Garland plans to release special counsel’s report on Jan. 6 Trump case

Smith’s prosecutors made the disclosure in a answer to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals after Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case made an emergency request to the court to block the report’s release.

Prosecutors explained that Smith’s report was a product of two volumes that corresponded to each of the criminal cases against Trump: the case in Florida related to classified documents and the case in Washington, D.C., related to the Capitol riot on 6 January and the 2020 elections. .

While Smith was forced to end his cases against Trump after the president-elect’s election victory, Trump’s two co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, still face charges. Lawyers for the co-defendants argued that disclosure of the report would be detrimental to them while their case was pending.

Prosecutors disagreed, saying volume one of the special counsel’s report did not address their case at all.

“As already mentioned, the Final Report consists of two volumes. Volume One, the Electoral Case, concerns an unrelated proceeding brought by the Special Prosecutor in Washington, DC, and, consequently, Volume One does not refer to either Nauta or De Oliveira or describe the evidence or charges against them,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors said Garland planned to make volume two available only to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary committees.

Federal regulation requires special counsels to compile a confidential report detailing their work once it is completed, and the attorney general has discretion over whether to make it public.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the classified documents at the lower court level, made a surprise decision Tuesday to temporarily bar Garland from releasing the full report until the 11th Circuit ruled on the matter.

His decision was met with criticism from legal experts who saying she had no jurisdiction to issue such an order. Prosecutors asked the 11th Circuit to quickly clarify that Cannon lacked authority to order a “nationwide injunction” against Garland for a case she did not oversee and to immediately revoke Cannon’s order.

“Let’s hope the 11th Circuit quickly takes up the Justice Department’s motion,” former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg provided in X.

Trump’s defense team, led by his deputy attorney general nominee Todd Blanche, is also fighting to block the report’s release after they were able to review a draft in Washington in recent days. the lawyers wrote in a scathing letter to Garland on Monday that releasing the report days before Trump’s inauguration would create a “media storm of false and unfair criticism” that would interfere with the president-elect’s transition duties.

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They also argued that it would be inappropriate to release any part of the report because it was prepared by Smith, whom they and Cannon considered illegally appointed as special prosecutor.

“The release of any confidential report prepared by this out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor would be nothing more than an illegal political stunt, designed to politically harm President Trump and justify the enormous sums of taxpayer money he “Smith spent unconstitutionally on his failed and dismissed cases,” they wrote.