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Let It Burn!
CNN —
Lawyers for Donald Trump have reviewed a draft of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report related to federal investigations into the president-elect and are threatening legal action if the Justice Department moves to release it, according to a letter included in court filings from Trump’s former co-defendants Monday night.
In the filings, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira ask Judge Aileen Cannon to block the release of the special counsel report, which was expected in the coming days before Trump is sworn in as president for the second time. The two men, who both worked for Trump and have pleaded not guilty to obstruction related crimes, argued in the filings that Smith does not have the authority to release the report because Cannon previously deemed his appointment as special counsel unlawful.
The filings included the letter from Trump’s attorneys to Attorney General Merrick Garland making similar arguments and stating that they were allowed “to review the two-volume Draft Report in a conference room at Smith’s office between January 3 and January 6, 2025.” The attorneys, two of whom have been selected by Trump for top Justice Department roles in the new administration, asked for advance notice of the report’s release so that they can “take appropriate legal action.”
The defense lawyers made similar arguments in filings submitted Tuesday morning to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is currently considering the Justice Department’s appeal of Cannon’s ruling finding Smith’s appointment to be unconstitutional.
Related articleThe lost year: How Merrick Garland’s Justice Department ran out of time prosecuting Trump for January 6
In the court filings, the defense lawyers said that the government allowed them “limited-access” review of the draft over the weekend and that it “revealed a one-sided narrative arguing that the Defendants committed the crimes charged in this case.”
Garland has told Congress he plans to provide lawmakers with the report, allowing for redactions required under Justice Department policy. That would mean the Justice Department would likely redact portions of the report related to the two co-defendants since the department is seeking to continue those cases and it is prohibited from prejudicing their potential trials.
In a separate overnight court filing, Smith’s office laid out more of the timeline on the finalization of the report. The special counsel’s office said it would not hand the report over to the attorney general until 1 p.m. ET Tuesday at the earliest, and the attorney general wouldn’t release it until at earliest Friday morning.
“The Attorney General 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,” Smith’s team wrote. The special counsel’s office indicated the report would have two volumes: likely one related to the documents case and another related to the separate January 6-related federal charges against Trump.
Federal regulations guiding the special counsel’s office work at the Justice Department put decisions about the release of reports like these in the hands of the attorney general.
The office added it plans to provide more on its position to Cannon Tuesday evening.
The defense attorneys, however, expressed dissatisfaction in Monday’s filings with the level of redactions in the draft that they had reviewed.
A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.
Nauta and De Oliveira are asking Cannon for an emergency hearing on the request and they requested that the 11th Circuit rule by Friday on the matter.
The fast-moving dispute comes less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, at which point his Justice Department – to be led largely by appointees drawn from his criminal defense team in the case before Cannon – will take over the handling of the investigation. The effort to block the report’s release is Trump’s latest attack on the institution of the special counsel.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/06/politics/rudy-giuliani-contempt-hearing
The defense teams’ efforts also come after recent special counsels Robert Hur, John Durham and Robert Mueller finalized reports that were released to the public with little opposition about criminal cases they charged or, in the circumstances of Trump and Joe Biden, declined to charge.
While Cannon dismissed the case against them and Trump over the summer, the Justice Department is appealing her ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. Trump himself was dropped from the case, on the request of prosecutors, after his reelection last year, but the prosecution of Nauta and De Oliveira has been handed off to the US attorney’s office in South Florida.
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