By Andrew Goudsward
(Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Thursday declined to block the U.S. Justice Department from releasing a special counsel’s investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
The ruling from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit appeared to clear the way for the release of the report as early as next week.
The appeals court’s decision did not immediately lift an order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this week pausing the release of the report. But Cannon set her order to expire three days after the appeals court ruled on the issue.
The appeals court invited the Justice Department to bring a separate appeal if it wished to reverse that ruling.
The report, if it is released, is likely to be the final act from Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought two historic cases against Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election results and for mishandling classified documents.
Smith dropped both cases after Trump’s election victory and neither reached a trial.
Thursday’s ruling came after Trump’s two former co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, asked the appeals court to block the release of the report, arguing it would interfere with their ongoing prosecution.
The report for now is only set to detail the 2020 election probe after Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed Smith, decided not to publicly release the portion focused on the classified documents while legal proceedings against Trump’s two former co-defendants remain ongoing.
The Justice Department plans to only allow certain senior members of Congress to review that section of the report, the department said in a court filing.
Nauta and De Oliveira argued that even the limited release of the documents section of the report to Congress could harm their defense against obstruction charges. Both have pleaded not guilty.
It is unclear how much new information the public portion of the report will contain. Smith and a House of Representatives panel have already released detailed accounts of Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 election, including during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed the cases against him were part of an effort to damage his political campaign.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Costas Pitas; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Leslie Adler)
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