House Democrats urge Garland to 'take all necessary steps' to release Jack Smith's report on Trump classified docs case
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are urging outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland to "take all necessary steps" to release special counsel Jack Smith's report on Donald Trump's handling of classified documents -- and they're encouraging him to drop the remaining charges against the president-elect's former co-defendants in order to do so.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who earlier this week allowed the Justice Department to release the first volume of Smith's report, which covers his election interference case against Trump, has temporarily blocked the release of the second volume covering the classified documents case due to the DOJ's ongoing prosecution of longtime Trump aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveira, Trump's former co-defendants in the case.
"As Attorney General, it is incumbent upon you to take all necessary steps to ensure the report is released before the end of your tenure, including, if necessary, by simply dismissing the remaining criminal charges against Mr. Trump's co-conspirators, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira," the 18 Democratic committee members wrote in a letter obtained by ABC News.
Cannon, who last year threw out Trump's classified documents case, plans to hold a hearing Friday on whether to make the Volume Two of Smith's report available to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
Because the Justice Department has said it will not publicly release the second volume of the report while charges are pending against Nauta and De Oliviera, the Democrats, led by ranking member Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, called on Garland to dismiss the charges ahead of Trump's inauguration next Monday.
"To the extent that such a decision to dismiss these cases might encourage these defendants to keep enabling the corruption of their superiors, those concerns are outweighed by the many indications that Mr. Trump will simply end the prosecutions against his coconspirators upon taking office anyway and then instruct his DOJ to permanently bury this report," they wrote.
"While we understand your honorable and steadfast adherence to Mr. Nauta's and Mr. De Oliveira's due process rights as criminal defendants, the practical effect of this position is that Volume 2 will almost certainly remain concealed for at least four more years if you do not release it before President-elect Trump's inauguration on January 20," the Democrats wrote.
Trump pleaded not guilty in 2023 to 40 criminal counts related to his retention of classified materials after leaving the White House, and later that year pleaded not guilty to separate charges of undertaking a "criminal scheme" to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Both cases were dropped following Trump's reelection in November due to a longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
In their letter to Garland, Democrats argued that the release of the full classified documents report was in "the public interest."
"To the extent the tangential charges against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira stand in the way of the overriding imperative of transparency and truth, the interests of justice demand that their cases be dismissed now so that the entirety of Special Counsel Smith's report can be released to the American people," they wrote.
