A United States judge has temporarily blocked Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing a report on his investigation into President-elect Donald Trump for his mishandling of classified documents.
On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who presided over the now-dismissed case against Trump, directed the US Department of Justice not to release the report until a federal appeals court rules on a request from his two former co-defendants.
Those co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, remain the subject of a continuing appeal. They have argued that the report’s release could interfere with their right to a fair hearing.
A criminal indictment in the classified documents case was announced in June 2023, when prosecutors alleged that Trump and Nauta, his aide, defied a federal subpoena to turn over records containing defence intelligence and other sensitive materials after leaving public office.
Prosecutors also accused the two of attempting to conceal the documents and cover up the evidence that they had done so.
De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was charged in August 2023 in an updated indictment, where he was implicated in an alleged conspiracy to delete surveillance footage.
Trump is the first US president ever to face criminal charges. He has since been convicted in a separate criminal case, over falsifying business documents in New York.
The classified documents case, meanwhile, has hit several hurdles since it was first announced.
Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, tossed the case last July, arguing in her decision that the position of “special counsel” had not been congressionally approved.
That ran contrary to years of legal precedent: Special counsels have been commonly approved to provide independent legal counsel in cases where there may otherwise be a conflict of interest.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a member of the administration of President Joe Biden, appointed Smith in 2022 to serve in that role for investigations regarding Trump.
In addition to the classified documents case, Smith has also probed Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. That resulted in a separate criminal indictment in August 2023.
Both federal cases were dropped last November, after Trump won a second term in office. Smith also announced his intention to resign before Trump’s inauguration, at which point the Republican leader will control the Justice Department.
“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith wrote in a legal submission at the time.
Smith’s report is said to contain two volumes: one about the classified documents case and the other about the election interference case. But a spokesperson for Smith’s office declined to comment on Judge Cannon’s order on Monday, barring its release.
Justice Department regulations require Smith to submit a final report to Garland, who has previously pledged to make public all reports from special counsels during his tenure.
Trump applauded Judge Cannon’s decision during a question-and-answer segment at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.
He has long denounced the prosecutions as a politically motivated attempt to block him from returning to power. On Monday, he repeatedly called Smith a “disgrace”.
“He wanted to do a report just before I take office probably, so he’ll do like a 500-page report, and it’ll be a fake report, just like the investigation was a fake investigation,” Trump told reporters, upon learning the news.
“So if they’re not allowed to issue the report, that’s the way it should be. Because he was thrown off the case in disgrace. Why should he be allowed to write a fake report?”
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