Top members of Congress won’t be able to privately review Jack Smith’s final report on Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents, virtually guaranteeing that the full results of his investigation will never be released while Trump is president.
Tuesday’s order from Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon — the Trump-appointed judge who dismissed the case against the president last year — blocked the Department of Justice from sharing a redacted version of the Mar-a-Lago report to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees.
Cannon issued her order one day after Trump’s inauguration, ensuring there was little risk that Trump’s Justice Department would release anything from Smith’s final report about his alleged attempts to withhold and hide documents from federal authorities after leaving office.
She also criticized the Justice Department under now-former Attorney General Merrick Garland, arguing that efforts to release the report “do not reflect well” on prosecutors.
Cannon also suggested there was no reason for lawmakers to review the contents of the report, and no “historical practice” for special counsel reports to be submitted to Congress “even on a limited basis.”
“In fact, there is not one instance of this happening until now,” she wrote.
She said there is a “reasonable likelihood” that the report would be leaked publicly, if handed over to members of Congress, “given the very strong public interest” in the case against the president.
Cannon said the report contained “detailed and voluminous” information that had not been publicly shared over the course of the years-long investigation, “including interview transcripts, search warrant materials, business records, toll records, video footage” and other records obtained through grand jury subpoenas.
Smith resigned from the Justice Department on January 10 after submitting his two-volume report to Garland, whose office entered a protracted legal battle with Cannon over its release.
Days before Trump returned to office, the Justice Department released the volume on Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The report followed Smith’s post-election decision to end the two mammoth criminal cases against the president after a years-long attempt to prosecute Trump for 44 crimes spelled out in hundreds of pages of evidence. Neither case made it to trial.
A federal grand jury indictment in 2023 charged Trump with conspiracy and obstruction for his efforts to reverse his election loss and his failure to stop a mob of his supporters from breaking into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as lawmakers convened to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump was separately charged in 2023 with mishandling reams of classified documents hoarded inside Mar-a-Lago and then allegedly obstructing attempts from federal authorities to get them back.
Following Trump’s election victory, Smith moved to dismiss the election interference case and removed Trump as a co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago case.
The case against Trump’s co-defendants and longtime employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira is pending on appeal.
Justice Department attorneys pledged that Garland would not publicly release Smith’s report on the classified documents investigation while the case is active.
