U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled Tuesday the Department of Justice can’t release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into whether President-elect Donald Trump unlawfully withheld White House documents, after Smith suggested the final report could come out later this week.
Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to members of the media at the US Department of Justice building ... [+]
Smith is set to issue a final report as part of his investigations into Trump and his allies—for allegedly mishandling White House documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election—which the special counsel said in a court filing could come out as soon as this week, should Attorney General Merrick Garland choose to release it.
Trump’s co-defendants in the documents case—whose cases are still ongoing, even as Trump’s charges were dropped—asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, and the higher appeals court hearing the case to block the Justice Department from releasing the report on the documents case, arguing it could harm their ongoing prosecution.
Trump has also separately asked Garland not to make the final report public, or to at least pause its release until after Trump takes office and let his Justice Department decide what do to with the report.
Cannon ruled Tuesday the final report cannot be released outside the Department of Justice until the federal appeals court hearing the documents case rules that it can be, also saying the report can only be issued three days after any appeals court ruling, unless the higher court says otherwise.
Cannon previously dismissed the documents case—ruling Smith was unlawfully appointed—and the charges against Trump aides Walter Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira are now pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, after Smith appealed Cannon’s ruling.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling, and directed Forbes to a filing earlier Tuesday in which Smith told the court that Garland had not yet decided whether to make the report on the documents case public, and that if it was made public, it would not be before Friday at 10 a.m. EST.
If Cannon’s ruling could survive legal scrutiny, if the Justice Department tried to challenge it. Politico notes there are questions about whether the Trump-appointed judge has the jurisdiction to make rulings in the case, given that it’s now out of her hands and with the 11th Circuit. Cannon did not address that issue in her ruling, which Politico notes also came before the Justice Department had a chance to file its response to the request to block the filing.
This story is breaking and will be updated.