Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed in a court filing that he will release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the 2020 election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump.
The Department of Justice told the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday that Garland plans to give Congress and the public access to Volume One of Smith’s final report. This report includes the claims that Trump illegally tried to change the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Garland will not share Volume Two, which is about the case involving the classified documents against Trump, because two of the defendants in that case are still being tried for crimes. Volume Two will only be available to the chairmen and senior members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. These people will not be able to talk about the report in public.
“This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” Justice Department attorneys said in response to a motion to stop the report from being released.
“It is customary for special counsels to release a final report, detailing the findings of their investigation and explaining any prosecution or declination decisions they reached. In Smith’s case, the prosecution decision is immaterial, given Trump’s status as president-elect and long-standing Justice Department policy against bringing criminal charges against a sitting president,” Fox News reported.
“Smith planned to release his final report sometime this month, as early as the end of this week. He will resign from his position before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. However, Trump co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira filed an emergency motion to block the reported imminent release of Smith’s final report,” the outlet added.
U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Aileen Cannon on Tuesday ruled in favor of Nauta and De Oliveira to “prevent irreparable harm.”
Smith said he’s “temporarily enjoined” against “releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice.”
The order will stay in place until three days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit announces a decision.
Nauta and De Oliveira pleaded not guilty to federal charges that they worked together to stop the FBI from investigating classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Garland asked Smith in 2022 to look into both the claims that Trump and his allies were trying to change the results of the 2020 election and the claims that Trump was keeping secret papers at his home in Florida.
Trump said he wasn’t guilty of everything.
This summer, Cannon threw out Smith’s case against Trump over classified records, saying that he was wrongfully made special counsel.
And in November, federal judge Tanya Chutkan dropped Smith’s charges against Trump in the case of meddling in the 2020 election. Smith also gave up his appeal of Cannon’s decision in the case of the secret records.
Garland chose to release the reports from two other special counsels whose investigations ended during his time in office. He released the summary reports from John Durham, who was hired by Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to look into how the Trump-Russia probe started, and the final report from Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney who was hired by Barr in 2023 to look into how President Biden handled classified documents.
Separately, Special Counsel Jack Smith could face consequences for his actions after Trump takes office.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky said that Smith and other prosecutors will face investigations “because of the huge cost and ultimate failure” of the prosecutions, The Daily Caller reported.
“Whether that yields findings of criminality is unlikely. However, I think it will find that Smith’s novel legal approach was fraught with issues that should have led a reasonable prosecutor to decline prosecution,” he said to the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview. “Smith is already leaving his special counsel post, but I anticipate some of the lawyers working under him will also be forced out of the [Department of Justice] DOJ for engaging in a legally unsound prosecution.”
“There is a lot of evidence that the congressional Jan. 6 committee intentionally avoided evidence beneficial to Trump’s position, and if Smith did the same, his conduct could be grounds for more severe consequences,” he said.
The Heritage Oversight Project said it was preparing a “a model indictment” against Smith.
It said that Smith could be charged for a conspiracy to violate an individual’s civil rights, it also said that there are “other potential avenues as well.”
“Jack Smith and his office must face severe legal, political, and financial consequences for their blatant lawfare and election interference,” Mike Davis, the president off the Article III Project said on X. “This includes a federal criminal probe for conspiracy against rights under 18 U.S.C. § 241.”
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