CNN
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The Justice Department told a federal appeals court on Wednesday that Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to release the January 6-related volume of its final report of special counsel Jack Smith before Donald Trump takes office.
However, Garland does not plan to publicly release the part of Smith’s report regarding the investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, the Justice Department said, the first formal notification of the attorney general’s intentions.
The Justice Department asked the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals to approve the plan.
“The Attorney General intends to release Volume One to Congress and the public consistent … in furtherance of the public interest in informing a co-equal branch and the public regarding this significant matter,” DOJ said in a filing.
At the moment, Garland is blocked from releasing any part of Smith’s report due to a ruling from District Judge Aileen Cannon. The Justice Department is seeking to lift the injunction as it applies to the January 6 section of the report.
Cannon on Tuesday temporarily blocked the special counsel from releasing both volumes, following a request from Trump and his former co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. (Nauta and De Olivera have pleaded not guilty.)
Because it won’t make the part regarding Nauta and De Oliveira public, the Justice Department told the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the pair shouldn’t be allowed to stop the rest of the report from being released.
“There is neither any need nor legal basis for an injunction,” the DOJ wrote in a filing to an appeals court on Wednesday. … But to avoid any risk of prejudice to defendants Nauta and De Oliveira, the Attorney General has determined, at the recommendation of the Special Counsel, that he will not publicly release Volume Two so long as defendants’ criminal proceedings remain pending.”
Nauta and De Oliveira ask for hearing with Cannon
Wednesday afternoon, Nauta and De Oliveira asked the 11th Circuit for a hearing before Cannon, in the hopes the appeals court won’t green-light the report’s release too quickly.
The co-defendants’ lawyers take particular issue with Garland’s approach of keeping the volume on the classified documents case, because the attorney general says he still wants to provide a copy of it confidentially to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees if they request it.
“This 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,” attorneys for Nauta and De Oliveira said.
“A hearing will only take a day at most, and it is essential to protect the due process interests at stake,” they added. “Any delay caused by such a hearing would be de minimis.”
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
