Judge temporarily blocks report on Trump classified-documents probe by special counsel

The federal judge in Florida who dismissed the case against Donald Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing a report detailing the findings of that investigation by special counsel Jack Smith.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon barred Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting” the long-awaited report or any drafts or conclusions from it while a federal appeals court in Atlanta weighs an emergency motion from two of the president-elect’s former co-defendants. The co-defendants said releasing the report would unfairly prejudice them. Their motion cited a letter from Trump’s attorneys which also argued that the release of Smith’s findings was not in the public interest and would interfere with his presidency and his presidential transition.

Earlier Tuesday, Smiths’ office told the court that Garland might not make the classified documents part of the report public. The report is two volumes. One volume details prosecutors’ findings in the classified documents case, and the other focuses on the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Donald Trump’s lawyers have read special counsel Jack Smith’s draft report detailing the findings of his two investigations of the incoming president and are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to fire Smith and block the report’s public release.

It is the latest effort by the president-elect to quash the remnants of the four criminal cases he has faced over the past two years.

Justice Department regulations say special counsels must submit a report explaining their legal decisions at the conclusion of an investigation, though it’s up to the attorney general to decide whether those findings are made public.

During Garland’s tenure leading the agency, he has indicated he would release any special counsel report that reaches his desk, redacting material that he thinks needs to remain out of public view. But an ongoing appeal in one of the two cases against Trump that Smith oversaw means releasing that portion of the report could be more complicated.

In a court filing early Tuesday, Smith said Garland might not make that part of the report public. If the attorney general does release it, Smith said that would not happen before Friday morning at the earliest, giving the court a few days to act.

Friday morning is when Trump is separately scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction in New York state court of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election. His lawyers are also trying to block that sentencing, saying that even though the judge has made clear he will not give Trump jail time or probation, getting sentenced just days before his inauguration would disrupt the presidential transition.

Trump’s lawyers are making similar arguments about the two-volume special counsel report. One volume focuses on Smith’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents after his first term in the White House. The other focuses on Smith’s probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.

“Releasing Smith’s report is obviously not in the public interest - particularly in light of President Trump’s commanding victory in the election and the sensitive nature of the ongoing transition process,” Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro said in a letter to Garland that was included in an emergency motion filed in Florida federal court Monday evening.

The motion was submitted by lawyers for Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s co-defendants in Smith’s classified-document case. They asked U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon to block the release of Smith’s report, citing her decision last summer to dismiss the classified documents indictment after she ruled Smith was unlawfully appointed.

Cannon’s ruling on Smith broke with decades of legal precedent involving special or independent counsels. The Justice Department is appealing, with Nauta and De Oliveira as defendants. Smith dropped Trump from the appeal because he won the November election and Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting sitting presidents.

It is unclear whether Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, would have clear authority to intervene in Garland’s decision on whether to release Smith’s report. But with the litigation against Nauta and De Oliveira ongoing, the co-defendants argued that the report could be detrimental to them and asked Cannon to hold a hearing on the matter.

“These Defendants will irreparably suffer harm as civilian casualties of the Government’s impermissible and contumacious utilization of political lawfare to include release of the unauthorized Report,” their motion said.

The judge who oversaw the D.C. federal election interference case, Tanya S. Chutkan, has indicated she disagrees with Cannon’s decision and believes Smith was rightfully appointed. Chutkan dismissed the D.C. election interference case at Smith’s request in November, again because of Trump’s election victory.

The letter to Garland that was included in the Florida filings shows that Trump’s attorneys are separately appealing to the attorney general not to release either volume of Smith’s report. Blanche - whom Trump has said he would nominate to be deputy attorney general in his administration - and Lauro cited Cannon’s decision in their letter, saying that if Smith is unlawfully appointed, he should not be able to compile a report.

“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 political stunt, designed to politically harm President Trump and justify the huge sums of taxpayer money Smith unconstitutionally spent on his failed and dismissed cases,” the letter reads.

The lawyers told the attorney general that Smith allowed them to review the draft report in person in Washington, but complained that they were prohibited from using electronic devices during the review. They asked Garland to fire Smith and said that if he chooses not to, he should allow Trump’s Justice Department - where Blanche, if confirmed, would hold the No. 2 position - to decide what to do with the completed report.

Blanche and Lauro argued that the report disregards the presumption of innocence and said its release would create a storm of negative media attention around Trump, requiring him to defend himself and interfering with his transition to office.

Smith’s office said in its filing Tuesday that its staff was working to finalize the report. Assistant special counsel James Pearce wrote that when Nauta and De Oliveira filed their motion with Cannon seeking to block the report’s release, “the parties were conferring” but the attorney general had “not yet determined how to handle the report volume pertaining to this case.”

Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to oversee the two federal investigations of the former president, after Trump announced he would again seek the White House. A special counsel has greater independence than a typical prosecutor, though still ultimately reports to the attorney general.

Both cases had been delayed in the appeals courts and were far from reaching a trial when Trump won last year’s election. While much of the evidence against Trump in the two cases was revealed in the indictments and pretrial proceedings, a special counsel report could lay out the strategy the government would have employed against Trump at trial and the full scope of the evidence in the cases.

Before Trump takes office, the Justice Department is also expected to release a report by special counsel David Weiss detailing the investigation of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

A federal jury in Delaware convicted Hunter Biden of gun charges as a result of that investigation, and he separately pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in Los Angeles last year. The president pardoned his son last month.

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Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.