Latest Move By Trump Co-Defendant Lawyers Could Prevent Merrick Garland From Releasing Jack Smith’s Final Report Before Inauguration
US Attorney General Merrick Garland is still pushing to release Jack Smith’s final report after Judge Cannon’s temporary injunction blocking the release expired on Sunday.
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected President Trump’s request to block the release of Jack Smith’s report.
Jack Smith resigned from the Justice Department on Saturday.
President Trump’s lawyers in a court filing on Wednesday argued the release of Jack Smith’s report would disrupt his transition to the White House.
“The report is nothing less than another attempted political hit job whose sole purpose is to disrupt the presidential transition and undermine President Trump’s exercise of executive power,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in an amicus brief, according to ABC News.
“The Final Report goes into more detail about the alleged crimes President Trump and others supposedly committed and involves evidence that was never released to the public–indeed, evidence that could not be released, such as those involving official acts,” the filing said, the outlet reported.
Lawyers for Trump’s co-defendants asked Judge Cannon to extend the injunction and hold a hearing on Merrick Garland’s plan to release Jack Smith’s report. If Judge Cannon agrees to hold a hearing, it could prevent Jack Smith’s report from being released before Trump’s inauguration.
Judge Cannon has not ruled on this yet.
ABC News reported:
In a series of court filings over the weekend, the Justice Department continued to press for the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigations into Donald Trump.
After Trump’s co-defendants in his classified documents case asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to block the release of Volume Two of the report, which covers that case, Cannon last week temporarily blocked the release of both that volume and Volume One of the report, which covers Smith’s Jan. 6 election interference case against Trump.
The government said in their filing that the Jan. 6 volume makes two references to the classified documents investigation, but those references do not mention any conduct, evidence or charges against the co-defendants. The government told Cannon they will provide her with those references for review in a sealed court filing.
Cannon, who last year dismissed the classified documents case after deeming Smith’s appointment unconstitutional, had asked the DOJ for that information after the Justice Department, in a court filing Saturday, argued she had no further jurisdiction to continue to weigh in on the release of the Jan. 6. volume of Smith’s report after the DOJ successfully appealed her initial injunction to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Cannon’s injunction prohibiting the report’s release was set to expire on Sunday, but attorneys for Trump’s co-defendants — his longtime aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira — asked Cannon on Friday to extend the injunction so she can hold a hearing on Garland’s plans to release the report.
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