By Andrew Goudsward
Feb 23 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge permanently barred the Justice Department on Monday from releasing a prosecutor’s report on the criminal case accusing President Donald Trump of unlawfully retaining classified documents following his first term in office.
Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon found that releasing the report would be a “manifest injustice” to the Republican president and two former associates who were charged alongside him because it would detail substantial allegations of criminal wrongdoing in a case that never reached a jury.
Cannon, who Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, dismissed all the charges in 2024.
Trump was accused in the case pursued by Special Counsel Jack Smith of illegally storing documents related to U.S. national defense, including the American nuclear program, at his Mar-a-Lago social club and obstructing U.S. government efforts to retrieve the material. Cannon found that Smith had not been lawfully appointed by the Justice Department during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Disclosure of Smith’s report “would contravene basic notions of fairness and justice in the process, where no adjudication of guilt has been reached following initiation of criminal charges,” Cannon wrote in Monday’s ruling.
The order means substantial information about one of the four criminal cases Trump faced in his years out of office may not be disclosed to the public.
Trump attorney Kendra Wharton welcomed Cannon’s order in a statement, adding that “any and all fruit of Smith’s poisonous tree” should “never see the light of day.”
Trump and his two co-defendants, personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago manager Carlos de Oliveira, pleaded not guilty to all charges and argued that the case was a politically motivated abuse of the U.S. legal system. They urged Cannon to bar the release of the report, which details Smith’s justification for seeking charges.
The Justice Department under Trump supported those arguments, arguing the report was a confidential document.
“Judge Cannon’s ruling continues a troubling pattern of decisions that shield the president from public scrutiny and place secrecy above the public’s right to know,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, a government accountability group that has sought disclosure of the report.
The Justice Department under Biden dropped an attempt to revive the case against Trump after he won the 2024 election.
Special counsels, who are appointed to lead certain politically sensitive investigations, are required to draft reports to the U.S. attorney general detailing their conclusions on whether to seek charges.
Shortly before Trump returned to the presidency 13 months ago, the Justice Department released Smith’s report detailing his other since-dismissed case against Trump, which accused Trump of plotting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
Cannon initially had barred disclosure of the documents case report to Congress, citing the ongoing case against Nauta and de Oliveira. The Justice Department dropped charges against Nauta and de Oliveira after Trump returned to office last year.
In Monday’s ruling, Cannon also cited concerns about releasing confidential grand jury information and concluded that Smith’s drafting of the report circumvented her order finding him unlawfully appointed.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Will Dunham and Chizu Nomiyama)
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