A federal judge has temporarily blocked the public release of special counsel Jack Smith‘s report on investigations into President-elect Donald Trump as an appeals court weighs a challenge.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon made the ruling Tuesday, the morning after an emergency request by defense lawyers to stop the Justice Department from making the report public — a step that Smith had said could come as early as Friday.
The matter is being considered by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The report is expected to describe charging decisions made in separate investigations by Smith into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump was charged alongside two codefendants in the classified documents case, which was dismissed in July by a Trump-appointed judge who concluded that Smith’s appointment was illegal. …