A federal judge has cleared the way for the Justice Department to release the portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is continuing to prohibit DOJ from showing selected lawmakers another part of Smith’s report that covers his probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Cannon ordered a hearing on that issue Friday in her courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has indicated he plans to publicly release the volume of Smith’s report detailing his election-related investigation, which led to grave criminal conspiracy charges against Trump. Cannon’s Monday order means that, barring intervention by a higher court, that volume could become public as soon as Tuesday.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has indicated it will not publicly release the other volume of Smith’s report, on the documents case, because the department is seeking to revive charges in that case against two of Trump’s former co-defendants. The department, though, wants to confidentially share that volume with leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.
Smith charged Trump in both cases in 2023, but dropped the charges against him after the 2024 election. The special counsel prepared a report explaining his conclusions and submitted it to Garland last week before resigning from his post on Friday. Lawyers for Trump and the two co-defendants in the documents case — Trump aides Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — were permitted to review the report in recent weeks, and last week they sought to block the Justice Department from making it public.
It’s unclear whether the part of Smith’s report on the election probe will contain previously unreleased details. Significant evidence has trickled out for two years in Smith’s indictments and court filings. Trump’s lawyers contended in court filings that it contains some new information and casts the president-elect as the leader of a sweeping criminal conspiracy.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on Cannon’s latest order or when officials will release the portion of the report they now have the go-ahead to disclose.
Trump ripped the prospect of a public report, saying on social media Sunday it would be “strictly for political purposes.”
Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the documents charges against Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira last July, ruling that Smith’s appointment as special counsel violated the Constitution. DOJ is appealing that decision to try to reinstate the charges against the two Trump allies.
As soon as Trump takes office, though, he is expected to end the department’s effort to prosecute Nauta and De Oliveira. The two men are accused of helping Trump obstruct the investigation into the classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.
Last week, Nauta and De Oliveira urged Cannon to prevent Smith from releasing his entire report, arguing that it would undermine their right to a fair trial.
Cannon’s five-page order Monday concludes that the portion of Smith’s report about the storage and handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has the potential to impact Nauta and De Oliveira, if the charges against them are reinstated.
Releasing that part of the report, “even on a limited basis as promised by the United States, risks irreversibly and substantially impairing the legal rights of Defendants in this criminal proceeding,” the judge wrote. “The Court is not willing to make that gamble on the basis of generalized interest by members of Congress, at least not without full briefing and a hearing on the subject.”
Cannon seemed highly dubious about prosecutors’ claims that the election-related portion of the report had no bearing at all on the Florida case, but she ultimately concluded that she had an “insufficient basis” to continue to block its release.
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