The department justified this by the ongoing prosecution of two associates of the future head of the White House.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it will not release the full report of special counsel Jack Smith on the storage of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida home for now. TASR informs about it according to the Reuters agency.
In a filing with a federal appeals court in Atlanta, the department said Smith had completed his two-part report on Trump and that Justice Department Chief Merrick Garland was set to release only the first part, which deals with Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Continuation of the case
For now, only certain members of the Judiciary Committees in Congress will get access to the classified documents section. The stated reason is the continuation of the case of Trump’s co-accused – personal assistant Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira.
It was not immediately clear when the part related to tampering with the election results in the US state of Georgia might be published. Federal judicial authorities in this case, as well as in the case with secret documents, dropped charges against Trump on the grounds that the US Department of Justice generally does not investigate sitting presidents.
Smith previously brought charges against Trump in two separate cases of compromising the integrity of the election and national security. The authorities started an investigation against Trump after the mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump’s sympathizers wanted to thwart the official process of confirming Joe Biden’s election victory with the attack. Trump was charged with criminal conspiracy in this case.
The second criminal case against Trump related to documents that he took from the White House to his private residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida after the end of his previous term and refused to turn them over to the authorities until the FBI conducted a search of his home in the summer of 2022.
