Trump administration lawyers defended the weekend flights that deported hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members despite a federal judge's order to turn the planes around.

The rare speech at the Justice Department comes as the Trump administration has spent the last several weeks trying to reconfigure the agency, including demoting attorneys who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and firing officials who investigated the president himself.

The Trump administration touted the release of files in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender, on Thursday. But the documents contained no new revelations.

A federal judge has appointed a lead monitor with three decades of experience in corrections to oversee a consent decree meant to address dangerous and unhealthy jail conditions in Georgia's most populous county.

Republicans welcomed Kash Patel's confirmation, seeing him as someone who can fix the FBI's alleged targeting of conservatives in recent years.

The department dropped a case against former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, withdrew from an investigation against Rep. Andy Ogles, and moved to dismiss the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Ed Martin advanced bogus claims about election fraud in swing states in 2020, and he spoke at a boisterous rally in Washington the day before the siege on the Capitol.

An order to dismiss the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams has sent the Justice Department into a crisis. Several top prosecutors resigned rather than obey orders to dismiss the case.

The acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and two top Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., resigned after the case against New York City's mayor war order dropped.

The federal lawsuit accuses those jurisdictions of "making it more difficult for, and deliberately impeding, federal immigration officers' ability to carry out their responsibilities." 

Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have both argued the Justice Department under Biden unfairly targeted conservatives, most notably Trump himself.

Bondi was confirmed by a vote of 54-46, and will now take the reins at the Justice Department at a moment when it is facing questions about the risk of political influence at the department.

Kash Patel, President Trump's pick to run the FBI, answered questions Thursday in a public hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In termination letters sent to more than a dozen officials, acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote that he did not believe they "could be trusted to faithfully implement the President's agenda."

The judge said it was "reasonable" the Justice Department interpreted Trump's Jan. 6 commutations to cover the defendants' prison sentences and wipe away their terms of supervised release.