Judge Aileen Cannon has slapped down an attempt to block special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case.
That will effectively make Smith’s summation of the failed criminal investigation available to the public. The dissemination of Trump’s classified documents case will be set to a hearing, per Cannon’s Monday memo.
In a filing last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland outlined his intentions to publicize the memo, which constitutes “volume one” of Smith’s report. But Garland never intended to make the so-called second volume on Trump’s classified documents case public, instead planning to hand the report to the chair and ranking member of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
Cannon had initially ordered on January 7 that the Justice Department would not be allowed to release Smith’s final report on his two federal criminal investigations into the president-elect.
Cannon’s ruling stated that Garland, the Department of Justice, Smith, and “all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals” could not publish any part of the report until three days after the Eleventh Circuit ruled on the case.
The decision was a score for two of Trump’s co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who argued that the release of the reports would cause “irreparable prejudice to defendants’ criminal proceedings.”
But the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Cannon’s decision last week, leaving Cannon with little option but to rescind her order.
The first volume of Smith’s report will likely become public after Cannon’s initial temporary injunction expires at midnight—unless the Eleventh Circuit intervenes again.
Smith concluded his investigations shortly after Trump won the November election. He resigned from the Justice Department last week.
This story has been updated.
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