Defense Lawyers Seek to Block Special Counsel Report in Trump Documents Case

Defense lawyers asked both the Justice Department and a federal judge on Monday night to stop the special counsel, Jack Smith, from publicly releasing a report detailing his investigation into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after he left office in 2021.

The two-pronged attempt to block the report’s release arrived as Mr. Trump was only two weeks away from being sworn in for a second term as president. With the case against Mr. Trump already dismissed, the report would essentially be Mr. Smith’s final chance to lay out damaging new details and evidence, if he has any.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in an aggressively worded letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, said they had recently been shown a draft copy of Mr. Smith’s report, calling it an example of the special counsel’s “politically motivated attack” against Mr. Trump. They demanded that Mr. Garland not allow Mr. Smith to make the report public and “remove him promptly” from his post.

“The release of any confidential report prepared by this out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor would be nothing more than a lawless political stunt, designed to politically harm President Trump,” the lawyers wrote. In separate court papers, lawyers for Mr. Trump’s two co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, sought a more direct path toward stopping the release of Mr. Smith’s report. They asked the judge who oversaw the case, Aileen M. Cannon, to issue an emergency order to bar Mr. Smith from making the report public until the case “has reached a final judgment and appellate proceedings are concluded.”

Both attempts to block Mr. Smith could face an uphill battle.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have no power to force Mr. Garland to stop the report from coming out, and their letter amounted to little more than a belligerent request. It is also unclear whether Judge Cannon would have the authority to tell the attorney general how to handle a report by a special counsel that he himself appointed, especially when the case is technically out of her hands and in front of an appeals court.