WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Wednesday that it intends to release special counsel Jack Smith's findings on Donald Trump's efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election but will keep under wraps for now the rest of the report focused on the president-elect's hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The revelation was made in a filing to a federal appeals court that was considering a defense request to block the release of the two-volume report while charges remain pending against two Trump co-defendants in the Florida case accusing the Republican former president and current president-elect of illegally holding classified documents. Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge presiding over the classified documents case, granted the request Tuesday, issuing a temporary block on the report.
The Justice Department said it would proceed with plans to release the first of two volumes centered on the election interference case but would make the classified documents section of the report available only to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for their private review as long as the case against Trump's co-defendants — Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira — is ongoing.
''This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants' interests,'' the filing said.
The decision lessens the likelihood that the report on the classified documents investigation, which of all inquiries against Trump had once seemed to carry the greatest legal threat, would ever be released given that the Trump Justice Department almost certainly will not make the document public even after the case against Nauta and De Oliveira is resolved.
Lawyers for Nauta and De Oliveira objected to the Justice Department's proposal in a filing of their own Wednesday evening, asking the appeals court to send the case back to Cannon for a hearing.
They said sharing the report with members of Congress creates the potential for it to leak and ''reflects an improper attempt to remove from the district court the responsibility to oversee and control the flow of information related to a criminal trial over which it presides, and to place that role instead in the hands of the prosecuting authority — who unlike the trial court has a vested interest in furthering its own narrative of culpability.''
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and been bitingly critical of Smith, including during a wide-ranging news conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday in which he said, "It'll be a fake report just like it was a fake investigation.''