After a last-minute legal battle, Jack Smith’s final report on his criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election is one step closer to becoming public.
On Monday, Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected arguments from Trump and his now-former co-defendants in the classified documents case who have tried to stop the Department of Justice from releasing the entire report.
Her decision clears the way for Attorney General Merrick Garland to partially release Smith’s report to the public once her initial three-day injunction expires at midnight Monday — less than a week before Trump returns to the White House.
Last week, the Trump-appointed federal judge temporarily blocked both volumes of Smith’s report from the public, including the results of his investigation into Trump’s election subversion — a case that played out in an entirely different court in Washington, D.C.
Garland had vowed to release the Mar-a-Lago report to top members of Congress while publicly releasing the volume on Trump’s election case, with only days left to spare before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, when he can stop both volumes from ever being released.
Smith — the former Hague prosecutor who was appointed as special counsel to oversee the two federal criminal cases against the president-elect — turned in his final two-volume report to Garland last week. He resigned from the Justice Department on Friday.
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