Chern-Simons functional under gauge transformations on flat bundles

We describe the effect of a gauge transformation on the Chern-Simons functional in a thorough and unifying manner. We use the assumptions that the structure group is compact and connected and, in particular, that the principal bundle is flat. The Chern-Simons functional we consider is the one defined by choosing a flat reference connection. The most critical step in arriving at the main result is to show both the existence and the uniqueness of a cohomology class on the adjoint bundle such that it is the class of the so-called Maurer-Cartan 3-form when restricted to each fiber.