dpA lockdown on the evidence Special Counsel Jack Smith gathered has made it fraught territory any time he speaks under oath about the now-dismissed classified documents case against President Donald Trump.
In his previous testimony and again on Tuesday, Smith says he won’t answer in detail about evidence or findings captured in his final report on the investigation.
That’s because Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw the Trump case in Ft. Pierce, Florida, put a gag order on any sharing of the details of that report, commonly referred to as Volume II of the Smith special counsel report. The volume hasn’t been released publicly.
For context: The lockdown on Volume II is still working its way through the federal court system, with an appellate court set to review Cannon’s anti-transparency decision in the coming months.
The topic of how much Smith can say has affected others who worked on the case too in recent weeks.
Last week, five current and former FBI agents and analysts asked Cannon for help understanding what they can and can’t talk about related to the decision to search Mar-a-Lago in 2022. The agents and analysts have been sought out as witnesses in a new investigation by the Justice Department that looks back at the search.
Smith, the FBI officials and other former prosecutors who worked on the Trump probe have tried to get guidance as well from the current Justice Department — now led by Trump’s private lawyer in the classified documents case, Todd Blanche.
The DOJ has been scant in its responses, leaving several of the former Mar-a-Lago case investigators risking possible obstruction if they were to be too cautious in what they share.
Smith, however, has tried to address the issue as much as he can, defending his decision to charge Trump in the case.
