US Judge in Trump Case Was ‘Plainly’ Wrong, Special Counsel Tells Court

The emergency motion late Friday is the latest back and forth in a court dispute over whether any portion of Smith’s report can be made public before Trump takes office on January 20, AP reported.

The push to release it before Trump’s inauguration reflects concerns that the Justice Department under the Trump administration, which will include members of his personal legal team in key leadership roles, would be in position to prevent the report from coming to light.

The Justice Department revealed in a separate filing on Saturday that Smith resigned from the department on Friday after having submitted his Trump report to the attorney general. The move had been expected.

The department is hoping to release in the coming days one part of its two-volume report focused on Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The department has said it will not publicly disclose a separate volume — about Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left the White House in January 2021 — as long as criminal proceedings against two of Trump’s co-defendants remain pending.

Both investigations resulted in indictments of Trump, though Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump’s election win. Smith cited Justice Department policy that bars the federal prosecution of a sitting president.