Jack Smith Hits Back at Aileen Cannon’s Trump Ruling: ‘Plainly Erroneous’
January 11, 2025
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A judge was wrong to block the release of a report on Donald Trump’s federal indictments, the U.S. Justice Department has said amid a fight to make public the findings of Special Counsel Jack Smith before the president-elect takes office.
The Justice Department filed an emergency motion on Friday to a federal appeals court to reverse Judge Aileen Cannon’s injunction blocking the publication of Smith’s report into Trump’s alleged efforts to undo the result of the 2020 presidential election.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump team for comment by email.
File image from August 1, 2023, of Special Counsel Jack Smith in Washington, D.C. The Justice Department is trying to get his report into Donald Trump published before the president-elect takes office on January 20,… File image from August 1, 2023, of Special Counsel Jack Smith in Washington, D.C. The Justice Department is trying to get his report into Donald Trump published before the president-elect takes office on January 20, 2025.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Why it matters
The emergency order is the latest move in a court fight to get Smith’s report released before Trump’s inauguration day on January 20. This comes amid concerns that the Justice Department under the Trump administration will be able to stop its release.
What to know
On January 7, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, issued an injunction on the report on Trump’s alleged actions to undo the result of the presidential election he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020.
On Thursday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency defense bid to block the release of the election interference report, the Associated Press reported.
Left in place was the injunction by Cannon which said none of the findings could be released until three days after the matter was resolved by the appeals court.
But the Justice Department has asked the appeals court to immediately lift Cannon’s injunction altogether, describing it as “plainly erroneous.”
The DOJ filing said Cannon’s action stops officials from privately sharing Smith’s report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with House and Senate Judiciary committees.
The Justice Department said it will not publicly disclose the volume of its report about the classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left the White House in 2021 while criminal proceedings against two of his co-defendants are pending.
It said that as the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Merrick Garland has “the authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Both investigations resulted in indictments of Trump but the cases were abandoned after the Republican won the 2024 presidential election, with Smith citing Justice Department policy stopping the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
What people are saying
U.S. Justice Department said: “The Attorney General (Merrick Garland) has authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates,” the Associated Press reported.
Donald Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung said Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report would be an “unconstitutional, one-sided, falsehood-ridden screed. It is time for Joe Biden and Merrick Garland to do the right thing and put a final stop to the political weaponization of our Justice system,” the New York Daily News reported.
What happens next
There is likely to be more legal wrangling if Trump or his co-defendants in the classified documents case take the 11th Circuit decision to the Supreme Court.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has the ultimate authority to decide whether to release Smith’s report and has previously said he would do so. He has said, however, that he would withhold the second volume of the report relating to Trump’s classified documents case.
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