A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the Justice Department cannot share special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents report with members of Congress.
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon extended the hold she had placed blocking the DOJ from sharing with four lawmakers Smith's report on his probe into President Donald Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents.
"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 in an order published Tuesday, the day after Trump returned to office.
Cannon, who dismissed the classified documents case in July, accused prosecutors representing the position of former Attorney General Merrick Garland of misleading her at a court hearing Friday, CNN reported.
The judge wrote that prosecutors play a "special role" in the criminal justice system, and Garland's attorneys were not "faithful to that obligation."
Before Trump was sworn in Monday, Garland sought to share Smith's report privately with leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees on the condition they did not disclose what was in it.
Lawyers for Trump's former co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, argued that even limited disclosure could prejudice them if their cases ever went to trial, CNN reported.
"The bare wishes of one Attorney General with 'limited time' in office to comply with a nonexistent 'historical practice' of releasing Special Counsel reports in the pendency of criminal proceedings is not a valid reason," Cannon wrote.
"And surely it does not override the obvious constitutional interests of Defendants in this action and this Court's duty to protect the integrity of this proceeding."
Cannon also expressed doubt whether the four lawmakers could keep the report's contents secret.
"There is no 'historical practice' of providing Special Counsel reports to Congress, even on a limited basis, pending conclusion of criminal proceedings. In fact, there is not one instance of this happening until now," Cannon wrote.
"Given the very strong public interest in this criminal proceeding and the absence of any enforceable limits on the proposed disclosure, there is certainly a reasonable likelihood that review by members of Congress as proposed will result in public dissemination of all or part of Volume II."
Cannon dismissed the case on the grounds that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed. That ruling is on appeal, leaving the possibility that the charges could be revived.