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Defense Lawyers Seek to Block Special Counsel Report in Trump Documents Case

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Defense Lawyers Seek to Block Special Counsel Report in Trump Documents Case

Defense lawyers asked both the Justice Department and a federal judge on Monday night to stop the special counsel, Jack Smith, from publicly releasing a report detailing his investigation into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after he left office in 2021.

The two-pronged attempt to block the report’s release arrived as Mr. Trump was only two weeks away from being sworn in for a second term as president. With the case against Mr. Trump already dismissed, the report would essentially be Mr. Smith’s final chance to lay out damaging new details and evidence, if he has any.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in an aggressively worded letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, said they had recently been shown a draft copy of Mr. Smith’s report, calling it an example of the special counsel’s “politically motivated attack” against Mr. Trump. They demanded that Mr. Garland not allow Mr. Smith to make the report public and “remove him promptly” from his post.

“The release of any confidential report prepared by this out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor would be nothing more than a lawless political stunt, designed to politically harm President Trump,” the lawyers wrote. In separate court papers, lawyers for Mr. Trump’s two co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, sought a more direct path toward stopping the release of Mr. Smith’s report. They asked the judge who oversaw the case, Aileen M. Cannon, to issue an emergency order to bar Mr. Smith from making the report public until the case “has reached a final judgment and appellate proceedings are concluded.”

Both attempts to block Mr. Smith could face an uphill battle.

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Mr. Trump’s lawyers have no power to force Mr. Garland to stop the report from coming out, and their letter amounted to little more than a belligerent request. It is also unclear whether Judge Cannon would have the authority to tell the attorney general how to handle a report by a special counsel that he himself appointed, especially when the case is technically out of her hands and in front of an appeals court.

That happened because Judge Cannon threw out the case in its entirety in July, ruling, in the face of decades of precedent, that Mr. Smith had been unlawfully appointed as special counsel. Mr. Smith and his deputies challenged that decision, and it was being considered by a federal appeals court in Atlanta when Mr. Trump won the election in November.

Citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president, Mr. Smith dropped the appeal where Mr. Trump was concerned, effectively ending his role in the case. But he did not drop the appeal against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira, and federal prosecutors in Florida now plan to pursue it when Mr. Smith steps down, likely before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

Mr. Smith has also moved to dismiss the other federal case he brought against Mr. Trump, accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. It remains unclear when Mr. Smith plans to file a report in that case and whether it will accompany the report on the documents prosecution or be contained in a separate document.

The effort by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to block the release of the report was only their latest attempt to kill or push back any legal filings or proceedings that might be embarrassing or damaging to the president-elect.

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Earlier on Monday, a state judge in Manhattan rejected Mr. Trump’s most recent attempt to delay his sentencing on 34 felony charges, saying that the hearing would go on as scheduled on Friday.

Justice Department regulations call for all special counsels to file reports to the attorney general explaining why they filed the charges they did, and why they decided not to file any other charges they might have been considering. The attorney general can then decide whether to release the report to the public.

It remains unclear when Mr. Smith was planning to finish his report in the classified documents case. But the lawyers for Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira said in their court papers that the report was likely to be released “within the next few days.”

Should either or both reports eventually see the light of day, it is possible they will not contain much in the way of new or revelatory information.

The report in the classified documents case could be complicated by the fact that it would likely have to undergo a careful review by the intelligence community for any classified information it contained. The report in the election interference case might not break significant new ground, if only because in October Mr. Smith filed a sprawling, 165-page brief laying out the evidence he planned to offer at trial.

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Still, in their letter to Mr. Garland, Mr. Trump’s lawyers complained that the draft report in the classified documents case said that Mr. Trump had “harbored a ‘criminal design’” and was the “head of the criminal conspiracies” detailed in the indictment. The draft also said, the lawyers wrote, that “Mr. Trump violated multiple federal criminal laws.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers turned the tables on Mr. Smith, accusing him of “unethical” conduct and “improper activities.” Those accusations had possible implications for future retribution against Mr. Smith, given that two of the lawyers who signed the letter to Mr. Garland, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, have been chosen by Mr. Trump to serve in high positions in his Justice Department.While Mr. Garland has not said publicly whether he intends to release either report by Mr. Smith, he has done so in the past with other reports by other special counsels.

In February, for example, Mr. Garland permitted the release of a report by the special counsel Robert K. Hur concerning President Biden’s handling of classified materials after he served as vice president. The report concluded that criminal charges were not warranted, but also offered an unflattering assessment of Mr. Biden’s memory and cognitive capacity in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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