On dubious authority, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order Tuesday purporting to block the public release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s closing report by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Cannon’s unprecedented order came at the urging of two former Trump aides who were charged in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which is currently on appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The move comes as Trump’s lawyers, many of whom have been tapped for substantial roles in the Justice Department in his new administration, have been lobbying Garland not to release Smith’s report. The two-volume report seemingly includes Smith’s findings in both the classified documents case and the Jan. 6 election subversion case.
Cannon’s order — which blocks Garland from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice” — does not distinguish between the two volumes of Smith’s report, potentially stretching her already strained authority even further, to the Jan. 6 case in which she’s never been involved.
Earlier today, the two Trump aides, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, filed an emergency motion with the 11th Circuit, asking the appellate court to block the report’s publication.
In their Monday letter to Garland, Trump’s lawyers lambasted Smith and demanded that Garland fire him.
“The release of any confidential report prepared by this out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor would be nothing more than a lawless political stunt, designed to politically harm President Trump and justify the huge sums of taxpayer money Smith unconstitutionally spent on his failed and dismissed cases,” they wrote. “Under such circumstances, releasing Smith’s report is obviously not in the public interest — particularly in light of President Trump’s commanding victory in the election and the sensitive nature of the ongoing transition process.”
The letter makes clear that Trump and his allies’ interest in blocking the report’s release extends beyond concern for Nauta and de Oliveira, whose cases are ongoing.
In a brief response, Smith said that he would not give Garland his Mar-a-Lago documents findings until after 1 p.m. ET today, and that Garland, if he ultimately publishes the report, wouldn’t do so before 10 a.m. ET on Friday.
Trump and his team may win the publication battle by dint of running out the clock until the same lawyers asking that the DOJ suppress the report are leading the department.
And so the Trump legal saga winds down the same way it began — with comical overreach by Aileen Cannon, acting at the behest of a former and future president insisting that he’s the victim of a political witch hunt.
Read the order here:
