Jan. 7 (UPI) — U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday temporarily blocked the release of a report of the investigation into President-elect Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
It prevents the U.S. Justice Department and Smith from releasing the long-awaited report for three days while the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reviews an emergency motion to block its release over a separate legal case that involves Trump’s co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.
In an emergency motion filed Monday night, lawyers for Nauta and De Oliveira asked Cannon, 44, to stop Smith from issuing the so-called Final Report on the grounds that it will irreparably harm their clients.
Cannon, a Trump-appointee, oversaw the classified documents case against the incoming president. She ruled last summer to dismiss the case against Trump, believing that Smith’s appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
On Tuesday, she said she was acting “to preserve the status quo” until the high court makes its ruling.
Cannon wrote in her three-page ruling that Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department, Smith and others involved in the case were “temporarily enjoined” from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such report outside the Department of Justice” or from otherwise “releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone” outside the federal government.
Her three-day order remains after an appeals court decision resolves the issue “unless the Eleventh Circuit orders otherwise,” Cannon wrote.
Meanwhile, Trump lawyers say they reviewed a draft of Smith’s final report on the federal investigations and asked Cannon to act despite the fact Trump is no longer a defendant, himself, in the case.
“As a former and soon-to-be president, uniquely familiar with the pernicious consequences of lawfare perpetrated by Smith, his office, and others at DOJ, President Trump should be permitted to participate in these proceedings,” Trump’s court filing read in part.
Smith planned to send his two-volume report to Garland on Tuesday, according to a court document.
But Trump’s legal team asked Cannon to “immediately order Smith and his office not to transmit any aspect of the Report to the Attorney General before the Emergency Motion is resolved.”
However, Garland “has not yet determined how to handle the report volume pertaining to this case, about which the parties were conferring at the time the defendants filed the motion, but the department can commit that the Attorney General will not release that volume to the public, if he does at all,” before 10 a.m. Friday, NBC reported.