Judge Aileen Cannon’s grant of a request by two of President-elect Trump’s employees and co-defendants — Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — to block the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case sets up a clash over whether the potentially explosive document will ever see the light of day. 

Judge Canon, who earlier this fall dismissed the charges against all three men when she determined that Mr. Smith was unlawfully appointed, issued a temporary stay pending further deliberations by the court that oversees her — the riders of the 11th United States Appeals Circuit. Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveira asked both Judge Cannon and the circuit riders to block Attorney General Garland from releasing the report.

Trump appeared to learn of Judge Cannon’s order from a reporter, Brian Glenn, during a Tuesday morning news conference at Mar-a-Lago. The president-elect called it a “big story.” He also called Mr. Smith a “mean, nasty guy” and crowed: “Nobody’s ever won so many cases as I have against the justice department.”   

Judge Cannon’s intervention after she already dismissed the charges underscores the case’s strange posture. Mr. Smith appealed that ruling to the 11th Circuit, but was forced to retreat after Trump won the election. He did not, however, cease the prosecution of Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveira, who refused to testify against Trump and pleaded “not guilty” to charges of conspiracy and obstruction.  

Instead, Mr. Smith handed the prosecution of the two men to the United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Markenzy Lapointe, an appointee of President Biden. Mr. Lapointe this week said he would resign from the Department of Justice effective January 17. Judge Cannon did not address jurisdictional questions in her brief order.       

The jurist’s ruling came just hours after Mr. Smith’s disclosure on Tuesday morning that he is “working to finalize a two-volume confidential report to the Attorney General.” The report explains his prosecution decisions in respect of Trump and two others. The plan to release it suggests the drama over the document is approaching a denouement — possibly this week. Mr. Smith plans to make his own filing by Tuesday evening arguing for the report’s release.

While the president-elect, whose case has been dismissed, could not formally join the motion from Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveria, he wrote under separate cover to Mr. Garland to urge him to bury the special counsel’s dispatch. Mr. Smith, in his notice, explains that Mr. Garland “will decide whether any portion of the report should be released to the public.” 

Mr. Smith also shares that Mr. Garland “has not yet determined how to handle the report volume pertaining to this case.” Mr. Garland has said publicly that he strongly disagrees with Judge Cannon’s dismissal of the case — he calls it a “basic mistake about the law.” He maintains that Mr. Smith was lawfully appointed.

Mr. Garland has come under withering criticism from not only Trump but also reportedly from Mr. Garland’s own boss, Mr. Biden. The president is allegedly irate at the attorney general for waiting years to appoint Mr. Smith to investigate — and charge — his predecessor, perhaps forfeiting the chance to win a federal conviction of Trump before the election. 

Mr. Smith was named as special prosecutor on November 18, 2023, two days after Trump declared his intention to retake the White House. That was a few months after the White House signaled, via a leak to the New York Times, that Mr. Biden was tiring of Mr. Garland’s cautious approach and wanted to see his predecessor prosecuted post haste. 

Mr. Smith also provides a timeline, assuring Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveira that Mr. Garland “will not release the volume to the public, if he does at all, before Friday, January 10, 2025, at 10:00 AM.”  The outlining of a schedule suggests that Messrs. Smith and Garland are coordinating their efforts.

Trump, who will take the oath of office on January 20, reckons that 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.” Trump’s attorneys appear to have been allowed access to a draft version of the report, which they call a “politically motivated attack.”  

The special counsel has already disclosed some of his thinking on the fate of his two prosecutions of the president-elect. In his motion to dismiss the charges against Trump relating to election interference, he wrote Judge Tanya Chutkan that his convictions as to the “merit” of his case had not wavered.

Instead, Mr. Smith suggests, “circumstances” intervened, in the form of Trump’s electoral victory over Vice President Harris. That delivered to the 47th president what Mr. Smith calls “temporary” immunity — for the next four years. That immunity is meant to ensure that the president is able to execute his constitutional charge to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” 

In that motion for dismissal — which Judge Chutkan granted — Mr. Smith explained that the decision to give up the pursuit of Trump wasn’t his to make. The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel — whose determinations are binding on federal prosecutors — ruled that there is a “categorical” prohibition on prosecuting a sitting president. That forced Mr. Smith to move for dismissal “without prejudice,” which keeps alive the hope that the charges could be refiled in the future.

Mr. Garland has so far displayed an instinct toward disclosure. He released the entirety of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Mr. Biden’s storage of classified documents, as well as Special Counsel John Durham’s report on the FBI’s Russian election interference investigation. His predecessor, Attorney General Barr, released Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report after first crafting a summary of its findings.