Martin Walsh January 10, 2025
A federal appeals court turned down a request to keep part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report from going public. The report includes details of Smith’s investigation and prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election and supposed improper retention of classified records.
Walt Nauta, a Trump aide, and Carlos de Oliveira, a former property manager at Mar-a-Lago, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to deny their request. They were charged with blocking a separate federal investigation into Trump’s handling of sensitive government records.
The court told the DOJ that they couldn’t release the report for three days, Fox News reported.
The Justice Department said it would go ahead with its plans to release the first of two volumes about the election interference case. However, the classified documents part of the report would only be available to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to look over in private as long as the case against Trump’s co-defendants is still going on.
It wasn’t clear right away when the report on election interference would be made public.
In a decision about presidential immunity, the Supreme Court said that former presidents are generally not prosecutable. This made the case of election interference less broad.
After Trump won the election, Smith’s team dropped both cases in November, saying that it was against Justice Department policy to bring federal charges against a sitting president.
Special counsels appointed by the attorney general are required by Justice Department rules to turn in a secret report when their investigations are over. After that, the attorney general will choose what to release to the public.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has made public in full the reports that the special counsels who worked for him wrote. These include Robert Hur’s report on how President Joe Biden handled classified information and John Durham’s report on the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In a statement, Trump Communications Director Steven Cheung said that it was time to “put a final stop to the political weaponiziation of our Justice system.”
“Deranged Jack Smith was sent packing after losing both of his Witch Hunts against President Trump. Deranged was unconstitutionally appointed and paid for, so he cannot be allowed to do anything more in perpetuation of his election-interfering hoaxes, let alone prepare an unconstitutional, one-sided, falsehood-ridden screed,” he said.
“Today’s decision by the 11th Circuit keeps Judge Cannon’s injunction in place and prevents any report from being issued. It is time for Joe Biden and Merrick Garland to do the right thing and put a final stop to the political weaponization of our Justice system,” Cheung said. “The American People elected President Trump with a historic and overwhelming mandate, and we look forward to uniting our country in the new Administration as President Trump makes America great again.”
For his part, some have speculated that Smith could face consequences for his actions against Trump.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky said that Smith and other prosecutors will face investigations “because of the huge cost and ultimate failure” of the prosecutions, The Daily Caller reported.
“Whether that yields findings of criminality is unlikely. However, I think it will find that Smith’s novel legal approach was fraught with issues that should have led a reasonable prosecutor to decline prosecution,” he said to the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview. “Smith is already leaving his special counsel post, but I anticipate some of the lawyers working under him will also be forced out of the [Department of Justice] DOJ for engaging in a legally unsound prosecution.”
“There is a lot of evidence that the congressional Jan. 6 committee intentionally avoided evidence beneficial to Trump’s position, and if Smith did the same, his conduct could be grounds for more severe consequences,” he said.
The Heritage Oversight Project said it was preparing a “a model indictment” against Smith.
It said that Smith could be charged for a conspiracy to violate an individual’s civil rights, it also said that there are “other potential avenues as well.”
“Jack Smith and his office must face severe legal, political, and financial consequences for their blatant lawfare and election interference,” Mike Davis, the president off the Article III Project said on X. “This includes a federal criminal probe for conspiracy against rights under 18 U.S.C. § 241.”
