A federal judge has temporarily blocked the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on investigations into President-elect Donald Trump while an appeals court considers an appeal.
U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon issued the ruling Tuesday, the morning after an emergency motion filed by defense lawyers to block the Justice Department from releasing the report — a move Smith said could come as early as Friday.
The matter is being considered by the Atlanta-based US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
The report is expected to describe charging decisions made in separate investigations conducted by Smith into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 presidential election. , 2021, riots at the US Capitol.
Trump was charged along with two other defendants in the classified documents case, which a Trump-appointed judge overturned in July, concluding that Smith’s appointment was illegal. Trump was also charged in an election interference case whose scope was narrowed significantly under the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.
Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump won the presidency, citing a Justice Department policy barring federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.
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Trump’s lawyers, including Todd Blanche, Trump’s pick to be deputy attorney general, urged Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter published late Monday to block publication of the report and to remove Smith from his position “immediately.” – Or postpone the issuance of the report to the next Attorney General.
Using language that mimicked Trump’s attacks on Smith and his work, Blanche told Garland that “the release of any confidential report prepared by this out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor would be nothing more than a lawless, designed political stunt.” To politically harm President Trump and justify the huge amounts of taxpayer money Smith unconstitutionally spent on his failed and dismissed cases.
The letter was attached to a document with an emergency request filed late Monday in federal court by lawyers for Trump’s defendants in the documents case, Trump’s valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago’s real estate manager Carlos de Oliveira. They asked Cannon to block the release of the report, noting that Smith’s appeal to dismiss charges against the men was still pending and that revealing disparaging information about them would be harmful.
In response to that request, Smith’s team said in a two-page filing early Tuesday that it intended to submit its report to Garland by the afternoon, and that the volume on the investigation into classified documents would not be released before 10 a.m. Friday. Both volumes of the Smith Report are intended to be released simultaneously.
Department of Justice regulations call for special counsels appointed by the Attorney General to submit a confidential report at the conclusion of their investigations.
So far, Garland has released in their entirety reports prepared by special investigators who worked under him, including Robert Hoare’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information and John Durham’s report on the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference.
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