Special counsel Jack Smith revealed Wednesday that Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to make public the portion of Smith’s final report pertaining to President-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 election case.
Prosecutors for Smith made the revelation in a response to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals after Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case made an emergency request to the court to block the report’s release.
Prosecutors explained that Smith’s report was a two-volume product that corresponded to each of the criminal cases against Trump: the case in Florida related to classified documents and the case in Washington, D.C., related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the 2020 election.
While Smith was forced to terminate his cases against Trump after the president-elect’s election victory, Trump’s two co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, still face charges. The co-defendants’ attorneys argued that the report’s release would be prejudicial to them while their case was pending.
Prosecutors disagreed, saying volume one of the special counsel report did not pertain to their case at all.
“As discussed, the Final Report comprises two volumes. Volume One, the Election Case, concerns an unrelated prosecution brought by the Special Counsel in Washington, D.C and, accordingly, Volume One does not refer to either Nauta or De Oliveira or describe the evidence or charges against them,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors said Garland planned to make volume two available only to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary committees.
Federal regulation requires special counsels to compile a confidential report detailing their work once they conclude it, and the attorney general has discretion over whether to release it to the public.
Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the classified documents at the lower-court level, made a surprise decision Tuesday to temporarily prohibit Garland from releasing the entire report until the 11th Circuit ruled on the matter.
Her decision was met with criticism from legal experts who said she did not have jurisdiction to issue such an order. Prosecutors asked the 11th Circuit to quickly clarify that Cannon lacked authority to order a “nationwide injunction” against Garland about a case she did not oversee and to immediately reverse Cannon’s order.
“Expect 11th Circuit to grant DOJ’s motion swiftly,” former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg predicted on X.
Trump’s defense team, led by his deputy attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche, is also fighting to block the report’s release after they were able to review a draft of it in Washington in recent days. The attorneys wrote in a scathing letter to Garland on Monday that publishing the report days before Trump’s swearing-in would create a “media storm of false and unfair criticism” that would interfere with the president-elect’s transition duties.
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They also argued it would be improper to publish any portion of the report because it was prepared by Smith, who they and Cannon have deemed unlawfully appointed as special counsel.
“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,” they wrote.
