Garland Prepares To Release Jack Smith’s Report On 2020 Election Subversion Case Against Trump

Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to publicly release special counsel Jack Smith’s final report detailing evidence that Donald Trump criminally conspired to subvert the 2020 election and disenfranchise millions of voters.

But Garland will withhold from public release a second volume of the report describing Smith’s second case against Trump for amassing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021.

The Justice Department revealed Garland’s decision Wednesday morning in a court filing opposing Trump’s effort to block Smith from releasing his final report altogether, “since the President-elect is no longer a defendant in any Special Counsel matter.” Both cases against Trump were dismissed after he won election to a second term in November, with prosecutors citing long standing DOJ policies against prosecuting a sitting president.

The decision to withhold the second volume of the report suggests it will likely fall to Trump’s Justice Department — which will inherit the case against Trump’s co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — to make a final determination. Though Trump is widely expected to end the ongoing prosecution of his former co-defendants, and has opposed the release of the final report, it will present a tricky calculus for the incoming president. Trump welcomed the public release of previous special counsel reports, including special counsel Robert Hur’s devastating assessment of President Joe Biden.

The Justice Department indicated that it plans instead to make a redacted version of the classified documents report available to leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees, so long as the lawmakers pledge not to release details publicly.

The prosecutors’ filing came in response to an effort by Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira to block Smith from releasing any part of his final report. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing the classified documents case, on Tuesday agreed to temporarily block Smith from releasing his report until three days after a final decision by the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the filing, prosecutors asked the 11th Circuit to overturn Cannon’s order, which appears to block the release of any portion of the entire report for the time being. Cannon threw out the case against all three defendants in July, saying Garland’s initial appointment of Smith was invalid. DOJ was appealing that decision when Trump won reelection.

The Justice Department also revealed that Smith formally submitted his report to Garland Tuesday night and recommended that Garland refrain from publicly releasing the volume pertaining to Nauta and De Oliveira’s ongoing prosecution. In addition, Smith indicated that both volumes of the report “minimize the identification of witnesses and co-conspirators.”