U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents case, has ruled that the Justice Department can publicly release Volume One of special counsel Jack Smith’s report, covering his election interference case against Trump — but is reserving ruling on whether the DOJ can make Volume Two, on the classified documents case, available to congressional leadership for review.
Cannon has scheduled a hearing on that matter for Jan. 17, three days before Trump’s inauguration.
Cannon last week issued an injunction temporarily blocking the release of the entire report — both the first volume on the Jan. 6 case and the second volume on the classified documents case — as the Justice Department appeared poised to publicly release the report. Attorney General Merrick Garland had vowed to release the classified documents volume to top members of Congress and to publicly release the election interference volume.
Trump’s former co-defendants in his classified documents case, longtime aide Walt Nauta and staffer Carlos De Oliveira, had sought to block the release of both reports, but the DOJ attested in a filing over the weekend that Volume One has has no bearing on the evidence or charges related Nauta and De Oliveira in their ongoing case.
In a filing overnight, prior to Cannon’s ruling, lawyers for Nauta and De Oliveira again asked Cannon to extend her order blocking the release of Smith’s entire final report and to hold a hearing about permanently prohibiting the report’s release.
“The Government, driven by political priorities that have no place in a criminal trial setting, seeks to strong-arm its way through this orderly process and has repeatedly failed to abide by established rules and procedure,” the lawyers wrote.