Legal

Cannon temporarily blocks release of Jack Smith report

The extraordinary move scrambles the final stage of the special counsel’s work.

Prosecutor Jack Smith waits for the start of a court session at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers court in The Hague, Netherlands, Nov. 10, 2020. | Pool photo by Peter Dejong

By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

01/07/2025 12:20 PM EST

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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his two criminal investigations into Donald Trump.

The extraordinary move, coming just days before Smith’s office is expected to shut down, scrambles the final stage of the special counsel’s work. Smith is expected to wrap up and deliver to Attorney General Merrick Garland a final report laying out the results of his probes into Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office in 2021 and his attempt to subvert the 2020 election. Garland has said he would release the report publicly in some form.

But Cannon’s order, issued at the request of two Trump allies who were co-defendants in the classified documents case, bars the Justice Department from releasing the report or any portion of it until three days after a federal appeals court rules on the issue.

The order bars Garland, the Justice Department, Smith and “all of their........

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