Judge temporarily blocks release of special counsel report on Trump cases amid simmering court fight

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on investigations into Donald Trump as an appeals court weighs a challenge to the disclosure of a much-anticipated document just days before the president-elect reclaims office.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon may represent a short-lived victory for Trump but it’s nonetheless the latest instance of the Trump-appointed jurist taking action in the Republican’s favor. The halt came in response to an emergency request Monday night by defense lawyers to block the release of a report that they said would be one-sided and prejudicial. Smith’s team is expected to respond later Tuesday.

Trump responded to Cannon’s order by complaining anew about Smith’s investigation and saying, “It was a fake case against a political opponent.”

It was not clear what the Justice Department, which has its own guidelines governing special counsels, intended to do following Cannon’s order, which barred the release of the report until three days after the matter is resolved by the Atlanta -based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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The two-volume report is expected to describe charging decisions made in separate investigations by Smith into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Smith pledged earlier in the day that at least the volume on the documents investigation would not be made public by the Justice Department until 10 a.m. on Friday at the earliest.

Trump was charged alongside two codefendants in the classified documents case, which was dismissed in July by Cannon, who concluded that Smith’s appointment was illegal. Trump was also charged in an election interference case that was significantly narrowed by a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump’s presidential victory, citing Justice Department policy that prohibits the federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.

Lawyers for Trump, including Todd Blanche, who was picked by Trump to serve as his deputy attorney general, urged Merrick Garland in a letter made public late Monday to block the release of the report and to remove Smith from his position “promptly” — or else defer the release of the report to the incoming attorney general.

Using language that mimicked Trump’s own 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 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 was attached in an exhibit to an emergency request filed late Monday in federal court by lawyers for Trump’s codefendants in the documents case, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira. They asked Cannon to block the report’s release, noting that Smith’s appeal of her dismissal of charges against the men is still pending and that the disclosure of pejorative information about them will be prejudicial.

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 pertaining to the classified documents investigation would not be made public before 10 a.m. Friday. It is presumed that both volumes of Smith’s report would be released simultaneously.

Justice Department regulations call for special counsels appointed by the attorney general to submit a confidential report at the conclusion of their investigations.

Garland has so far made public in their entirety the reports produced by special counsels who operated under his watch, including Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information and John Durham’s report on the FBI’s Russian election interference investigation.