Before now-former Special Counsel Jack Smith resigned, he had quite a hard time in the courtroom against President-elect Donald Trump's co-defendants, who made a similar request to Judge Aileen Cannon that the incoming president did.
According to The Hill, the two co-defendants in the case asked the judge to stay the release of Smith's final report, which if granted, would likely keep it under wraps until Trump is in office.
Trump, along with the co-defendants, have worked overtime to attempt to block the release of the final report on the election interference probe.
Valet Walt Nauta and property manager Carlos de Oliveira were denied their request by an appeals court.
Though the two men were denied by the appeals court, the court left in place a ruling by Cannon that prevented the release of the report for three days after the appeals court.
The Hill reported:
Smith’s team before dawn filed a motion asking Cannon to waive the three-day period, likewise asking the 11th Circuit to override that directive from the lower court.
It added:
But lawyers for Trump’s two co-defendants wrote Friday that in failing to address the three-day waiting period in Cannon’s ruling and directing prosecutors to challenge that timeline with the Florida judge, the appeals court was greenlighting additional proceedings before Cannon.
Attorneys for the co-defendants fired back.
"The Government literally asked the Eleventh Circuit to vacate the January 7, 2025 Order, and the Eleventh Circuit refused to do so. For practical purposes, Defendants argument in the Eleventh Circuit that the matter belongs initially in this Court prevailed," they wrote.
They added, "This matter was properly left to the sound discretion of this Court."
Part of the strategy by the two co-defendants is to run out the clock to allow Trump and his incoming Department of Justice to quash the case completely.
Once the case is fully dropped, any notion of the report being released will instantly go away.
Over the weekend, in a bombshell announcement, Jack Smith resigned from his position.
According to Politico, his resignation announcement came in a footnote of a legal filing.
