Donald Trump’s lawyers who read special counsel Jack Smith’s draft report detailing the findings of his two investigations of the incoming president are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to fire Smith and block the report’s public release.
Justice Department regulations require special counsels to submit a report explaining their legal decisions at the conclusion of an investigation, although it’s up to the attorney general to decide whether those findings are made public.
Garland has indicated he would release any special counsel report that reaches his desk, redacting material that he thinks needs to remain out of public view.
However, an ongoing appeal in one of the two cases against Trump that Smith oversaw means releasing that portion of the report could be more complicated.
In a court filing early Tuesday, Smith said Garland might not make that part of the report public. If the attorney general does release it, Smith said that would not happen before Friday morning at the earliest, giving the court a few days to act.
Friday morning is when Trump is separately scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction in New York state court of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election.
His lawyers are also trying to block that sentencing, saying that even though the judge has made clear he will not give Trump jail time or probation, getting sentenced just days before his inauguration would disrupt the presidential transition.
Trump’s lawyers are making similar arguments about the two-volume special counsel report.
One volume focuses on the probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents after his first term in the White House.
The other focuses on the federal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
“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,” Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro said in a letter to Garland that was included in an emergency motion filed in Florida federal court Monday evening.
The motion was submitted by lawyers for Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s co-defendants in the classified-document case.
They asked U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon to block the release of Smith’s report, citing her decision last summer to dismiss the classified documents indictment after she ruled Smith was unlawfully appointed.
Cannon’s ruling on Smith broke with decades of legal precedent involving special or independent counsels.
The Justice Department is appealing, with Nauta and De Oliveira as defendants, although Trump was dropped off the appeal because he won the November election, and Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.
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