Washington, Feb 23 (.) A federal judge on Monday permanently blocked the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report describing President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and allegations that he obstructed government efforts to reclaim them.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted requests from Trump and two of his former co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, to issue an order prohibiting the release of the second volume of Smith’s report. The order bars Attorney General Pam Bondi or her successors from releasing or sharing that portion of the final report, CBS reported.
Cannon lit into Smith for a “brazen stratagem”: for compiling the detailed report even after she ruled in July 2024 that his appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional and dismissed the case against Trump and two co-defendants. The Justice Department had appealed Cannon’s decision but dropped the case altogether after Trump’s election.
Bondi had already determined that the report’s second volume shouldn’t be released to the public, in part because of questions surrounding the legality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.
“Special Counsel Smith, acting without lawful authority, obtained an indictment in this action and initiated proceedings that resulted in a final order of dismissal of all charges. As a result, the former defendants in this case, like any other defendant in this situation, still enjoy the presumption of innocence held sacrosanct in our constitutional order,” Cannon wrote in her decision. “For obvious reasons, the Court need not take actions in contravention of that protection absent a statutory or other lawful directive to do so.”
Cannon, who was appointed to the U.S. district court in South Florida by Trump during his first term, also wrote that the second volume contains “voluminous discovery” that remains subject to a protective order issued during the early stages of the case.
She said that allowing the release of the report would lead to large amounts of material related to the case becoming public.
“Moreover, while it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work, it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial,” Cannon continued.
“The Court strains to find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt, at least not in a situation like this one, where the defendants contested the charges from the outset and still proclaim their innocence.”
Without Cannon’s order, Smith’s report was set to become public on Tuesday. Kendra Wharton, one of Trump’s lawyers, said the judge “properly ruled that the broad disclosure of protected grand jury testimony and discovery materials related to a dismissed criminal case, along with the publication of opinions and unproven accusations by an unconstitutional prosecutor, has no place in the American judicial system.
Smith brought two criminal cases against Trump in 2023. The first stemmed from an alleged effort to subvert the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election, and the second involved the president’s alleged mishandling of sensitive government documents after the end of his first term. Trump denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all charges. Both cases came to an end after Trump won the presidency again. Smith resigned before Trump was sworn in for a second term, but before leaving his post, he submitted a two-volume report detailing his investigations to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. The report quickly became the focus of legal wrangling.
Trump’s two co-defendants in the documents case, Nauta and de Oliveira, attempted to block the release of a portion of Smith’s report involving the investigation into the 2020 election. Their efforts, however, were unsuccessful, and that volume was made public days before Trump’s second inauguration. But the second volume has remained out of the public’s view.
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