A Trump-appointed federal judge’s lingering inaction over a special counsel’s report about President Trump’s retention of classified documents has ensured that it remains hidden, prompting a free-speech group to urge an appeals court to intervene.
Separately on Monday, a judge made public more than 200 pages of files concerning closed-door fights in court over attorney-client privilege during the investigations into the documents case and into Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Together, the developments showed how details of the two investigations that led to indictments of Mr. Trump while he was out of office have remained hidden from public view.
The request by the free-speech group, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, is known as “mandamus” petition, meaning it is pressing a higher court to instruct a lower court to act.
The request’s success is by no means assured because the standard for an appeals court to grant such an order is hard to meet. Essentially, it must find that the right to the relief sought is clear and indisputable and that there is no other way to get it.
But the request spotlights how the Trump-appointed judge who oversaw that case, Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, has sat on a request aimed at trying to make public a report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, on the investigation.
Mr. Smith dropped the investigations into Mr. Trump after the 2024 election because the Justice Department considers sitting presidents temporarily immune from prosecution.
Mr. Smith ultimately produced a two-volume report about his work. The first volume, regarding the election case, became public in January. But the documents volume remains hidden because Judge Cannon imposed an injunction blocking the Justice Department from providing a copy to anyone outside the department.
Judge Cannon, who earlier threw out the case because she ruled the special counsel’s appointment invalid, has left the injunction in place even though its stated rationale no longer exists. She had asserted that the report’s disclosure could undermine the fair-trial rights of two former co-defendants to Mr. Trump if an appeals court overturned her dismissal, but the Trump administration has since dropped the case entirely.
Before issuing the injunction, Judge Cannon had ordered the Justice Department to show the report to her. In February, the Knight First Amendment Institute asked her both to lift that injunction and to post the report on the case docket, citing the public’s constitutional right to see judicial records.
But Judge Cannon has yet to act on that request. Calling that delay “manifestly unreasonable,” the institute asked the appeals court to order her to act.
The continued existence of Judge Cannon’s injunction has also derailed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking the report by American Oversight in Washington, and by The New York Times in New York.
Disclosing the report, the institute argued, “would shed light on the scope and integrity of the special counsel’s investigation and on the character and actions of the then-former and now-current president.”
Separately, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia, James E. Boasberg, made public on Monday material concerning fights over attorney-client privilege during the two grand jury investigations into Mr. Trump.
The Justice Department had curated and partly redacted that material, which includes motions, argument transcripts and rulings after Judge Boasberg, in response to a request by The Times, ordered that they be unsealed.
The broad strokes of the fights had emerged in news reports in 2022 and 2023, but grand -jury secrecy rules normally require keeping official records of such matters confidential unless they are formally acknowledged — as they later were in open court.
Some of the court records were also in a partly redacted trove that had been made public in November after Politico and The Times requested that files related to fights over executive privilege be made public. The new material made visible discussion of attorney-client privilege, too.
For example, on Sept. 28, 2022, the previous chief judge for the District of Columbia, Beryl A. Howell, issued a major, 40-page ruling holding that various associates of Mr. Trump who had invoked a range of privilege claims to avoid testifying in the election investigation had to appear before the grand jury and answer questions.
But the version released last year blacked out her entire discussion of how attorney-client privilege applied to former government lawyers in the Trump White House, spanning Pages 30 to 36 of that opinion. The newly released version makes public her legal analysis.
“As an executive branch attorney,” Judge Howell wrote, a former White House lawyer had “a responsibility and duty to inform the grand jury of information he possesses pertinent to the grand jury’s investigation into” a potential crime. “Accordingly, the former president’s claim of attorney-client privilege fails.”
The newly released files also include an excerpt from a March 20, 2023, hearing before Judge Boasberg, new to the job of chief judge, that was not in the earlier tranche. It adds to the record showing that judges expressed concern about Mr. Trump’s delay tactics.
On March 15, 2023, just before her term as chief ended, Judge Howell had ordered witnesses to turn over materials and testify. A lawyer for a subpoenaed witness and Mr. Trump asked Judge Boasberg for a stay. He extended a deadline for 48 hours but declined to issue the stay.
“There is a premium on moving this case through with expedition,” Judge Boasberg said. “There have been lengthy delays already, which I place at the feet of the former president, not the government. And the fact that there is a special counsel and a desire in the great public interest to move this case along quickly, that favors not staying the matter.”
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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