WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has quickly asked a federal appeals court to overturn a judge’s order blocking it from releasing any portion of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into President-elect Donald Trump.
The emergency motion late Friday is the latest in a court dispute over whether President Trump can release parts of the Smith report before he takes office Jan. 20. The push to release the report before Trump’s inauguration would force the Justice Department to include members of his personal legal team in key leadership roles, and the Trump administration would be in a position to block the report from being made public.
The State Department is expected to release part of a two-volume report in the coming days that focuses on Trump’s efforts to cancel the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The State Department said it would not release a separate book, including one detailing Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left the White House in January 2021. The defendant is pending.
Both investigations resulted in the indictment of Trump, but Smith’s team dismissed both cases in November after Trump was elected. Smith cited the Justice Department’s policy prohibiting federal prosecution of a sitting president.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday denied an emergency defense request to block the release of election interference reports covering Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 election results before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. I did it. The appeals court ordered lower court Judge Eileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, not to release the findings until three days after the issue was resolved by the appeals court.
Lawyers for Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, Trump’s agent Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago estate manager Carlos De Oliveira, asked Cannon to extend a restraining order and halt his release A hearing was requested to be held on the request. of the report.
The Justice Department asked the appeals court late Friday to immediately lift Cannon’s injunction. In addition to temporarily blocking the release of election interference reports, Cannon’s actions also prohibited officials from privately sharing classified dossier reports with House and Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, the filing said.
Cannon’s order was “manifestly wrong,” according to the department’s motion.
“The Attorney General is the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice and is authorized to supervise all officers and employees of the Department,” the Justice Department said. Accordingly, the Attorney General has the authority to decide whether to release investigative reports prepared by subordinates.”
Department of Justice regulations require special prosecutors to write reports at the end of their work, and it is customary for such documents to be made public regardless of the subject matter.
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William Barr, who was Attorney General during Trump’s first term, released a special counsel report investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential links to the Trump campaign.
Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, also released a special counsel report that included findings on Biden’s handling of classified information before he became president.
