A federal judge has banned the Justice Department from showing certain lawmakers parts of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the classified documents case against Donald Trump.
In a 14-page order, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, said there is no legal basis for the department to confidentially share the report with the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
Cannon’s ruling could make it easier for the Trump administration to bury the report, which details Smith’s investigation into the classified documents Trump kept at his Mar-a-Lago home after his first term, and his alleged attempt to hinder attempts to retrieve them.
Some details of that criminal investigation have emerged in court filings over the past two years, but the judge made clear that Smith’s report is packed with new revelations about the now-defunct case against Trump.
“Much of this information has not been made public in the lawsuits,” Cannon wrote. “It contains numerous references … to interview transcripts, search warrant materials, business documents, toll records, video footage.”
In the final days of the Biden administration, the Justice Department wanted to show the report to the small group of lawmakers but not release it publicly. Over the past few decades, special counsel reports on their investigations have been routinely released to both Congress and the public.
Trump, however, opposed any distribution of Smith’s report outside the Justice Department, even under strict conditions intended to prevent lawmakers from leaking its details.
Now that Trump is in control of the department, he is expected to oppose any disclosure of the report, including possible future attempts to make it public under the Freedom of Information Act. Cannon’s statement gives Trump new ammunition to keep this secret, at least in the short term.
A separate part of Smith’s report — detailing his investigation into Trump’s attempt to undermine the 2020 election — was made public last week.
But releasing the part about the documents case was more complicated, because the Justice Department — at least under former Attorney General Merrick Garland — was still trying to dismiss charges in that case against Trump’s two former co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. to breathe new life into.
The charges against Trump himself were dismissed in both of Smith’s cases after Trump won the 2024 election.
In blocking lawmakers from seeing the documents report, Cannon wrote that Congress had not subpoenaed it, requested a confidential investigation or identified legislation that would be helped by accessing Smith’s findings. Although the department has been quick to share the findings of special counsel investigations with lawmakers in recent years, Cannon said that in this case it would result in a “reasonable likelihood” of “public dissemination.”
Cannon has repeatedly criticized Garland and his subordinates, saying their claims about the need to show the report to Congress make no sense.
“These statements do not reflect well on the department,” she wrote about the arguments the department made last week, when Garland was still attorney general. “In short, the Department provides no valid justification for its apparently urgent desire to release case information to Members of Congress in an ongoing criminal proceeding.”
It is unclear how long Cannon’s block on the release of the report will remain in effect. Last July, Cannon dismissed the classified documents case that Smith brought against Trump and two co-defendants (both accused of helping Trump to obstruct justice). She concluded that Garland’s appointment of Smith was illegal, even though attorneys general from both parties have used the same or similar mechanisms to appoint special prosecutors in politically sensitive cases.
The Justice Department appealed the dismissal and sought to reinstate charges against all three men. After Trump won the election last November, however, officials dropped the effort to reinstate charges against Trump as they continued to push to revive the case against his two co-defendants.
Trump appointees at the Justice Department are expected to drop that appeal entirely. But abandoning the case against Nauta and De Oliveira could eliminate a key legal reason for keeping the report secret – namely the argument that releasing the report would jeopardize the two men’s ability to get a fair trial could bring.
Cannon’s order is also likely to frustrate efforts to make the report public through FOIA for the time being. She said DOJ cannot distribute the document case portion to anyone until the appeal is over, and she raised the prospect that she will maintain the hold even after the appeal to ensure the report does not include a grand jury. secrets or information subject to attorney-client privilege.
Cannon held arguments on the issue Friday in her courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida. During the hearing, she expressed deep skepticism about the Justice Department’s request to share the report with lawmakers. By delaying her ruling until now, she essentially ran out the clock on the Biden administration’s ability to appeal.