1 of 5 | Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith testifies at a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on January 22. A federal judge on Monday blocked Smith’s report on his investigation into President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents held at Mar-a-Lago. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
A federal judge in Florida on Monday blocked the public release of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into classified documents held at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
In the order, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the Southern District of Florida said Smith’s report should not be made public after she previously ruled that he was illegally appointed to spearhead the case.
In July 2024, she said Smith’s appointment as special counsel by President Joe Biden violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. She took issue with what she described as the “broad power” given to Smith, the “indefinite” appropriate given to the task and his lack of supervision.
Biden appointed Smith to investigate whether Trump — then the former president — mishandled classified documents by storing them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Smith’s probe resulted in 41 criminal counts against Trump, but Cannon dismissed the case in 2024.
In her order Monday, she accused Smith of accelerating efforts to prepare the report after her ruling so it could be completed before he left his position in January 2025 upon Trump’s inauguration to a second term. She said Smith used “discover materials generated in this case,” and there was a 2023 protective order preventing the public release of such materials unless approved by a court.
Cannon said she’s also blocking the release of the report because doing so “would cause irreparable damage to former defendants” involved in the case. Also named in the indictment against Trump were his aide, Walton Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker accused of helping Nauta move 30 boxes of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago into a storage room under Trump’s direction.
Smith defended his investigation into the handling of classified documents — and another into Trump’s alleged attempts to interfere with the 2020 election — to Congress in December. He said if given the same evidence, he would charge Trump with crimes again.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Smith said.
“Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.”
This week in Washington
President Donald Trump speaks alongside Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Thursday. The Trump administration has announced the finalization of rules that revoke the EPA’s ability to regulate climate pollution by ending the endangerment finding that determined six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health. Photo by Will Oliver/UPI | License Photo
