Kash Patel invoked his right not to incriminate himself before a grand jury examining whether Donald Trump mishandled national security secrets.

The messages showed that F.B.I. investigators took normal bureaucratic steps and precautions when opening an extraordinarily sensitive inquiry into Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

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.

Kash Patel’s public comments on the QAnon conspiracy theory suggests he sees its adherents more as an audience to be courted rather than an ideology to follow.

The once and soon-to-be president takes advantage of the blurry lines between appearance and perception, between reputation and reality.

President-elect Donald J. Trump believes he has been wronged by current and former officials, members of the media and more.

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.

Mr. Smith, a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, had signaled that he would step down before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has worked for years to discredit any and all criminal and civil cases against him as nothing more than politically motivated witch hunts.

The judges left in place a lower-court injunction that bars the disclosure of the report for three days, and the Justice Department then appealed it.

The president-elect’s defense lawyers accused the special counsel of unethical and improper behavior in his prosecutions of their client. They could be in senior Justice Department roles within weeks.

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.

Both the Justice Department and the judge who oversaw the case were asked to stop the public release of the report.

In an hourlong news conference at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect delivered a hodgepodge of grievances, complaints and false claims.

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.

The president-elect’s suggestion that he plans to replace the head of the agency comes after her predecessor raised alarms about his handling of presidential records.