Judge Blocks Release Of Report On Mar-a-Lago Probe
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will not allow the public to see former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on why he prosecuted now-President Donald Trump for allegedly unlawfully retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
She issued the decision in a 14-page order on Tuesday.
The order also grants the wish of Trump and both of his former co-defendants in the case, valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira. The men asked Cannon to keep the report away from the prying eyes of the House and Senate judiciary committees.
The Justice Department under former Attorney General Merrick Garland had agreed to keep this volume of Smith’s report under wraps from the general public since the case is still ongoing against Nauta and De Oliveira, but he did not oppose sharing it with members of the congressional committees on the condition that they would not leak it.
Cannon lit into the now-former special counsel and attorney general in her order on Tuesday.
“Never before has the Department of Justice, prior to the conclusion of criminal proceedings against a defendant — and absent a litigation-specific reason as appropriate in the case itself — sought to disclose outside the Department a report prepared by a Special Counsel containing substantive and voluminous case information. Until now,” she wrote.
The first volume of Smith’s charging report went public just ahead of Trump’s inauguration, since Cannon ultimately had no power to stop it. That section focused explicitly on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and allegations that Trump conspired to subvert the 2020 presidential election and defraud and intimidate voters and state and election officials.
The reasons the Justice Department gave to grant the release of the second volume to members of Congress “do not reflect well on the Department,” Cannon wrote.
Though prosecutors pointed out that special counsels have investigated presidents and released their findings openly in the past, Cannon said that given the pending charges and “no valid justification” or indication of a “very strong public interest,” it was “reasonable” for her to believe that any release of the report, even if it only went to members of Congress, would be improper.
The judge said Tuesday that there “has been no subpoena by Congress for review or release” and “no record of an official request by members of Congress for in camera review of Volume II as proposed by the Department in this case.”
“There is, however, a recent letter by some of those same members urging Attorney General Garland to release Volume II to the public immediately, even if doing so requires dismissal of the charges as to Defendants Nauta and De Oliveira,” she said.
The letter sent by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee argued that while the dismissal of the charges against Nauta and De Oliveira “might encourage these defendants to keep enabling the corruption of their superiors, those concerns are outweighed by the many indications that Mr. Trump will simply end the prosecutions against his coconspirators upon taking office anyway and then instruct his DOJ to permanently bury this report.”
“Mr. Trump has not been secretive about his plans to weaponize the DOJ for his own personal whims and preferences,” the letter stated. “He has promised to name a Special Prosecutor to target political opponents, stated he would use the Department to prosecute his enemies, and threatened to ‘direct the DOJ to investigate’ progressive district attorneys who have not supported his personal agenda above the Constitution.”
Trump has “made it clear that he does not want Special Counsel Smith’s report to see the light of day and has repeatedly sought to prevent disclosure of any part of it,” the committee Democrats wrote.
Nauta and De Oliveira’s case continues to churn through the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for now. Trump is no longer a party to the case, since the charges against him were dismissed last year and Justice Department policy directs that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.