U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida issued an order Tuesday temporarily preventing former Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing a report into the so-called “documents” case against President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump’s legal team filed an emergency motion on Monday night in the U.S. district and appellate court to stop Smith.
Cannon’s order Tuesday read, in part:
Pending resolution of the Emergency Motion filed in the Eleventh Circuit and/or any further direction from the Eleventh Circuit, Attorney General Garland, the Department of Justice, Special Counsel Smith, all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d)(2), are TEMPORARILY ENJOINED from (a) releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice, or (b) otherwise releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions in the Final Report or in drafts thereof.
The order against Smith’s report will be in effect until three days after the Eleventh Circuit’s decision, Cannon wrote.
Smith issued a similar report in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., in October in what critics said was a deliberate effort at interfering in the presidential election by maligning Trump.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
