Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to publicly release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report outlining evidence that Donald Trump criminally conspired to subvert the 2020 election and disenfranchise millions of voters. However, Garland will withhold the second volume of the report, which pertains to Smith’s case against Trump for retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021.
This decision was disclosed by the Justice Department in a court filing on Wednesday, as it opposed Trump’s efforts to block the release of any part of Smith’s final report. The filing clarified that Trump, as the President-elect, is no longer a defendant in any Special Counsel investigation. Both cases against Trump were dismissed following his 2020 election win, with prosecutors citing longstanding DOJ policies against prosecuting a sitting president.
The move to withhold the second volume signals that the decision on whether to release it may fall to Trump’s Justice Department, which will inherit the case against Trump’s co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. Though Trump is widely expected to seek the end of the ongoing prosecution of his former co-defendants and has opposed the report’s release, the decision could present a complicated situation for the incoming president. Trump has previously welcomed the release of other special counsel reports, such as Robert Hur’s damning assessment of President Joe Biden.
The Justice Department also indicated it would provide a redacted version of the classified documents report to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, contingent on lawmakers agreeing not to release the details to the public.
The filing was in response to efforts by Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira to block the release of Smith’s report. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee overseeing the classified documents case, temporarily blocked Smith from releasing the report until three days after a final decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Prosecutors have asked the 11th Circuit to overturn Cannon’s order, which appears to prevent the report’s release altogether for now. The Justice Department is awaiting the circuit court’s ruling before setting a timeline for the release of the 2020 election report.
Additionally, the Justice Department revealed that Smith formally submitted his report to Garland on Tuesday and recommended that Garland refrain from publicly releasing the section related to Nauta and De Oliveira’s ongoing prosecution. Smith also noted that both volumes of the report “minimize the identification of witnesses and co-conspirators.”
