A US court denied a bid to block the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday turned down an emergency challenge aimed at keeping under wraps the report expected to detail unflattering revelations about Mr Trump’s failed effort to cling to power in the election he lost to President Joe Biden.
A separate volume of the same special counsel report — related to Mr Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate — will not become public while the case against two co-defendants of the president-elect remains pending, the Justice Department has said.
Even with the appeals court ruling, though, the election interference report will not immediately be released, and there is no guarantee it will be as more legal wrangling is expected.
The defendants may now ask Ms Cannon to rule on the merits of their request to block the report, which she did not do earlier when she granted their emergency motion.
They could also conceivably ask the conservative-dominated Supreme Court to intervene.
A Trump spokesperson called Mr Smith’s report an “unconstitutional, one-sided, falsehood-ridden screed”.
“It is time for Joe Biden and Merrick Garland to do the right thing and put a final stop to the political weaponization of our Justice system,” spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement after the ruling.
The two-volume report is expected to detail findings and explain charging decisions in Mr Smith’s two investigations, though the prospect for significant new information is unclear given the extensive details already disclosed in separate indictments against Mr Trump.
Mr Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Mr Trump’s presidential election victory, citing Justice Department policy that prohibits the federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.
Mr Smith’s appeal of the dismissal of charges against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who were charged alongside Mr Trump with obstructing the investigation, is still active, and their lawyers argued this week that the release of a report while proceedings were pending would be prejudicial and unfair.
The Justice Department’s decision to withhold the classified documents section of the report, for now, lessens the likelihood it will ever be seen by the public, given that the Trump Justice Department almost certainly will not release it even after the case against Mr Nauta and Mr De Oliveira is resolved.
The election interference case was significantly narrowed by a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
The court ruled then for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, all but ending prospects Mr Trump could be tried before the November election.
Justice Department regulations call for special counsels appointed by the attorney general to submit a confidential report at the conclusion of their investigations.
It is then up to the attorney general to decide what to make public.
Attorney general Merrick Garland has made public in their entirety the reports produced by special counsels who operated under his watch, including Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information and John Durham’s report on the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference.
