An Austrian court has convicted a man of planning to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna nearly two years ago. The Austria Press Agency reports that the state court in Wiener Neustadt found the 21-year-old defendant, an Austrian citizen, guilty on charges including those related to the concert. His defense attorney said he admitted to the charges related to the concert plot during the opening day of the trial last month. The concert plot was thwarted, but Austrian authorities still canceled Swift’s three performances in August 2024. The defendant apologized in his final words to the court ahead of the verdict.

The Trump administration has quietly instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid pursuing criminal investigations into Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, a longtime target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. That's according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials. It's the latest sign of warming relations between the White House and the oil-rich nation. It’s unclear whether prosecutors had implicated Rodriguez in any crimes or whether investigators were moving toward an indictment. A Justice Department spokesperson said in an email “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.”

The prosecution of five people in the drug death of actor Matthew Perry ended Wednesday with the sentencing of the personal assistant of the “Friends” star. Sixty-year-old Kenneth Iwamasa was at Perry's side in the final weeks of his life. Perry had been taking ketamine legally through his doctor, but about a month before his death began illegally seeking more. He found a doctor willing to provide it off the books, and a street dealer who gave him even more. On the last day of his life, Perry received about half a dozen injections. Iwamasa found him dead in the Jacuzzi of the home they shared.

Matthew Perry's personal assistant has been sentenced to three years and five months in prison for his role in the drug death of the “Friends” star. Sixty-year-old Kenneth Iwamasa received the sentence in a Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday. Iwamasa The assistant was at Perry’s side through the final days of his life in 2023. He injected Perry with the fatal dose of ketamine and found him dead in his Jacuzzi. He would eventually become prosecutors’ most important informant. Iwamasa was the last person sentenced of five who pleaded guilty in connection with Perry's death at age 54.

A federal judge has allowed a teenager charged with sexually assaulting and killing his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship to remain free for now. The judge is considering arguments following Wednesday's hearing in Miami. Timothy Hudson, initially charged as a juvenile, was allowed to live with an uncle and be electronically monitored. After the case moved to adult court, prosecutors wanted the 16-year-old in custody. The judge ended Wednesday's hearing without a final decision, saying he wants to talk to the U.S. Marshals Service about detaining Hudson closer to his family. Hudson has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse.

Attorneys for former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon argue in a new court filing that recent examples of grand jury misconduct by the U.S. Department of Justice across the country warrant the release of transcripts from the normally secretive proceedings in his case. Lemon made the new arguments in a court filing Wednesday. Lemon pleaded not guilty in February to federal civil rights charges, following a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor. Lemon’s attorneys argue that “the past 15 months have seen an unprecedented and growing distrust in the Justice Department’s use of the grand jury process.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center says a Justice Department indictment against the group is part of a “top-down” campaign of retribution against President Donald Trump’s perceived political enemies and represents a vindictive prosecution that must be dismissed. That's according to court papers filed Tuesday by the Alabama-based nonprofit. It was indicted in April on fraud and money laundering charges that accuse it of misleading donors by paying informants inside white supremacist and other extremist organizations as a means of obtaining inside information. In a motion seeking to dismiss the indictment, lawyers for the group say the Justice Department rushed to bring a prosecution despite internal doubts about the strength of the evidence.

The Department of Justice is acknowledging it's removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. The department says the information about the prosecutions is “partisan propaganda.” The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the Capitol assault. On that day more than five years ago, hundreds of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

A human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in Tennessee has been dismissed without a trial. Abrego Garcia's mistaken deportation to El Salvador last year became an embarrassment for President Donald Trump’s administration when it was ordered to return him to the U.S. Abrego Garcia claimed the timing of the criminal charges and inflammatory statements about him by top Trump officials demonstrated the prosecution was vindictive. A federal judge in Tennessee on Friday agreed to dismiss the charges. Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years, although he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager.