President Biden must order the release Jack Smith's full report now

Anything less is dangerous, inexcusable, and deeply unfair to those who gave evidence, worked on the cases, and sat on grand juries.

Both volumes of Jack Smith’s final report must be made public. Joe Biden should order the Justice Department to publish it without delay.

Volume One describes the evidence that Donald Trump led an insurrection that culminated in the attack on the Capitol on January 6^th. Attorney General Garland has indicated he plans to release that report.

Volume Two focuses on the criminal mishandling of public documents. Garland says he will not release that because related cases are still pending against two of Trump’s employees. Please. Yes, Attorney General’s focus on the little guys led to the largest investigation in the Department’s history and the arrest of more than a thousand people for their role on January 6^th. The Department even obtained a number of important convictions of those who led the violence that day. But Garland’s continued efforts to get the little guys means all he can do now about Mr. Trump is release part of a report. Has he learned nothing?

Evidence photo of boxes allegedly containing classified documents in a bathroom at Mar-A-Lago. Photo Credit: DOJ

Drop the charges on Nauta and De Oliveira, the two Trump employees who followed the boss’s orders and shuffled the boxes around. The charges are going to get dropped anyway on January 20^th. It serves no interest, and certainly not justice, to pretend that this won’t just go away in a few weeks. Like the January 6th case, delay and a focus on the little guys let the big guy off. At least salvage the report.

Keeping the contents of the report a secret is inexcusable and dangerous. Let’s focus on the danger. Classified documents contain national secrets and protect the lives of brave Americans who are involved in gathering data around the world. They also protect the lives of brave foreigners whose nations share intelligence with us. Our allies make decisions about what to share based on how we treat the information they give us. Similarly, they make decisions about how to evaluate the information we share with them, in part, based on how careful we are with the chain of data. Individual lives, American foreign relations, and the value and the security of our national intelligence are at stake.

And what is the excuse on offer for not releasing the report? It is nothing more than the pretense that the prosecution of two Trump employees will continue. Are the lives of our agents and informants doing dangerous work around the world less important that a few more weeks of pretending the cases against the two Trump employees are actually going to move forward when Trump is President? Is this feeble excuse really more important than helping Congress and the American people and our allies understand what the incoming President does with confidential and classified documents? It is not.

President Biden, if these arguments don’t move the needle for you, please consider this: More than a thousand good people worked hard on these cases. Investigators, court clerks, attorneys, witnesses. Ordinary citizens sat in grand juries to weigh the evidence. They took this work seriously. They did what was required of them even, at times, in the face of threats and intimidation. I know you care about this, and you care about those people. But your term is ending, and the incoming administration is determined to re-write history and paint all of this work as a politically motivated abuse of power. It is unfair to all those who participated in this work to do anything less than everything in your power to share what you know with the public before it is too late.