Testifying in a confirmation hearing, Kash Patel, who is nominated to lead the F.B.I., also sought to allay fears about his fitness to serve.

The prospect of legal challenges to President Trump’s purges may be a feature, not a bug, for adherents of sweeping presidential authority.

The early days of the transition have been marked by dismissals and dread.

The White House defied a law that requires giving Congress 30 days’ notice and detailed reasons before removing the watchdog officials.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which the White House has threatened to purge, called for new limits on the list in a report issued on Friday.

Kash Patel, Donald J. Trump’s choice to run the bureau, has made a series of spurious assertions about the Russia, Jan. 6 and classified documents inquiries.

The world’s richest man had been expected to be situated in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, but a West Wing office would give him closer access to President Trump.

The Justice Department now enters a second Trump administration with less authority to pursue a president than it has had in half a century.

Jack Smith wrote that Donald Trump would have been convicted had the case been allowed to proceed and explained why he didn’t pursue charges of incitement of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who dismissed the classified documents case, blocked a volume about that matter from being shown to Congress but allowed the release of a volume about the election case.

The justices, who asked tough questions of both sides, showed skepticism toward arguments by lawyers for TikTok and its users.

But in a court filing, the department indicated that it would release a separate report about Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as soon as possible.

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who had dismissed the documents case in its entirety, temporarily barred Jack Smith from releasing the results of his investigation to the public.