The January 6 Report Is Substantially the Immunity Brief Reporters Ignored in October

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I want to say something about the structure of Jack Smith’s report. For his description of Trump’s alleged crimes, he includes a fairly high level narrative in the text, with detailed footnotes.

A great number of the footnotes — around 178 of them — cite to ECF 252.

ECF 252 is the immunity brief Jack Smith fought hard, over Trump’s objections, to submit in October. The footnotes often then cite the Special Counsel’s Bates stamp identifying that piece of evidence and include a short description of the source.

Take this footnote:

It sources this assertion in the report itself:

Under this plan, they would organize the people who would have served as Mr. Trump’s electors, had he won the popular vote, in seven states that Mr. Trump had lost-Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin-and cause them to sign and send to Washington false certifications claiming to be the legitimate electors. 39

It cites to the following language in the immunity brief:

So in early December, the defendant and his co-conspirators developed a new plan regarding the targeted states that the defendant had lost (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin): to organize the people who would have served as the defendant’s electors had he won the popular vote, and cause them to sign and send to Pence, as President of the Senate, certifications in which they falsely represented themselves as legitimate electors who had cast electoral votes for the defendant. Ultimately, the defendant and his co-conspirators would use these fraudulent electoral votes—mere pieces of paper without the lawful imprimatur of a state executive—to falsely claim that in his ministerial role presiding over the January 6 certification, Pence had the authority to choose the fraudulent slates over the legitimate ones, or to send the purportedly “dueling” slates to the state legislatures for consideration anew.

[snip]

Notwithstanding obstacles, the defendant and his co-conspirators successfully organized his elector nominees and substitutes to gather on December 14 in the targeted states, cast fraudulent electoral votes on his behalf, and send those fraudulent votes to Washington, D.C., in order to falsely claim at the congressional certification that certain states had sent competing slates of electors.301 When possible, the defendant and co-conspirators tried to have the fake electoral votes appear to be in compliance with state law governing how legitimate electors vote.302

And this footnote in the immunity brief.

As advertised, the footnote links to the Appendix and (in this case) the actual fake elector certificates.

In other words, for the narrative sourced to ECF 252 (one part of the narrative not sourced to the immunity brief pertains to the riot itself), we’ve already gotten this material. We got it in October, before the election.

It got only passing coverage.

We got much of this report, in more detailed form, in October. Many of the people who claim releasing this report would have made a difference in the election didn’t read the immunity brief in October, much less make a big deal about it.

The structure is significant for a few more reasons. First, the footnotes in this report sometimes provide more description about what appears in the appendix. Second, for those (including state Attorneys General) who want the evidence from Smith’s prosecution, the place to go is Tanya Chutkan, because it’s all there in her docket, sealed.

The Jack Smith Report

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Here’s the report.

Here’s the section on Insurrection — the only crime that would have disqualified Trump as President.

The Office considered, but ultimately opted against, bringing other charges. One potential charge was 18 U.S.C. § 2383, sometimes referred to as the Insurrection Act, which provides that “[w]hoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” 18 U.S.C. § 2383. Section 2383 originated during the Civil War, as part of the Second Confiscation Act of 1862. See Act of July 17, 1862, ch. 195, § 2, Pub. L. No. 37-160, 12 Stat. 589,590.

[snip]

To establish a violation of Section 2383, the Office would first have had to prove that the violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof,” and then prove that Mr. Trump “incite[d]” or “assist[ed]” the insurrection, or “g[ave] aid or comfort thereto.” 18 U.S.C. § 2383

[snip]

The Office determined that there were reasonable arguments to be made that Mr. Trump’s Ellipse Speech incited the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and could satisfy the Supreme Court’s standard for “incitement” under Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444,447 (1969) (holding that the First Amendment does not protect advocacy “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and … likely to incite or produce such action”), particularly when the speech is viewed in the context of Mr. Trump’s lengthy and deceitful voter-fraud narrative that came before it. For example, the evidence established that the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay. But the Office did not develop direct evidence-such as an explicit admission or communication with co-conspirators-of Mr. Trump’s subjective intent to cause the full scope of the violence that occurred on January 6. Therefore, in light of the other powerful charges available, and because the Office recognized that the Brandenburg standard is a rigorous one, see, e.g., NA.A.CF v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 902, 927-929 (1982) (speech delivered in “passionate atmosphere” that referenced “possibility that necks would be broken” and violators of boycott would be “disciplined” did not satisfy Brandenburg standard); Brandenburg, 395 U.S. at 446-447 (reversing conviction where Ku Klux Klan leader threatened “revengeance” for “suppression” of the white race), it concluded that pursuing an incitement to insurrection charge was unnecessary.

By comparison, the statutes that the Office did charge had been interpreted and analyzed in various contexts over many years. The Office had a solid basis for using Sections 3 71, 1512, and 241 to address the conduct presented in this case, and it concluded that introducing relatively untested legal theories surrounding Section 2383 would create unwarranted litigation risk.  Importantly, the charges the Office brought fully addressed Mr. Trump’s criminal conduct, and pursuing a charge under Section 23 83 would not have added to or otherwise strengthened the Office’s evidentiary presentation at trial. For all of these reasons, the Office elected not to pursue charges under Section 2383. 193

DOJ also released the Hunter Biden report, which attempts to prove the prosecution was not political but proves the opposite.

I’ll return to both later.

Aileen Cannon Interfering with Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin’s Constitutional Duty

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I’m a bit baffled by the status of Aileen Cannon’s Calvinball to keep both volumes of the Jack Smith report buried (I thought her three day stay was up, but I must be wrong). But I fully expect she’ll find some basis to bigfoot her way into DOJ’s inherent authority again by the end of the day.

But this week, the result of her bigfooting poses new Constitutional problems. She is interfering with Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin’s constitutional duty to advise and consent to Donald Trump’s nominees.

It’s not just me saying it. In the letter to Merrick Garland signed by aspiring Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and PADAG designee Emil Bove (whom WaPo says will serve as Acting DAG until Blanche is confirmed), complaining about the report, they state explicitly that release of the report would “interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings” (and, apparently, reveal damning new details about DOGE [sic] head Elon Musk’s efforts to interfere in a criminal investigation).

Equally problematic and inappropriate are the draft’s baseless attacks on other anticipated members of President Trump’s incoming administration, which are an obvious effort to interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings, and Smith’s pathetically transparent tirade about good-faith efforts by X to protect civil liberties, which in a myriad other contexts you have claimed are paramount.

This is premised on Smith’s report being biased.

Except what Cannon is suppressing consists of sworn testimony from some of Trump’s closest advisors. The damning testimony I keep raising, seemingly debunking Kash Patel’s claim (cited in search warrant affidavits) that Trump had “declassified everything” he took home with him almost certainly comes from Eric Herschmann, installed in the White House by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

This witness names at least two other people who, he claimed, would corroborate his claim that Kash’s claims were false.

Another witness described that Kash visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago before he made his claim in Breitbart.

Most importantly, Kash himself provided compelled testimony to a grand jury, represented by Stan Woodward, who not only has been named as Senior Counselor in Trump’s White House, but who (in the guise of Walt Nauta’s attorney), remains on filings fighting to suppress the release of information that could harm Kash’s bid to be FBI Director.

Do Trump’s intended DOJ leadership think Kash’s own sworn testimony is unreliable?

Did Kash renege on his public claims that Trump declassified everything?

Or did he provide testimony that conflicts with that of multiple witnesses, in which case Jack Smith might have had to explain they would have charged Kash with obstruction, too, except that he testified with immunity.

Kash’s testimony (and that of the witness who appears to be Eric Herschmann) precedes the date of Jack Smith’s appointment. It cannot be covered by Aileen Cannon’s ruling that everything that happened after that was unconstitutional.

Trump’s nominee for FBI Director gave sworn testimony in an investigation into a violation of the Espionage Act. That testimony is almost certainly covered in Volume II of the Jack Smith report. Merrick Garland has described that he would allow Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin (along with Jim Jordan and Jamie Raskin) to review the document — which is imperative for the ranking members of SJC to perform their duty to advise and consent to Trump’s appointments.

And Aileen Cannon has, thus far, said that Grassley and Durbin can’t do their job. They can’t consider Kash Patel’s conduct in an Espionage Act investigation in their review of Kash’s suitability to be FBI Director. The ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have reviewed Pete Hegseth’s FBI background check, but Grassley and Durbin have been deprived of the ability to read about Kash Patel’s role in a criminal investigation into hoarding classified documents.

Durbin may well have standing to complain about Cannon’s interference in his constitutional duties. It’s high time he considered making the cost of Cannon’s interference clear.

Update: Steve Vladeck explains how I miscounted three “days:”

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(a)(1)(C), when a court order gives a time period in days, we “include the last day of the period, but if the last day is a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the period continues to run until the end of the next day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday.” In other words, Cannon’s injunction, if it’s not modified, will expire (clearing the way for the public release of the January 6 volume) at the end of the day, today (and not, as many assumed, yesterday).

The FISA 702 Canard at the Core of Trump Debates

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By now you’ve heard about Peter Thiel’s batshit column, in which (with no explanation) he suggests Trump’s second term might bring about an apocálypsis that his first term did not, a revelation of all the secrets that, Thiel claims, “the media organisations, bureaucracies, universities and government-funded NGOs” have been keeping.

Among the secrets Thiel thinks Trump will tell in his second term that he did not in his first are:

  • Who else — potentially including “Fidel Castro, 1960s mafiosi, the CIA’s Allen Dulles” — worked with Lee Harvey Oswald to kill JFK.
  • How longtime Trump and Elon Musk friend Jeffrey Epstein died in a prison overseen by Bill Barr, whose family ties with Epstein go back even further.
  • Whether Anthony Fauci secretly believed and covered up that, “Covid spawned from US taxpayer-funded research, or an adjacent Chinese military programme?”
  • Joe Biden Administration’s hypothetical involvement in Brazil’s decision to uphold its data sovereignty, an Aussie law imposing age limits on Internet use, or the UK’s prosecution of violent rioters whom Thiel describes as guilty of no more than speech.
  • Whether Charles Littlejohn’s leak of Trump’s and others’ tax records was anomalous or whether the same thing happened to Hunter Biden. (I kid. Of course he ignored that it happened to Hunter.)
  • What’s behind a “50-year slowdown in scientific and technological progress in the US, the racket of crescendoing real estate prices, and the explosion of public debt” (in the same way he ignored that Hunter’s tax records had been leaked, Thiel also ignored how easy it would be to fix public debt if he and his buddies paid their fair share in taxes).

Nutty, right?

And right in the middle of these fevered conspiracy theories, intelligence contractor Peter Thiel wondered whether there’s such a thing as a right to privacy at all so long as Congress keeps reauthorizing FISA Section 702 under which the FBI continued to have violative queries incorporating US Person identifiers all the way through the Trump first term and in queries done as part of the January 6 investigation.

And on that same day, Tulsi Gabbard issued a statement reversing her opposition to Section 702, and in the process won the support of James Lankford and presumably some other hawkish Senators.

If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people. My prior concerns about FISA were based on insufficient protections for civil liberties, particularly regarding the FBI’s misuse of warrantless search powers on American citizens. Significant FISA reforms have been enacted since my time in Congress to address these issues.

And all these Senators, reassured that Tulsi will continue America’s best spying advantage, will ignore all the other reasons she’s wildly unsuited for the position.

Thiel is not alone among those naively investing his hopes to end surveillance by ending 702. A slew of privacy activists have focused there, too.

It’s like none of these people remember that people close to Trump used Israeli surveillance contractor Black Cube to spy on Barack Obama’s Iran deal negotiators, Colin Kahl and Ben Rhodes.

It’s like none of these people remember that Trump had DHS — which has fewer protections for US persons than the FBI does and which was run by a Trump flunkie — to surveil journalists covering the Portland riots.

It’s like none of these people have thought through the implications of Trump’s baseless claim that Hizballah was somehow involved in January 6, which is that all the people already identified who participated in the riot will be searched under 702 for ties to Iran; searching for ties to foreign terrorist groups is literally the initial use case for 702.

It’s like none of these people have through through the implications of the immunity ruling, which would mean that Trump could spy on Daniel Ellsberg’s shrink or even his Democratic opponents, and John Roberts would still let him off the hook.

It’s like none of these people have yoked that reality to Trump’s chumminess with most of the most prolific sources for Section 702 — Facebook and Google, probably Amazon — providing him a way to get what he wants directly (to say nothing of whatever DMs Elon might find to be interesting), targeting the actual Americans rather than the people overseas with whom they interacted.

Craziest still, Thiel presents the concern that the government will continue to partner with companies run by Tech Bros like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Apple and Sundar Pichai to surveil the world (likely with the help of Palantir software) as some great conspiracy theory. But he doesn’t realize — or wants to pretend — that he and his Tech Bro buddies are the key villains here.

Do tell us your secrets, Peter. But first, come to grips with the fact that you are the conspiracy you’re wailing about.

Calvinball

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Yesterday at 7:39PM, the 11th Circuit denied Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira’s bid to enjoin the Jack Smith report. But the unsigned order did not tell Aileen Cannon to fuck off. Instead, it invited DOJ to appeal her decision.

ORDER:

Appellees’ “Emergency Motion for Injunction with Relief Requested by January 10, 2025” is DENIED.

To the extent that Appellant seeks relief from the district court’s January 7, 2025, order temporarily enjoining Appellant, Appellant may file a notice of appeal from that order.

DAVID J. SMITH Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

ENTERED FOR THE COURT – BY DIRECTION

DOJ did appeal; their appeal hit Judge Cannon’s docket around 11:04PM.

NOTICE OF APPEAL by USA as to Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta, Carlos De Oliveira Re: 682 Order. Filing fee $ 605.00. USA/FPD Filer – No Filing Fee Required.

Just after midnight, DOJ filed a notice of appeal to the existing 11th Circuit docket.

Earlier this evening, January 9, this Court denied defendants’ emergency motion to enjoin the Attorney General from publicly releasing any portion of the Final Report of the Special Counsel. The Court further indicated that, “[t]o the extent that Appellant seeks relief from the district court’s January 7, 2025, order temporarily enjoining Appellant, Appellant may file a notice of appeal from that order.”

We write to notify the Court that the United States has tonight filed a notice of appeal from the district court’s order of January 7, 2025. See Dkt 686. As the Court knows, that order temporarily enjoined the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, the Special Counsel, and others from releasing or sharing the Special Counsel’s Final Report “outside the Department of Justice” pending this Court’s ruling on defendants’ emergency motion. Dkt. 682 at 2. The district court specified that this prohibition would “remain[] in effect until three days after” this Court’s resolution of defendants’ motion in this Court. Id

[snip]

Given the unusual exigencies of this case, as illustrated by the emergency motions practice in both the district court and this Court, the United States respectfully renews its request that this Court promptly vacate the district court’s temporary injunction.1

1 The government’s notice of appeal, filed tonight, squarely invokes this Court’s appellate jurisdiction. As soon as the new appeal is docketed in this Court, the United States intends to move to have that appeal consolidated with this one. To the extent there is any doubt concerning the Court’s authority to review the temporary injunction, furthermore, we respectfully request that the Court construe our appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus. See Suarez-Valdez v. Shearson Leahman/American Express, Inc., 858 F.2d 648, 649 (11th Cir. 1988) (holding that appeal can be construed as a petition for mandamus if the Court harbors doubts as to its appellate jurisdiction).

They renewed their request to tell Cannon to fuck off, and asked them to treat this as a writ of mandamus in the meantime.

Because the 11th Circuit order is unsigned, it’s really difficult to understand what whatever judges involved intend by this muddle — besides giving Nauta and De Oliveira a shot at appealing to SCOTUS on the very narrowed question before the 11th Circuit: whether they can prohibit Merrick Garland from doing anything given it will cause them no harm.

By inviting DOJ to appeal, they have squarely invoked the 11th Circuit’s appellate jurisdiction, meaning Cannon should be barred from meddling any more (not like that ever stopped her).

And if SCOTUS does nothing before 7:39PM on Sunday, then Garland can do what he says he wants: release the January 6 report and share the documents report with the Chairs and Ranking members of the Judiciary Committees.

But if DOJ files their appeal, then the 11th Circuit can weigh in on Cannon’s far more expansive demands.

There are at least hints here that DOJ is going to take steps to share the reports one way or another.

Until then, we’re waiting to learn how this game of Calvinball will turn out.

Update: Here’s DOJ’s motion to reverse Aileen Cannon.

Why and How to Hold John Roberts Accountable

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I want to explain why and how to hold John Roberts accountable for Trump’s corruption. It is based on the following presumptions.

  • Blaming Merrick Garland for Trump’s reelection has required inventing facts about the timeline, which is why I argue it is conspiratorial thinking.
  • Because of how SCOTUS rewrote the Constitution, no counterfactual gets Trump disqualified before the election, and probably doesn’t get him to trial.
  • This was a political failure that started well before January 6.

So one reason I advocate focusing on accountability for John Roberts is because he and his colleagues, in fact, are responsible. They intervened to ensure the leader of their party would evade accountability. And so they enabled everything that comes next.

And Trump has responded by flouting all concern about legal accountability.

  • He set up a kickback system for his inauguration, the proceeds of which will go to his own pocket.
  • Trump boasted of his expanded business deals with the Saudis.
  • He hailed $20 billion in investments from the same guys whose payments Alexander Smirnov was hiding on his taxes.

This is corruption in plain sight. The corruption is the obvious result of Roberts’ grant of immunity. So I propose to track it, name it, make John Roberts own it.

I’m not arguing that doing so will immediately make John Roberts regret what he has done. While Roberts has shown the ability to moderate off his prior shitty decisions, he’s pretty wedded to making corruption legal.

But one of the only short-term guardrails on Trump will be the things the Senate and SCOTUS choose to place on him. They’ve failed every other time they could reverse Trump’s damage, but in his first term, they did push back on his worst instincts. So by at least making the effects of the immunity ruling visible, you increase the chance that Roberts might do so.

The same is true of the violence that Trump will stoke. Roberts doesn’t want to own that. He does.

There’s good reason to go through this exercise, repetitively, insistently, that doesn’t invest hope that it’ll somehow convince Roberts.

MAGAt has spent years building their villain: migrants and trans people.

Defenders of democracy have done a far poorer job of doing the same — so much so that MAGAts have also projected a false claim of corruption onto the Bidens, transferring it from themselves.

But it’s time that we made corruption — and the Republican-picked judges that enabled it — the villain. We need to explain the world, and the explanation really is corruption, not migrants.

And if we do so from the start, with discipline, with repetition, then when Trump’s corruption ends up breaking things, causing catastrophe, that explanation will be ready at hand. I can’t tell you which of Trump’s corrupt schemes will do catastrophic damage first. Possibly his embrace of crypto currency, or maybe the dodgy types who set up his personal piggy banks will do something so shocking that even Pam Bondi’s DOJ can’t look the other way. But when Trump’s corruption causes catastrophe — and it’s a matter of when, not if — we need to be ready to name it, rather than let them scapegoat migrants for Trump’s doing.

There’s one more reason I advocate this approach. As I tried to lay out here, polarization is Trump’s most useful weapon. Every time you present an issue in terms of loyalty to Trump or opposition to him, a great many people will choose Trump, even if only symbolically, because it’s the price of admission to GOP politics. So I advocate, as often as possible, to make someone else the figurehead for the problem.

Even in much of the conspiracy theorizing targeting Garland as the villain, I’ve seen people — smart people!! — who don’t understand the full shocking import of the immunity ruling. Reversing that oversight is a necessary step in reclaiming democracy.

“False in Numerous Respects:” House Democrats Package Up Liz Cheney’s Evidence of “Despicable Malice”

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In a letter [alternate link] Cassidy Hutchinson’s attorney, William Jordan, sent to the DC bar, he corrected some of the false claims made in Barry Loudermilk’s report claiming that Liz Cheney had inappropriately suborned perjury from Hutchinson.

The Loudermilk Report is false in numerous respects, including its suggestion that Ms. Hutchinson and Congresswoman Cheney had any improper communications.

[snip]

The Loudermilk Report is replete with other politically motivated falsehoods, but at a minimum Ms. Hutchinson wanted specifically to correct this error because it has been seized on by Mr. Passantino and other individuals in this Complaint. [my emphasis]

The other individuals likely including private citizen Donald Trump.

And that’s interesting because the report in which the letter was published includes an interesting line at the end of a long explanation of why this is an assault on Speech and Debate.

That section cites the Supreme Court opinion holding that “once it is determined that Members are acting within the ‘legitimate legislative sphere’ the Speech or Debate Clause is an absolute bar to interference.” Then it cites the amicus brief the GOP sent in support of Scott Perry’s fight to keep content from his phone involving things that had nothing to do with formal oversight from prosecutors. “The Clause is not abrogated by allegations that a legislative official acted unlawfully or with an unworthy purpose, and applies both in civil cases and criminal prosecutions.” It cites to Scott Perry’s own filing. After including Trump’s tweet invoking the report, it trashes Loudermilk’s shoddy analysis.

Then it notes that Speech and Debate protects Loudermilk from any claim of defamation someone might bring against him.

If the Clause did not apply to congressional investigations, Chairman Loudermilk could be subject to liability himself for defamation.

Oh. And then it notes that those without Speech and Debate protection who falsely accused her of a crime, “may also be liable.”

All those who republish these allegations outside speech or debate may also be liable.

And that’s interesting because Cheney — whose reference to this report in a Tweet was the first I heard of it — specifically said that the “report destroying Loudermilk’s fraudulent allegations shows the despicable malice behind Trump’s efforts.”

“Despicable malice” sounds like the kind of thing you might sue over.

Barry Loudermilk Wasted $250K Making Security Footage available on Rumble

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In response to Barry Loudermilk’s report on January 6, his counterpart of the committee, Joe Morelle, released a response. [Alternate link]

I’ll say more about its central Speech and Debate argument; as I’ve noted, DOJ can’t investigate Liz Cheney without falling afoul of the same Speech and Debate that protected Scott Perry from investigation for his role in the insurrection.

But there’s an important detail that deserves its own post.

There’s a long section of the report that describes right wing efforts to make security footage from January 6 available. It describes how, rather than hosting the video on the Committee’s own website, right wingers chose to post it on Rumble instead. It includes a quote from USCP Acting Director of Intelligence Julie Farnham about the downsides of doing so: It meant making the content readily available to extremists.

Ms. Farnam: Well, the audience is largely extremists, and those are people who have — not everyone, but some of them have celebrated the threats to our democracy and have worked to undermine our democracy. And so having that security information makes it even more dangerous for the people trying to protect the Capitol and more dangerous for all the Members of Congress.188

And for the privilege of making security video readily available to extremists, the report reveals, Republicans paid $250,000.

In other words, Barry Loudermilk and Mike Johnson wasted tax payer money to make themselves and their colleagues less safe.

Lefty Pundits Absolve Their Own Failures on Holding Trump Accountable for His Coup

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Let me start this post with a quiz.

Who are the two Trump associates newly treated as co-conspirators in the October 2024 immunity brief?

Read more →

Yes, Trump Is Trying to Prevent the Release of Jack Smith’s Report

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As I have expected, Trump is trying to prevent the release of Jack Smith’s report. Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira asked Judge Cannon (who, unless I’m mistaken it, does not retain jurisdiction over the case) to prevent Smith from releasing the volume pertaining to the stolen documents. And that filing includes a long screed from Todd Blanche asking Merrick Garland to fire Jack Smith so he doesn’t do what Special Counsels do.

Among the other things Blanche complains about is that the report includes details on people expected to be part of Trump’s Administration. And that Xitter stalled its response to a warrant.

Equally problematic and inappropriate are the draft’s baseless attacks on other anticipated members of President Trump’s incoming administration, which are an obvious effort to interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings, and Smith’s pathetically transparent tirade about good-faith efforts by X to protect civil liberties, which in a myriad other contexts you have claimed are paramount.

As I keep mentioning, some of this will implicate Kash Patel. Hell, some of it may implicate Blanche himself.

As I have suggested, Garland may have been trying to release both this and the David Weiss report after Wednesday’s sentencing of Alexander Smirnov — so possibly the 10th. We’ll see whether Garland tries to get the documents part of the report out before Cannon tries to intervene.

Update: Jack Smith responded to the Florida motion.

The Special Counsel’s Office is working to finalize a two-volume confidential report to the Attorney General explaining the Special Counsel’s prosecution decisions. See 28 C.F.R. § 600.8(c). The Attorney General will decide whether any portion of the report should be released to the public. See 28 C.F.R. § 600.9(c). One volume of the report pertains to this case. The Attorney General has not yet determined how to handle the report volume pertaining to this case, about which the parties were conferring at the time the defendants filed the Motion, but the Department can commit that the Attorney General will not release that volume to the public, if he does at all, before Friday, January 10, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. The Special Counsel will not transmit that volume to the Attorney General before 1:00 p.m. on January 7, 2025. The Government will file a response to the defendants’ Motion no later than January 7, 2025, at 7:00 p.m.

Update: Aileen Cannon has enjoined DOJ from releasing the report at all. This wildly exceeds her authority and makes it more likely that it’ll come out under Presidential immunity.

Meanwhile, David Weiss plans to release a report under the same authority some time after Wednesday.