A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report relating to his now-suspended investigations into President-elect Trump’s alleged 2020 election interference and alleged improper retention of classified records.
Trump co-defendants Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira filed an emergency motion to block the reported imminent release of Smith’s final report.
U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Aileen Cannon ruled in favor of Nauta and De Oliveira to ‘prevent irreparable harm.’
Cannon said Smith is ‘temporarily enjoined’ from ‘releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice.’
The order remains in effect until three days after a resolution is announced from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
It is customary for a special counsel to release a final report when his or her work is done, detailing the findings of their investigation and explaining any prosecution or declination decisions they reached as a result of the probe. In Smith’s case, the prosecution decision is immaterial, given Trump’s status as president-elect and longstanding Justice Department policy against bringing criminal charges against a sitting president.
The report would first go to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s office for review, according to standard practice.
Nauta and De Oliveira pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging they conspired to obstruct the FBI investigation into classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Smith was tapped by Garland in 2022 to investigate both the alleged effort by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as Trump’s keeping of allegedly classified documents at his Florida residence.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Cannon, this summer, dismissed Smith’s case against Trump relating to classified records, ruling that he was appointed unlawfully as special counsel.
And in November, federal Judge Tanya Chutkan dropped Smith’s charges against Trump in the 2020 election interference case. Smith also dropped his appeal to Cannon’s ruling in the classified records case.
President-elect Trump, during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday reacted to Cannon’s decision to block Smith’s report.
‘Deranged Jack Smith dropped the lawsuits. He was told to by the DOJ because they had no lawsuit. They lost in court in front of a very strong and a very brilliant judge,’ Trump said, referring to Cannon. ‘So, he wanted to do a report just before I take office probably, so he’ll do a 500-page report and it will be a fake report, just like the investigation–it was a fake investigation.’
Trump added that Smith was ‘thrown off the case in disgrace.’
‘Why should he be allowed to write a fake report? It will only be a fake report,’ Trump said, ‘That’s great news.’
Garland has opted to release the reports from two other special counsels whose investigations concluded during his tenure — publishing both the summary reports submitted by John Durham, who was tapped by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to review the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, as well as the final report from Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney whom he tapped in 2023 to investigate President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
