Judge Aileen Cannon temporarily blocked the Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith‘s final report to the public in an order on Tuesday, saying an appellate court needed to address disputes about the report before its release.
Cannon issued the decision after two co-defendants in President-elect Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida made an emergency request to the judge to block it. The co-defendants’ attorneys argued they had reviewed the report and that its release would be prejudicial to their clients.
Their same request also remains pending before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Cannon said her order would stay in place until the higher court issued a ruling.
The co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, had included in their request a letter Trump’s attorneys wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they blasted Smith’s report as a “partisan weapon” and urged the attorney general to withhold it from the public.
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment on Cannon’s order and instead pointed to a filing Smith’s team submitted to the court Tuesday morning. In the filing, prosecutors said Garland had not yet decided whether he would release Smith’s report and that he definitely did not plan to release it before Friday.
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This story is developing.