Instagram or Twitter, for instance.

Chief among the changes in this update are the addition of Disney to the mix. Apple has previously put Mickey Mouse on the iPod nano, and Mickey, Minnie and Toy Story characters in current or upcoming Apple Watch software.

So users can now overlay their videos with animations of Mickey and Minnie here, too. Not to mention Donald and Daisy Duck.

What’s more, Disney-owned animation studio Pixar has several movies on show in the app, including Toy Story, Finding Dory, Cars and Inside Out.

Among the new features, there are special effects that can be overlaid to create videos with 12 new posters, banners and 10 new overlays.

Do it right and you can make it look like Mickey Mouse is at lunch with you, or Minnie is dancing at your party. It’s easily done: place the overlay icon on the video you’ve shot and, well, that’s it. The software will add the animation as you play it back.

Sure, the presence of animated Disney characters may seem like a confirmation that Clips works especially well for younger users, the Snapchat kids whose business Apple was drawn to in the first place with Clips. But it’s infectiously attractive to us older users, too.

Live Titles has been simply but effectively updated, too. This is the feature which has been present since day one, where whatever you speak is transcribed in real time. And it’s been transformed with the simple addition of a button to make editing the text simpler than ever.

This is a free app that’s easy to use and highly enjoyable. I mean, I slightly wish Donald Duck was available without him being in a red-hot temper (it’s just a bit stereotypical for the old boy) and regular readers of my writing will know that I very much wish that the Toy Story characters included Bullseye, but these are small disappointments in a great fun app.

The Kingsman: The Golden Circle Red Band Trailer!

20th Century Fox has released the new Kingsman: The Golden Circle Red Band trailer, which you can watch in the player below!

Stars Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges and Pedro Pascal will be joined by screenwriter Jane Goldman and Kingsman co-creator and Comic-Con legend Dave Gibbons for the 20th Century Fox panel in Hall H on Thursday July 20th starting at 11 AM PT.

Kingsman: The Secret Service introduced the world to Kingsman – an independent, international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion, whose ultimate goal is to keep the world safe. In Kingsman: The Golden Circle, our heroes face a new challenge. When their headquarters are destroyed and the world is held hostage, their journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy organization in the US called Statesman, dating back to the day they were both founded. In a new adventure that tests their agents’ strength and wits to the limit, these two elite secret organizations band together to defeat a ruthless common enemy, in order to save the world, something that’s becoming a bit of a habit for Eggsy…

Directed by Matthew Vaughn from a script by Jane Goldman and Vaughn, and based on the comic book The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, Kingsman: The Golden Circle stars Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Halle Berry with Sir Elton John, and Channing Tatum, and Jeff Bridges. It will arrive in theaters on September 22.

Eighth person in Trump team meeting linked to money laundering investigation

A Government Accountability Office report published in 2000 details how companies in the US set up bank accounts that came under investigation for money laundering -- and it involved Ike Kaveladze, the eighth person who has now been identified as attending the June 9, 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr., his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer.

The GAO report published in October 2000 outlined how companies opened 236 accounts at two banks through which more than $1.4 billion was deposited between 1991 and 2000. It found the accounts had been opened for corporations tied to Russian brokers. The GAO did not name Kaveladze in the report.

According to a November 2000 report in the New York Times, Kaveladze opened the accounts. He told the Times at the time that the GAO investigation was a "witch hunt" and denied he engaged in any wrongdoing. He was never charged with any crimes.

In a statement posted to his Facebook page on Tuesday night, former Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan said Kaveladze established companies and set up bank accounts that came under congressional investigation for possible money laundering.

Levin said that while serving as the senior Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, he learned in the year 2000 that Kaveladze, the eighth person identified as being present at the meeting at Trump Tower, established "some 2,000" US corporations and bank accounts on "behalf of people in Russia."

"The owners of those accounts then moved some $1.4 billion through those accounts," he wrote in the post. "Kaveladze claimed he did all this without knowing for whom he was doing it."

He called Kaveladze the "poster child of this practice."

In a statement posted to his Facebook page on Tuesday night, former Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan said Kaveladze established companies and set up bank accounts that came under congressional investigation for possible money laundering.

Levin said that while serving as the senior Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, he learned in the year 2000 that Kaveladze, the eighth person identified as being present at the meeting at Trump Tower, established "some 2,000" US corporations and bank accounts on "behalf of people in Russia."

"The owners of those accounts then moved some $1.4 billion through those accounts," he wrote in the post. "Kaveladze claimed he did all this without knowing for whom he was doing it."

He called Kaveladze the "poster child of this practice."

Kaveladze is a senior vice president at Crocus Group, the real estate development company run by Azerbaijani-Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, according to Kaveladze's LinkedIn. The June 9, 2016 meeting was set up by Rob Goldstone, who acts as a publicist for Agalarov's son, a musician.

Kaveladze's identity was confirmed by Balber.

His personal website says he "holds responsibility for multiple elements of the company's Russian development project."

Balber said Kaveladze is a long-time US citizen who speaks fluent Russian and has "never had any engagement with the Russian government in any capacity."

Hill investigators, Trump staff look to Facebook for critical answers

Top Democrats on the House and Senate Russia investigations and a top digital staffer from the campaign of President Donald Trump split sharply on whether the campaign colluded with Russia, but many agree that Facebook holds the answers investigators are looking for and they want the social media giant to give up the goods.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, met with Facebook officials in California more than a month ago as part of his committee's investigation into potential collusion or election interference, and he's convinced the company can explain whether anyone from the Trump campaign helped Russians boost fake news articles targeting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Warner is testing the theory popular among Democratic operatives that Russia was behind spikes in fake news that were anti-Clinton and that Russia had help targeting those articles from US political operatives.

"If the Russians know, how are the Russians smart enough to target in areas where the Democrats weren't knowledgeable enough? I don't feel like I have run that to ground yet," Warner told CNN.

"There are two questions. One is: Was there coordination or collusion between the campaigns and these technology tools, which overwhelmed the search engine tools so that certain stories popped up at the top of your newsfeed. The second is, on a broader basis going forward: How do we prevent this from happening again?" Warner said.

Likewise, House investigators plan to interview former Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscale as part of their probe. A Democratic committee source said they want to know whether Parscale or anyone else from the campaign helped guide Russian targeting of fake news stories.

Parscale, who announced last week he would testify before the House, and other Trump campaign digital staff have denied this allegation, saying they are unaware of any Russian activity.

Trump's digital staff have said the best way to clear their names is for Facebook to testify.

A digital staffer who worked with the Trump campaign, Gary Coby, said Facebook would know exactly what the Trump campaign was doing -- and that the campaign was not coordinating with Russian operatives -- because Facebook staff worked side by side with the Trump digital campaign staff.

But both the Democrats and Trump's digital staff are likely to face a tough battle trying to get answers from Facebook, which has previously fought government requests citing personal privacy and free speech concerns.

"We've been in touch with a number of government officials, including Sen. Warner, who are looking into the 2016 US Presidential election," a Facebook spokesman told CNN. "We will continue to cooperate with officials as their investigations continue. As we have said, we have seen no evidence that Russian actors bought ads on Facebook in connection with the election," a reference to a line of inquiry Warner is investigating.

At the core of Warner's questioning is a theory among Democratic operatives and former top-level Clinton campaign staff that Russia had help from domestic political operatives to micro-target fake news articles. No evidence has been uncovered to prove that theory.

Last month, Senate intelligence staff interviewed Brett Horvath, a social media technology expert who argues it's possible that Russian operatives got political data that could then be used for successfully micro-targeting swing voters on Facebook.

"Facebook has all the data that could prove this is happening or not happening, that's the starting point," Horvath, a veteran Democratic political operative, told CNN.

"The tech companies, the vendors as we call them, all had people assigned to help us. Google, Twitter and Facebook," said Coby, who was working with the Trump campaign as part of the Republican National Committee's support team.

"Since we were spending so much with Facebook we worked with the Facebook team the most," Coby said. "We were starting from scratch and welcomed all the help we could get."

Another Trump campaign digital staffer said that there is no evidence to prove the theory popular among Democrats, but said that only Facebook can answer three critical questions: were the same databases used by the Trump campaign and Russian operatives to coordinate targeting of voters; was money used to promote pro-Trump posts, and, if so, how much was spent and by whom; and will Facebook reveal if bots were successfully used to push fake news posts?

"Those three questions answer everything," the second Trump campaign staffer said.

But Facebook has had some rocky battles with the members of the Senate intelligence committee in the past. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Californian who at that point was the top Democrat on the committee, fought Facebook in 2015 to try and force the company to report suspected terrorist activity to law enforcement.

"They told us to pound sand," Burr said of the intelligence committee's efforts on ISIS recruiting posts. Facebook argued that it would infringe on privacy and free speech rights of its users, but it also said Facebook "Shares the government's goal of keeping terrorist content off our site."

Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees have been generally dismissive of most Democratic theories -- but on the Senate side, a few have shown interest in the proliferation of fake news. In a May hearing, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio expressed concerns about the explosion of fake news in general and wanted answers on how it spread.

In the immediate wake of the election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was dismissive of the impact of fake news, but has since supported efforts to counter fake news. In the French elections, Facebook took down 30,000 fake accounts.

And Facebook's own internal review by its security team, released earlier this year, determined that "malicious actors" created fake accounts on their platform to spread misinformation during the campaign. But it also pointedly did not name who was responsible for the fake news posts.

Asked what he would do if Facebook does not have the detailed information on fake news, Warner said he wasn't sure.

"That's a great question and I don't have the answer to that," he said. "I've got a lot more questions to get answered."