WASHINGTON – A U.S. judge on Monday permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing a prosecutor’s report on the criminal case accusing President Donald Trump of unlawfully retaining classified documents following his first term in office.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon found that release of the report would be a “manifest injustice” to Trump and two former associates who were charged alongside him because it would detail substantial allegations of criminal wrongdoing in a case that was dismissed and never reached a jury.
The order means substantial information about one of the four criminal cases Trump faced in his years out of office may not be disclosed to the public. Trump was accused of illegally storing documents related to U.S. national defense at his Mar-a-Lago social club and obstructing U.S. government efforts to retrieve the material.
Trump and his two co-defendants, personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago manager Carlos de Oliveira, pleaded not guilty to all charges. They urged Cannon to bar the release of the report from Special Counsel Jack Smith detailing his justification for the charges.
Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Reuters