Washington (AP) As an appeals court considers a challenge to the release of a highly anticipated document just days before the president-elect retakes office, a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on investigations into Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision may be a temporary win for Trump, but it is the most recent time the Trump-appointed judge has ruled in the Republican’s favor. The delay followed defense attorneys’ urgent appeal on Monday night to prevent the publication of a report they claimed would be biased and one-sided. Smith, who was born in Central New York, and his group are anticipated to reply later on Tuesday.
In response to Cannon’s directive, Trump once again expressed dissatisfaction with Smith’s probe, claiming that it was a fabricated case against a political rival.
Following Cannon’s decision, which prohibited the report’s dissemination until three days after the case was decided by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, it was unclear what the Justice Department, which has its own rules controlling special counsels, planned to do.
Smith’s separate investigations into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the lead-up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, are expected to be covered in the two-volume report. Earlier in the day, Smith promised that the Justice Department would not release the volume of materials under investigation until at least 10 a.m. on Friday.
The case involving the confidential materials, in which Trump was accused along with two codefendants, was dropped by Cannon in July when he determined that Smith’s appointment was unlawful. A Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity severely reduced the scope of the election meddling case in which Trump was also indicted.
Citing Justice Department precedent that forbids federal charges of sitting presidents, Smith’s team dropped both cases in November following Trump’s election triumph.
In a letter made public late Monday, Trump’s attorneys, including Todd Blanche, who was appointed by Trump as his deputy attorney general, urged Merrick Garland to either prevent the report’s release and fire Smith immediately or postpone its release until the next attorney general.
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, Blanche told Garland, using language that mimicked Trump’s own attacks on Smith and his work. The purpose of the report was to justify the enormous amounts of taxpayer money that Smith unconstitutionally spent on his dismissed and failed cases and to politically harm President Trump.
The letter was included as an exhibit in an emergency request that attorneys for Trump’s codefendants in the papers lawsuit, Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira and Trump valet Walt Nauta, submitted late Monday in federal court. Noting that Smith’s appeal of her dismissal of charges against the men is still underway and that the dissemination of negative material about them will be prejudicial, they requested Cannon to prevent the release of the report.
Smith’s team responded to that request in a two-page filing early on Tuesday, stating that the volume related to the inquiry of classified materials would not be made public before 10 a.m. Friday and that it planned to deliver its report to Garland by the afternoon. It is assumed that Smith’s report would be published in two volumes at the same time.
At the end of their investigations, special counsels designated by the attorney general are required by Justice Department regulations to provide a secret report.
To date, Garland has released all of the reports from special counsels working under his direction, such as Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified material and John Durham’s report on the FBI’s investigation into Russian election meddling.
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