Garland asks court for permission to release special counsel report on Jan. 6 insurrection before Trump takes office

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department told a federal appeals court on Wednesday that Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to release the January 6-related volume of its final report of special counsel Jack Smith before Donald Trump takes office.

However, Garland does not plan to publicly release the part of Smith’s report regarding the investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, the Justice Department said, the first formal notification of the attorney general’s intentions.

The Justice Department asked the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals to approve the plan.

“The Attorney General intends to release Volume One to Congress and the public consistent … in furtherance of the public interest in informing a co-equal branch and the public regarding this significant matter,” DOJ said in a filing.

At the moment, Garland is blocked from releasing any part of Smith’s report due to a ruling from District Judge Aileen Cannon. The Justice Department is seeking to lift the injunction as it applies to the January 6 section of the report.

Cannon on Tuesday temporarily blocked the special counsel from releasing both volumes, following a request from Trump and his former co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. (Nauta and De Olivera have pleaded not guilty.)

Because it won’t make the part regarding Nauta and De Oliveira public, the Justice Department told the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the pair shouldn’t be allowed to stop the rest of the report from being released.

“There is neither any need nor legal basis for an injunction,” the DOJ wrote in a filing to an appeals court on Wednesday. … But to avoid any risk of prejudice to defendants Nauta and De Oliveira, the Attorney General has determined, at the recommendation of the Special Counsel, that he will not publicly release Volume Two so long as defendants’ criminal proceedings remain pending.”

Trump urges appeals court to block release of entire special counsel report

Late Wednesday, lawyers for Trump asked to weigh in as the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals considers whether to block the release of the report, urging the court to prevent both volumes of the report from being released publicly.

“The report is nothing less than another attempted political hit job which sole purpose is to disrupt the Presidential transition and undermine President Trump’s exercise of executive power,” Trump argued in a proposed friend-of-the court brief.

While the Justice Department has already indicated that Garland had decided not to publish the volume of the report dealing with the classified documents investigation, Trump claimed that releasing the other volume dealing with the election subversion investigation would have “collateral effects” on Nauta and De Oliveira. Raising the possibility of leaks, Trump also objected to Garland’s stated plans to allow the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to view behind closed doors the report volume dealing with the classified documents case.

As an alternative, Trump suggested that the appeals court send the dispute back to Cannon, arguing that she could decide what from the report can or cannot be made public.

Nauta and De Oliveira ask for hearing with Cannon

Earlier Wednesday, Nauta and De Oliveira asked the 11th Circuit for a hearing before Cannon, in the hopes the appeals court won’t green-light the report’s release too quickly.

The co-defendants’ lawyers take particular issue with Garland’s approach of keeping the volume on the classified documents case, because the attorney general says he still wants to provide a copy of it confidentially to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees if they request it.

“This reflects an improper attempt to remove from the district court the responsibility to oversee and control the flow of information related to a criminal trial over which it presides, and to place that role instead in the hands of the prosecuting authority – who unlike the trial court has a vested interest in furthering its own narrative of culpability,” attorneys for Nauta and De Oliveira said.

“A hearing will only take a day at most, and it is essential to protect the due process interests at stake,” they added. “Any delay caused by such a hearing would be de minimis.”

CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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