OAN Staff Sophia Flores
9:20 AM – Tuesday, January 21, 2025
A federal judge has blocked the Department of Justice (DOJ) from sharing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report with select members of Congress.
On Tuesday, in a 14-page order, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon prevented Smith’s report from being reviewed by four members of Congress. She stated that the DOJ has no legal basis and referred to the department’s conduct as “startling.”
“Prosecutors play a special role in our criminal justice system and are entrusted and expected to do justice,” Cannon wrote. “The Department of Justice’s position on Defendants’ Emergency Motion … has not been faithful to that obligation.” “In short, the Department offers no valid justification for the purportedly urgent desire to release to members of Congress case information in an ongoing criminal proceeding,” Cannon wrote.
Cannon later went on to express worries that if the report shown to the select members of Congress were to be leaked, it would prevent Trump’s former co-defendants from having a fair trial.
“This Court lacks any means to enforce any proffered conditions of confidentiality, to the extent they even exist in memorialized form. And most fundamentally, the Department has offered no valid reason to engage in this gamble with the Defendants’ rights,” the order said.
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