Ryan Lucas
Ryan Lucas covers the Justice Department for NPR.
He focuses on the national security side of the Justice beat, including counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Lucas also covers a host of other justice issues, including the Trump administration's "tough-on-crime" agenda and anti-trust enforcement.
Before joining NPR, Lucas worked for a decade as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press based in Poland, Egypt and Lebanon. In Poland, he covered the fallout from the revelations about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, he reported on the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and the turmoil that followed. He also covered the Libyan civil war, the Syrian conflict and the rise of the Islamic State. He reported from Iraq during the U.S. occupation and later during the Islamic State takeover of Mosul in 2014.
He also covered intelligence and national security for Congressional Quarterly.
Lucas earned a bachelor's degree from The College of William and Mary, and a master's degree from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
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The Justice Department has asked Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted associate of Jeffrey Epstein, for a meeting as it looks to make new inroads into what had been a closed investigation.
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The 2019 death of disgraced financier and sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein is the source of turmoil in MAGA world. Many in Trump's base are furious over his administration's handling of the Epstein files.
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Conspiracy theories have swirled around disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein since his death in a federal lockup in 2019. On Monday, a department released a memo that reaffirmed previous conclusions.
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U.S. authorities continue to be on alert for any potential threat on U.S. soil stemming from President Trump's decision to bomb Iran.
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The Department of Homeland Security is warning about what it calls a "heightened threat environment" in the U.S. That's amid fears Iran could retaliate for a U.S. attack on its nuclear facilities.
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A former fierce critic of the FBI, Kash Patel is now leading the agency and making drastic changes.
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The decision reverses course on the use of consent decrees to ensure accountability of law enforcement agencies. It comes days before the anniversary of George Floyd's murder by a police officer. -
The Trump administration's effort to reshape the Justice Department's civil rights division and its mission, once the crown jewel of the department, has prompted a mass exodus of attorneys.
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President Trump said he is appointing Fox News host Jeanine Pirro to be acting U.S. attorney in Washington DC. This is after the president pulled his controversial first pick for the job, Ed Martin.
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Critics warn that despite President Trump's call to end weaponization of the DOJ, the department has become more politicized in the president's first three months back in office.
