Judge Clears DOJ Release of Trump 2020 Election Case Report (1)

A federal judge in Florida won’t block US Attorney General Merrick Garland from releasing part of the final report on the federal criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled on Monday that Garland can release the part of the report detailing former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

But Cannon extended an earlier order that barred Garland from sharing the second part of Smith’s report with anyone outside of the Justice Department. That volume related to the investigation into whether Trump illegally held onto classified documents after he left the White House in 2021 and conspired with associates to obstruct efforts to retrieve them by US officials.

Garland had planned to keep the documents report secret from the public, citing pending criminal proceedings, but intended to provide copies to several senior members of Congress. Cannon set a hearing for Jan. 17 — three days before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration — to consider whether to continue to bar Garland from carrying out that plan.

Lawyers for the two former Trump co-defendants who had been fighting the report’s release, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, could seek to immediately appeal Cannon’s decision. Trump has opposed the report’s release, and he would have the power to stop it from being shared with the public as president.

The Justice Department also could challenge Cannon’s order blocking the release of the second volume to members of Congress. The department has a pending appeal of Cannon’s earlier order delaying the report’s release.

Midnight Deadline

Cannon’s previous order barring any release of the report remains in effect until midnight on Monday. The Justice Department could be clear to release the report as soon as Tuesday.

Trump isn’t formally a party to the legal fight but his lawyers wrote to Garland, arguing against making the report public. He also filed a friend-of-court brief. Smith secured indictments against Trump in both cases but dropped those charges after the November election, citing long-standing Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

Lawyers for Nauta and De Oliveira, a spokesperson for Trump and a Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return requests for comment. Smith resigned from the department last week.

Cannon, who was appointed to the south Florida federal bench by Trump, wrote in the latest order that her authority was limited to the classified documents case and the parties in it. The Justice Department told the court that there was nothing in the first volume of the report that related to the documents prosecution. Based on that representation, the judge wrote, there was “insufficient basis” to grant Nauta and De Oliveira’s request.

In a footnote, the judge appeared to take issue with the Justice Department saying that it “believes” volume one didn’t contain information related to the documents case. Cannon wrote that if Justice Department lawyers had “any doubt” about what they told her, they were “reminded of their obligation of full candor to this Court.”

Nauta and De Oliveira have argued that any release of Smith’s report would prejudice their interests while the documents case is still active. Cannon had tossed out the indictment after finding Smith’s appointment and funding were unconstitutional. Prosecutors are appealing that decision.

For the second volume, however, Cannon wrote that allowing even the limited disclosure to congressional leaders “risks irreversibly and substantially impairing the legal rights of Defendants in this criminal proceeding.” Nauta and De Oliveira had argued that the court would lose control over “the flow of information” once the report went to Congress.

A federal appeals court previously refused an emergency request by Nauta and De Oliveira to stop Garland from releasing the report.

(Updated with additional information from the order and background.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net;
Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman

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