As of now, Attorney General Merrick Garland says he will release the part of Jack Smith’s report about Trump’s actions on January 6, but will not release the report about Trump’s retention of documents.

The Trump team is in court trying to block even that partial, redacted part of Smith’s findings.

But doesn’t the public have the right to know the results of Smith’s investigations. Once Trump is in office, his Justice Department will suppress the report. It will never be released. It may be destroyed.

Jonathan V. Last, editor of The Bulwark, offered a brilliant solution.

Biden should release the entire report, in the service of the public’s right to know. Biden would be criticized by Trump and his acolytes, but that’s nothing new.

As President, Biden has absolute immunity for any actions he takes in his official capacity.

Will Biden play by the new rules or continue to be a nice guy?

Last writes:

I want to talk about all of the Trump insanity. I want to talk about his insistence on “taking” Greenland. And the Panama Canal. And making Canada a U.S. state. And renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

But guess what: Trump wants us to talk about this bs. He’s trying to dominate the news cycle, get attention, and keep the public talking about nonsense instead of the important story.1 So let’s not do that here?2

Instead, let’s talk about Jack Smith’s report. Because Democrats are poised to let Trump win again because they’re still playing by 2015 rules.

This week Trump’s legal team petitioned the attorney general not to release Smith’s report.

The chutzpah of these guys is off the charts. Because they aren’t saying, “The report should not be released.” At least that would be an argument.

No, Trump’s legal rationale is that the decision of whether or not to release the report should rest with . . . the next attorney general.

The icing on the cake is that they’re making this petition to Merrick Garland, who has some personal experience with Republicans denying a sitting Democratic administration the ability to execute governing decisions.

Fork. That. Noise.

Perhaps understanding how silly this petition is, Judge Aileen Cannon came off the bench (so to speak) to try to force Garland not to release the report. She issued an order forbidding the attorney general of the United States from publishing a report that federal regulations authorize him to publish when it’s “in the public interest.”

What authority does Judge Cannon have over the attorney general in this instance? Why is the publication of a government report in Washington under her purview in Florida, especially since, as Kim Wehle points out this morning, the case is no longer in her hands? And, most importantly, Smith’s report covers his two prosecutions and Cannon was formerly overseeing only one of those cases—so on what basis is she enjoining a report that covers another judge’s case in another jurisdiction?

These are questions we don’t need to answer because Cannon has proven herself to be nothing more than a naked political actor. Her conduct has been so egregious that Ty Cobb referred to her yesterday as Trump’s “tool” and said, “He [Trump] gets the results he needs from her.”

Reminder: Ty Cobb is not a resistance lib; he does not have TDS. He’s a conservative Republican who served as Trump’s own White House counsel. When one of the most important Republican lawyers in the country thinks a judge is cartoonishly crooked, that’s saying something.

Now you understand why Trump dispatched his kid and Charlie Kirk to Greenland yesterday for photo ops? Better to focus on a stunt than on Trump’s total corruption of the justice system. 

2. Fear

Why are Trump and Cannon so desperate to prevent the special counsel’s report from coming out? Trump won. He’s going to be president. They’ve gotten everything they wanted.

Perhaps because Trump’s lawyers recently reviewed the final draft of Smith’s report. They’ve seen what’s in it. If it were a nothingburger—or if it was TOTAL EXONERATION—they’d want it public.

Surely that means something?

Smith’s report should be public. As a matter of tradition (all previous special counsel reports were published) and also as a matter of morality. The country should have a permanent record of Trump’s once-allegedly-criminal actions.

But also as a matter of politics. Remember: 2025 is the year of maximum peril. Every day that can be chewed up forcing the administration to fight on a topic they fear is a day they lose in pursuit of their authoritarian agenda. You would not know it from their current posture, but the Democrats are actually the opposition party. They have a duty to oppose Trump, on all fronts, and inflict political pain wherever they can.

It is not clear that the Democratic party, as an organism, understands this reality. And so the final reason for making Smith’s report public by any means necessary is to force Democrats to come to terms with the new rules of American government.

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Government officials are now bound by the law—and only the law. The Republican party has worked hard to create this new order and has spent the last eight years exploiting this dynamic while Democrats have operated under the political arrangements that existed from, roughly speaking, 1974 to 2015.

The law says that Aileen Cannon’s injunction can, at least temporarily, halt the transmission of Jack Smith’s report.

But the law also says that any action a president takes as part of his official duties is, prima facie, legal. This was not formerly the case, but it is now. So if President Biden were to publish the report this afternoon in violation of Judge Cannon’s order, he would do so with total immunity.

Or, if the attorney general were to publish the report, putting himself at risk of being held in contempt of court, he could be pardoned by President Biden. That would all be perfectly above-board.

Yet, amazingly, Biden and Garland seem to still be in 2015 mode. 

This morning Garland made clear, in a Justice Department court filing, that he intends to publish the volume of Jack Smith’s report concerning the insurrection case, but will hold back on the volume relating to the classified documents.3

Which means that, unless President Biden acts, it is unlikely that the public will ever see the section of Smith’s report that pertains to the stolen documents case.4 Garland will not publish the volume related to that case. Which probably means that this second volume will never see the light of day.

Can you believe this? Can you believe that, in 2025, Biden and Garland are still operating under Queensberry rules, where nonbinding precedents are controlling and everyone stays hands-off the process? That they are willing to let Trump off the hook again?

Let’s be totally and completely clear: President Biden should publish both volumes of Smith’s report before leaving office. Doing so would serve the public interest and—most importantly—would be legal. Because, as an official action of a sitting president, it falls under the Supreme Court’s blanket of immunity.

Joe Biden didn’t make these rules; but like it or not, the country is now governed by them.

Unilateral disarmament is for suckers and hippies.