Judge blocks public release of special counsel report on Trump investigation

(CNN) — District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday blocked the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.

Her order prevents Smith and the Justice Department from moving forward with releasing the report until the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals has time to review the emergency motion by Trump’s codefendants to block the report’s release.

The move comes amid a flurry of legal filings Monday night and Tuesday. Lawyers for Trump have reviewed a draft of Smith’s final report related to federal investigations into the president-elect, according to a letter included in court filings from Trump’s former co-defendants Monday night.

In the filings, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira asked Cannon to block the release of the special counsel report, which is expected in the coming days before Trump is sworn in as president for the second time. The two men, who both worked for Trump and have pleaded not guilty to obstruction-related crimes, argued that Smith does not have the authority to release the report because Cannon previously deemed his appointment as special counsel unlawful. (The 11th Circuit is currently considering DOJ’s appeal of that ruling as well).

Cannon was appointed by Trump during his first term in office.

Her brief order blocking the Justice Department on Tuesday does not distinguish between the two volumes said to be in Smith’s report – one dealing with the mishandling of classified documents probe and the other covering the investigation into 2020 election interference. Trump’s lawyers have said that the arguments against publication of the report applied to both volumes, pointing in part to the overlap in evidence.

The filings included the letter from Trump’s attorneys to Attorney General Merrick Garland making similar arguments and stating that they were allowed “to review the two-volume Draft Report in a conference room at Smith’s office between January 3 and January 6, 2025.” The attorneys, two of whom have been selected by Trump for top Justice Department roles in the new administration, asked for advance notice of the report’s release so that they can “take appropriate legal action.”

In the court filings, the defense lawyers said that the government allowed them “limited-access” review of the draft over the weekend and that it “revealed a one-sided narrative arguing that the Defendants committed the crimes charged in this case.”

Garland has told Congress he plans to provide lawmakers with the report, allowing for redactions required under Justice Department policy. That would mean the Justice Department would likely redact portions of the report related to the two co-defendants since the department is seeking to continue those cases and it is prohibited from prejudicing their potential trials.

Report wouldn’t be released until Friday morning at the earliest

In a separate overnight court filing, Smith’s office laid out more of the timeline on the finalization of the report. The special counsel’s office said it would not hand the report over to the attorney general until 1 p.m. ET Tuesday at the earliest, and the attorney general wouldn’t release it until at earliest Friday morning.

“The Attorney General has not yet determined how to handle the report volume pertaining to this case, about which the parties were conferring at the time the defendants filed the motion,” Smith’s team wrote.

Federal regulations guiding the special counsel’s office work at the Justice Department put decisions about the release of reports like these in the hands of the attorney general.

The office added it plans to provide more on its position to Cannon Tuesday evening.

The defense attorneys, however, expressed dissatisfaction in Monday’s filings with the level of redactions in the draft that they had reviewed.

The fast-moving dispute comes less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, at which point his Justice Department – to be led largely by appointees drawn from his criminal defense team in the case before Cannon – will take over the handling of the investigation. The effort to block the report’s release is Trump’s latest attack on the institution of the special counsel.

The defense teams’ efforts also come after recent special counsels Robert Hur, John Durham and Robert Mueller finalized reports that were released to the public with little opposition about criminal cases they charged or, in the circumstances of Trump and Joe Biden, declined to charge.

While Cannon dismissed the case against them and Trump over the summer, the Justice Department is appealing her ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. Trump himself was dropped from the case, on the request of prosecutors, after his reelection last year, but the prosecution of Nauta and De Oliveira has been handed off to the US attorney’s office in South Florida.

Pointing to the possibility that the criminal prosecution against them could be revived, Nauta and De Oliveira argued Monday that the release of the report would “irreversibly and irredeemably” prejudice them as defendants. They also noted that the protective order limiting what they can say about the discovery the government has provided them remains in place.

Because the defendants are “strictly precluded form refuting the Report,” releasing it would make it “even more unfairly prejudicial,” they said.

“The Final Report is meant to serve as a Government verdict against the Defendants contrary to all criminal justice norms and constitutional guideposts,” they argued to the judge.

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This story has been updated with additional developments.

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Contributing: Evan Perez, CNN