A federal judge in Florida has cleared the way for the release as early as Tuesday of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigation into alleged election interference by President-elect
Donald Trump.
Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
In an order Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon said the Justice Department could proceed with plans to make public Smith’s findings detailing Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
But she barred the government from releasing — even to select members of Congress — a separate volume detailing Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of government efforts to retrieve them.
Two of Trump’s former co-defendants in the classified documents case — longtime employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — have said they could be unfairly prejudiced if that part of Smith’s report is made public. Cannon scheduled a hearing Friday to hear their concerns and said she would decide the fate of the classified documents volume after that.
Any part of her order could be immediately appealed by Trump, his co-defendants or the Justice Department.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has
said he intends to make public the first volume of Smith’s report, on the election-interference case, but would share the classified documents findings only with leaders of certain congressional committees to protect Nauta and De Oliveira while litigation in their case continues.
Time is running out for Garland to execute that plan before Trump takes office and his administration assumes control of the Justice Department next Monday.
Skip to end of carousel
Under Justice Department regulations, special counsels must submit a final report to the attorney general at the conclusion of their investigations, detailing their findings and decision-making process. The attorney general is required to give that report to Congress and to decide whether it should be made public. Smith,
who resigned his post Friday, submitted the two-volume summary of his findings in both investigations to Garland last week.
Neither case went to trial, and Smith’s report is expected to provide the fullest possible accounting of the evidence gathered by investigators and the strategy prosecutors would have used in court.
Smith asked a judge to
dismiss the election-interference charges after Trump’s election victory in November, saying he stood by the facts of the case but recognized that Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.
Cannon
tossed the classified documents case in July, ruling that Smith had been unlawfully appointed. After the November election, the Justice Department dismissed Trump from
its appeal of that decision, which is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Nauta and De Oliveira are still parties in the case.
Last week, lawyers for all three men urged federal courts to prevent the Justice Department from releasing the special counsel’s findings on either investigation. Trump’s lawyers maintain that doing so would interfere with the president-elect’s orderly transition. Attorneys for Nauta and De Oliveira say releasing the report would prejudice the public against them if the 11th Circuit revives the classified-documents indictment and they are put on trial.
www.kcrg.com
