Garland Expected to Release Jack Smith Report

Just as most of us expected, with the Biden administration coming to a close and the Trump administration about to take over, the Biden administration is making moves to hamper Trump.  

Among those, Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that he is about to release the Special Counsel Jack Smith report.  

The move has been temporarily blocked by Judge Cannon, but this is about to be a war.  

Release the Report 

Let me get my opinion on this out of the way first, then I will get into the legalities of all this. 

I believe that since the documents case was dismissed and Smith dropped the election interference charges, the report should not be released. 

The reason I don’t believe it should be released is because of the manner in which the charges were dropped, without prejudice, which means charges can still be filed again in the future. Not only that, but there are still two other people on trial in these cases, and releasing this report could hurt their cases. 

When Garland announced he was going to release the report, Judge Cannon stepped in to block it, which led to the DOJ filing an appeal with the 11th Circuit.  

The DOJ argued, "This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants' interests.” 

Garland added, "As I have made clear regarding every Special Counsel who has served since I took office, I am committed to making as much of the Special Counsel's report public as possible, consistent with legal requirements and Department policy.” 

Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira filed a motion to block the report, being co-defendants in the case, claiming that it would do them “irreparable harm.” 

Cannon ruled in favor, so, for now, the report is blocked.  

Realistically, those two are collateral damage because the real purpose of this is to hurt Trump.  

Now, the question is if this appeal will play out before January 20. If not, I would suspect that Trump’s AG would drop the appeal and this matter would be closed.  

However, I fully expect the 11th Circuit to expedite the request by the DOJ to have this issue settled before Garland leaves his post.