The filing from the department follows a judge’s weekend order indicating that she was inclined to grant the Trump legal team’s request for a special master who would oversee the review of documents taken during the Aug. 8 search of the Mar-a-Lago estate. 

The directive from U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart came hours after federal law enforcement officials submitted under seal the portions of the affidavit that they want to keep secret as their investigation moves forward. The judge set a deadline of noon Friday for a redacted, or blacked-out, version of the document.

Thursday’s prime-time hearing will open with eyewitness testimony from the first police officer pummeled in the mob riot and from a documentary filmmaker tracking the extremist Proud Boys, who prepared to fight for Trump immediately after the election, and led the storming of the Capitol.

The charges against members of the angry pro-Trump mob range from low-level misdemeanors for those who only entered the Capitol to felony seditious conspiracy charges against far-right extremists. It’s the largest prosecution in the history of the Justice Department.

The frustration, anger and questions about the response from police grew deeper on Friday after authorities revealed that despite repeated 911 calls from students and teachers, the school district’s police chief had told more than a dozen officers to wait in a school hallway. 

The first trial for one of the hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions begins this week, with jury selection starting Monday in the case against Guy Wesley Reffitt. The trial may be a bellwether for many other Capitol riot cases.

The Justice Department is launching an effort in Chicago and four other U.S. cities to reduce spiking gun violence by addressing illegal trafficking and prosecuting offenses that help put guns in the hands of criminals.

The Justice Department said Saturday that it no longer will secretly obtain reporters’ records during leak investigations, a policy shift that abandons a practice decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.

The Chicago Police Department has been operating under a consent decree since 2019. The order, which was prompted by the 2014 police murder of Laquan McDonald, is the first consent decree the department has faced. But it’s not the first attempt at police reform in Chicago.

Community activists and lawyers engaged in efforts to reform the Chicago Police Department have blasted Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPD leadership for failing to move quickly on implementation of a court-mandated consent decree that is supposed to ensure change.

Nearly one-third of federal correctional officer jobs in the United States are vacant, forcing prisons to use cooks, teachers, nurses and other workers to guard inmates.

The Justice Department is sending a strong message about its priorities these days. In just over the past two weeks, it has opened investigations of police in Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis.

Federal agents raided Rudy Giuliani’s Manhattan home and office Wednesday, seizing computers and cellphones in a major escalation of the Justice Department’s investigation into the business dealings of former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.

Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison agreed as part of a deferred prosecution agreement last July to pay a $200 million fine for its role in a bribery scheme involving then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The Illinois case share similarities with what federal authorities have said occurred in Ohio.

Latino lawyers and community leaders on Tuesday will ask the Department of Justice to investigate the fatal shooting of a 13-year-old boy by a Chicago police officer. 

The DOJ says the city is required to install accessible pedestrian signals that give audio or tactile cues when it’s safe to cross the street. According to the suit, Chicago has just 15 of those signals out of 2,700 crosswalks with visual signals.