By Perry Stein, Jeremy Roebuck · The Washington Post (c) 2025
The federal judge in Florida who dismissed Donald Trump’s indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing the findings of that investigation.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon barred Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting” the report or any drafts or conclusions from it while a federal appeals court in Atlanta weighs an emergency motion from two of the president-elect’s former co-defendants.
The co-defendants said releasing the report would unfairly prejudice them. Their motion cited a letter from Trump’s attorneys that also argued the release of Smith’s findings was not in the public interest and would interfere with his presidency and his presidential transition.
It is not clear that the report on the classified documents probe would have been released before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, even without the order from Cannon, whom Trump appointed to the federal bench during his first term in the White House.
Justice Department regulations say special counsels must submit a report explaining their legal decisions at the conclusion of an investigation, but it’s up to the attorney general whether those findings are made public.
During Garland’s tenure leading the agency, he has indicated he would release any special counsel report that reaches his desk, redacting material that he thinks needs to remain out of public view. But an ongoing appeal in the classified-documents casemeans releasing that portion of Smith’s report could be more complicated, and Smith’s office told the court early Tuesday that Garland might not make it public.
Trump was dismissed from the appeal in the classified documents case after he was elected in November, because Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting sitting presidents. But his co-defendants, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, are still parties in the appeal.
Cannon said her ruling blocking the report’s release would remain in effect until three days after the appeals court issues its decision on whether making the report public would unfairly impact Nauta and De Oliveira, both of whom have worked for Trump for years. She cautioned that her decision should not be read as a ruling on any of the arguments Trump and his former co-defendants had put forth for keeping the report permanently under wraps.
The appellate court ordered the Justice Department to respond to the motion from Nauta and De Oliveira by Wednesday morning.
The flurry of legal filings were the latest effort by the president-elect and his allies to quash the remnants of the four criminal cases he has faced over the past two years.
Also Tuesday, an appellate court judge in Manhattan denied a bid by Trump to delay his sentencing in one of the other criminal cases – his conviction in state court of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchanscheduled the sentencing for Friday, 10 days before Trump’s inauguration. The judge said he will not impose jail time or probation on the president-elect but wants to complete the sentencing process to honor the seriousness of the jury verdict.
Trump’s lawyers had asked the appeals court to put the sentencing on hold while it reviews Merchan’s ruling that Trump was not protected in this case by presidential immunity.
Merchan has repeatedly found that the hush money case was based on personal conduct, not Trump’s official duties, and that the federal immunity doctrine therefore does not apply. Trump’s lawyers argue that a July 1 expanded immunity ruling by the Supreme Court means the falsifying records case in New York was illegally brought. They note that jurors at the trial heard some testimony and saw some evidence that was generated during Trump’s first year in office in 2017.
In the federal cases, Trump’s lawyers have written a letter to Garland arguing against the release of either volume of the special counsel report. The other volume of the report details prosecutors’ findings in their investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“Releasing Smith’s report is obviously not in the public interest – particularly in light of President Trump’s commanding victory in the election and the sensitive nature of the ongoing transition process,” Todd Blanche and John Lauro wrote in the letter, which was included in the emergency motion filed by Nauta and De Oliveira in Florida federal court Monday evening.
The motion cited Cannon’s decision last summer to dismiss the classified documents indictment after she ruled Smith was unlawfully appointed. Thatruling broke with decades of legal precedent involving special or independent counsels, and it is the subject of the ongoing appeal.
“These Defendants will irreparably suffer harm as civilian casualties of the Government’s impermissible and contumacious utilization of political lawfare to include release of the unauthorized Report,” their motion said.
The judge who oversaw the D.C. federal election interference case, Tanya S. Chutkan, has indicated she disagrees with Cannon’s decision and believes Smith was rightfully appointed. Chutkan dismissed the D.C. election interference case at Smith’s request in November, again because of Trump’s election victory.
In asking for Cannon to intervene on the special counsel report, Trump’s co-defendants returned to a judge who had repeatedly expressed skepticism of prosecutors’ decision-making in the classified documents case- and one whose rulings drew criticism from legal experts even prior to her decision to dismiss the case entirely last year.
In 2022, over objections from prosecutors, Cannon granted Trump’s request to have a special master – essentially an extra judge – screen the more than 100 classified documents investigators seized during their court-authorizedsearch of his Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club. She also barred prosecutors from accessing those documents while the review took place, a decision that threatened to significantly delay the timeline of the case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta reversed her decisions on both points.
In their letter to Garland, Blanche and Lauro saidSmith allowed them to review the draft report in person in Washington in recent days, but would not let them useelectronic devices during the review.
They asked Garland to fire Smith and said that if he chooses not to, he should allow Trump’s Justice Department to decide what to do with the completed report. Trump has said he will nominate Blancheto be deputy attorney general in his administration, which means he would be the No. 2 at the agency if he is confirmed.
The letter from him and Lauro cited Cannon’s decision on special counsel appointments, saying that if Smith was unlawfully named, he should not be able to compile a report. They said the report disregards the presumption of innocence and its release would create a storm of negative media attention around Trump, requiring him to defend himself and interfering with his transition to office.
“The release of any confidential report prepared by this out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor would be nothing more than a lawless political stunt, designed to politically harm President Trump and justify the huge sums of taxpayer money Smith unconstitutionally spent on his failed and dismissed cases,” the letter reads.
Smith’s office said in its filing Tuesday that its staff was working to finalize the report. Assistant special counsel James Pearce wrote that when Nauta and De Oliveira filed their motion with Cannon seeking to block the report’s release, “the parties were conferring” but the attorney general had “not yet determined how to handle the report volume pertaining to this case.”
Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to oversee the two federal investigations of the former president, after Trump announced he would again seek the White House. A special counsel has greater independence than a typical prosecutor, though still ultimately reports to the attorney general.
Both cases had been delayed in the appeals courts and were far from reaching a trial when Trump won last year’s election. While much of the evidence against Trump in the two cases was revealed in the indictments and pretrial proceedings, a special counsel report could lay out the strategy the government would have employed against Trump at trial and the full scope of the evidence in the cases.
Before Trump takes office, the Justice Department is also expected to release a report by special counsel David Weiss detailing the investigation of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
A federal jury in Delaware convicted Hunter Biden of gun charges as a result of that investigation, and he separately pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in Los Angeles last year. The president pardoned his son last month.
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Shayna Jacobs in New York contributed to this report.