Washington — A federal judge in South Florida blocked the Justice Department from giving lawmakers the portion of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report that deals with his investigation into President Trump’s handling of classified documents.
In a 14-page order on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted a request from Mr. Trump’s co-defendants to keep the report from the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Walt Nauta, an aide to Mr. Trump, and Carlos de Oliveira, the former property manager at Mar-a-Lago, asked Cannon to block its release earlier this month.
“Never before has the Department of Justice, prior to the conclusion of criminal proceedings against a defendant — and absent a litigation-specific reason as appropriate in the case itself — sought to disclose outside the Department a report prepared by a Special Counsel containing substantive and voluminous case information. Until now,” she wrote on Tuesday.
Smith, who resigned as special counsel earlier this month, submitted to former Attorney General Merrick Garland a two-volume report on his investigations involving Mr. Trump. The first volume, related to his investigation into the president’s alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of power after the 2020 election, was released to the public days before Mr. Trump was inaugurated.
But Garland said the second volume, about the classified documents case, would not be available to the American people because proceedings involving Nauta and de Oliveira are ongoing. Instead, the attorney general said the report would only be available to the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and only if they agreed not to share information about it.
Nauta and de Oliveira sought to completely shield the full report, arguing its disclosure would unfairly prejudice potential future criminal proceedings against them. Cannon last week cleared the way for the Justice Department to release the first volume, on the 2020 election case, but ordered a hearing on whether the second volume should be available to lawmakers.
