Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday temporarily blocked the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his probes of President-elect Donald Trump.
The Florida jurist, who delivered several Trump-friendly rulings in the classified documents case, ordered the Department of Justice to keep the report sealed until an appeals court can assess objections to its release lodged by Trump and two co-defendants.
Cannon said her ruling aimed to “prevent irreparable harm arising from the circumstances…and to permit an orderly and deliberative sequence of events.”
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Justice Department to respond to the emergency motion by Wednesday morning.
Trump complained about Smith’s probes even as he praised Cannon’s ruling after being told of it by a reporter at a press conference.
“It’ll be a fake report just like it was a fake investigation,” he said.
Trump separately lost a bid on Tuesday to block Judge Juan Merchan from sentencing him Friday on 34 felony convictions in the Manhattan hush money case
The motion to keep the Smith report sealed was originally brought by two Trump employees who were charged along with the once-and-future president in the classified documents case. Trump joined the appeal, saying he too wants the report kept secret.
Cannon last year dismissed the documents case on the grounds that Smith was improperly appointed.
Cannon’s ruling appeared to apply to both the portion of the Smith’s report on the documents case or also a separate volume summarizing Smith’s findings in the election interference case, which she played no role in.
The special counsel dropped both cases after Trump won the November election, citing policies barring prosecution of a sitting president.
Smith has prepared a two-volume report on the cases which Attorney General Merrick Garland was expected to publicly release before Trump retakes office on Jan. 20, perhaps as soon as the end of this week.
Trump’s attorneys separately sent a letter to Garland demanding he remove Smith from his post immediately and kill the report, or allow Trump’s incoming attorney general to decide what to do with it.
“No report should be prepared or released, and Smith should be removed, including for even suggesting that course of action given his obvious political motivations and desire to lawlessly undermine the transition,” wrote attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, both of whom have been tapped for top Justice Department posts in the incoming administration.
The Smith report is expected to describe his decisions regarding Trump’s taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate, his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Before Trump’s reelection scuttled the cases, Smith was seeking to convince an appeals court to overrule Cannon’s decision dismissing the documents case, which also accused Trump of obstructing the government’s efforts to get back the top-secret documents.
He was also trying to move forward with the election interference case after the Supreme Court hobbled the prosecution by granting Trump significant immunity for official actions taken while in power.
