Trump calls on judge to block his own DOJ from releasing Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago report

Donald Trump is demanding a federal judge block his Department of Justice from releasing Jack Smith’s report on the president’s alleged hoarding of government documents and classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

The president filed a motion Tuesday arguing that the release of the former special counsel’s "inherently biased” report would "irreparably harm” the president and his former co-defendants.

Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon — the Trump-appointed judge who dismissed the case against the president in 2024 — had previously blocked the Justice Department from sharing a redacted version of the Mar-a-Lago report with members of Congress, ensuring that Smith’s final report wouldn’t see the light of day during his first months back in office.

The judge will now decide whether that report can ever be released.

In 2023, a grand jury indictment accused Trump of mishandling reams of classified documents inside Mar-a-Lago and then conspiring to obstruct attempts from federal authorities to get them back after he left the White House at the end of his first term.

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Trump faced 40 separate charges stemming from allegations that he withheld hundreds of documents, some of which were pictured in boxes stashed in Mar-a-Lago bathrooms, according to photographs.

Judge Cannon ultimately dismissed the case after agreeing with Trump’s attorneys that the special counsel was unconstitutionally appointed and funded. Smith’s team appealed that decision but dropped the case altogether after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

A first volume of Smith’s investigations into Trump was released in the days before the president returned to office, detailing his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and failure to stop a mob from ransacking the halls of Congress to do it by force.

But a second volume, on Smith’s Mar-a-Lago case, has remained under wraps.

Cannon’s 93-page order dismissing the case did not address allegations or evidence but focused solely on Trump’s arguments that the special counsel was unlawfully serving in the role.

Attorneys for the president wrote that the release of that report would “improperly endorse and give legal effect to Smith’s unlawful investigation and prosecution” and “irreparably harm” Trump and his former co-defendants.

Because Trump is a former defendant, he “unquestionably has direct, substantial, and compelling interests” to block the report’s release, attorneys wrote.

The release of the volume would “improperly endorse and give legal effect to Smith’s unlawful investigation and prosecution” and would “irreparably harm” Trump and his former co-defendants,” according to the filing.

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“The court has already rightly determined that Smith was an unconstitutionally appointed and funded officer who could not, and did not, lawfully exercise executive power,” attorneys wrote. “The appropriate remedy is the invalidation of all of Smith’s [acts], including his subsequent preparation and submission of Volume II.”

The report is “inherently biased and one-sided” and reflects “opinions of an unconstitutionally appointed and funded federal official” who relied on “unlawfully obtained” evidence for a “political purpose,” attorneys said.

Trump and his former co-defendants no longer have access to the materials in this case while First Amendment groups and members of Congress seek the court’s permission to release Smith’s report, creating a “fundamentally unfair situation,” according to Trump’s team.

If those materials are publicly released, Smith and Trump’s political opponents will be able to “publicize the report’s allegations, giving them unwarranted credibility, while the individuals targeted by those accusations cannot defend themselves from Smith’s false and baseless attacks,” attorneys said.

In his explosive closed-door testimony to members of Congress last year, Smith said his investigation “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

“President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” he said. “These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him.”

Trump “caused” the violent attacks at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and “exploited it,” Smith told lawmakers.

Smith is scheduled to testify publicly about Trump’s alleged crimes before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, January 22.