Washington — A federal judge in South Florida blocked the Justice Department from giving lawmakers the portion of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report that deals with his investigation into President Trump’s handling of classified documents.
In a scathing rebuke of the Justice Department’s proposal, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said in a 14-page order she is granting a request from Mr. Trump’s co-defendants to keep the report from the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Walt Nauta, an aide to Mr. Trump, and Carlos de Oliveira, the former property manager at Mar-a-Lago, asked Cannon to block its release earlier this month.
“Never before has the Department of Justice, prior to the conclusion of criminal proceedings against a defendant — and absent a litigation-specific reason as appropriate in the case itself — sought to disclose outside the Department a report prepared by a Special Counsel containing substantive and voluminous case information. Until now,” she wrote on Tuesday.
Smith, who resigned as special counsel earlier this month, submitted to former Attorney General Merrick Garland a two-volume report on his investigations involving Mr. Trump. The first volume, related to his investigation into the president’s alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of power after the 2020 election, was released to the public days before Mr. Trump was inaugurated.
But Garland said the second volume, about the classified documents case, would not be available to the American people because proceedings involving Nauta and de Oliveira are ongoing. Instead, the attorney general said the report would only be available to the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and only if they agreed not to share information about it.
Nauta and de Oliveira sought to completely shield the full report, arguing its disclosure would unfairly prejudice potential future criminal proceedings against them. Cannon last week cleared the way for the Justice Department to release the first volume, on the 2020 election case, but ordered a hearing on whether the second volume should be available to lawmakers.
She also reviewed that part of the report herself, and said in her order that it contains “detailed and voluminous discovery information” covered by a protective order issued at an earlier stage in the case. Cannon wrote that Garland’s proposal would risk prejudicing the ongoing case.
“The bare wishes of one attorney general with ‘limited time’ in office to comply with a non-existent ‘historical practice’ of releasing special counsel reports in the pendency of criminal proceedings is not a valid reason,” she wrote. “And surely it does not override the obvious constitutional interests of defendants in this action and this court’s duty to protect the integrity of this proceeding.”
The judge, appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, rebuffed the Justice Department’s assertions that there is interest by Congress in the unreleased portion of the report, noting there has been no subpoena for its release and no record of any lawmaker seeking to review it. There is also no pending legislation on the subject, she said.
Cannon wrote that statements by prosecutors about Garland’s desire to disclose the report to the four leaders of the Judiciary Committees “do not reflect well on the department.”
“[T]he Department offers no valid justification for the purportedly urgent desire to release to members of Congress case information in an ongoing criminal proceeding,” she said.
The judge also said that given the “very strong public interest” in the case involving Nauta and de Oliveira, there is a “reasonable likelihood” that review by lawmakers would lead to the public dissemination of all or part of the report involving the classified documents investigation.
In the summer of 2023, Smith brought charges against Mr. Trump, alongside Nauta and de Oliveira, for allegedly holding onto classified documents after leaving office the first time in January 2021 and obstructing the Justice Department’s investigation. The president and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty to all charges.
But last July, Cannon dismissed the indictment on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed special counsel. The former special counsel appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.
After Mr. Trump was elected president last November, Smith asked the appeals court to drop the case against Mr. Trump, citing longstanding Justice Department policy that forbids the prosecution of a sitting president. The 11th Circuit agreed to do so, but the case is moving forward with Nauta and de Oliveira as co-defendants.
