Trump: Jack Smith Classified Documents Report Should Remain Secret

President Donald Trump argued Tuesday that former special counsel Jack Smith’s final report — chronicling the criminal case against him for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago — should never be made public.

Trump urged U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a new court filing to extend her 11-month-old order blocking the Justice Department from releasing the full report, which Smith submitted shortly before Trump’s second inauguration.

Anything less, his attorney Kendra Wharton wrote, would “perpetuate Jack Smith’s unlawful criminal investigations and proceedings.”

Trump’s request is a break from the Justice Department’s handling of all special counsel reports in recent decades. Typically, those reports are provided to Congress and made public, even when they have included damaging findings about the incumbent administration. DOJ released another report Smith compiled detailing his findings about Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election shortly before President Joe Biden left office.

Trump’s effort could complicate efforts by congressional Republicans to grill Smith about the substance of his investigation. Cannon’s order bars the Justice Department from disseminating the results of its investigation to outsiders, including Congress. While Smith’s final classified documents report remains under seal, he may not have authority to discuss its findings with lawmakers.

Trump’s move is his first direct request of Cannon — a judge he appointed at the end of his first term — since taking office. And the filing came from his personal lawyer rather than Justice Department officials, who weighed in separately Monday. The filing is infused with the typical disdain Trump has expressed for his former prosecutors, labeling Smith a “so-called special counsel” and saying the case was “marred by numerous deficiencies and repeated abuses of office.”

Cannon derailed Smith’s classified documents case against Trump in July 2024, ruling that his appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. The Justice Department appealed her ruling but dropped the appeal after Trump won the 2024 election.

Prosecutors also dropped a bid to revive the charges against Trump’s two codefendants in the matter, including Walt Nauta, his personal aide at the time.

Trump’s request comes as Cannon is nearing a deadline to decide how to handle demands by First Amendment groups to lift her blockade on Smith’s report. His Justice Department argued in a filing on Monday that her original block “should remain in effect.”

Notably, the Justice Department suggested that if Cannon intended to lift her order, she should order DOJ officials to give Trump’s codefendants a 60-day heads up to facilitate potential legal challenges to the release of the report.

Cannon has been under pressure to rule on the groups’ effort to seek the unsealing of the report for weeks. Last month, a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rapped Cannonfor “undue delay” in ruling on whether to take up arguments related to the unsealing of the report. The panel set a 60-day window for Cannon to act, which expires in early January.