2025-01-13 18:06:00
A federal judge said Monday that the Justice Department can release special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, is latest back and forth in a court dispute over the report from the special counsel who prosecuted Trump in two cases the Justice Department abandoned in November.
Cannon had earlier temporarily blocked the department from releasing the report. Cannon’s latest order on Monday cleared the way for the release of the volume on Trump’s 2020 election interference case.
She set a hearing for Friday on whether the department can release to lawmakers the volume on Trump’s classified documents case. The department has said it will not publicly disclose that volume as long as criminal proceedings against two of Trump’s co-defendants remain pending.
Meanwhile, special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the Justice Department after submitting his investigative report on Trump.
The department disclosed Smith’s departure in a court filing Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated , follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions against Trump that were withdrawn following Trump’s White House win in November.
At issue now is the fate of a two-volume report that Smith and his team had prepared about their twin investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
he Justice Department had been expected to make the document public in the final days of the Biden administration, but the Trump-appointed judge who presided over the classified documents case granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt its release. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in that case, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had argued that the release of the report would be unfairly prejudicial, an argument that the Trump legal team joined in.
