Judge Who Blocked Release Of Trump Report Was 'Plainly' Wrong, DOJ Tells Appeals Court
HuffPost
The emergency motion late Friday is the latest back and forth in a court dispute over whether any portion of Smith's report can be made public before Trump takes office Jan. 20.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to move swiftly in reversing a judge’s order that had blocked the agency from releasing any part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump.
The emergency motion late Friday is the latest back and forth in a court dispute over whether any portion of Smith’s report can be made public before Trump takes office Jan. 20. The push to release it before Trump’s inauguration reflects concerns that the Justice Department under the Trump administration, which will include members of his personal legal team in key leadership roles, would be in position to prevent the report from coming to light.
The department is hoping to release in the coming days one part of its two-volume report focused on Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The department has said it will not publicly disclose a separate volume — about Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left the White House in January 2021 — as long as criminal proceedings against two of Trump’s co-defendants remain pending.
Both investigations resulted in indictments of Trump, though Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump’s election win. Smith cited Justice Department policy that bars the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency defense bid Thursday to block the release of the election interference report, which covers Trump’s efforts before Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to undo the results of the 2020 election. The appeals court left in place an injunction from a Trump-appointed lower court judge, Aileen Cannon, that said none of the findings could be released until three days after the matter was resolved by the appeals court.