The U.S. Department of Justice is asking the judge overseeing the lingering fallout from the Mar-a-Lago documents case to block public release of the second volume of Donald Trump-related reporting compiled by the former special counsel.
In a short filing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, prosecutors said they agree with Trump and his former co-defendants—Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira—that the report should remain confidential.
The filing characterizes the second volume as an internal, deliberative Justice Department document that should not be released outside the department. It also argues the court should not order further scrutiny over what grand jury information may be contained in the volume, saying current DOJ counsel did not participate in Smith’s work and lacks firsthand knowledge of how redactions were made. The government adds that it does not believe a line-by-line review of the report, discovery, and grand jury material is necessary.
The DOJ’s position builds on Judge Cannon’s earlier handling of requests to intervene from outside groups, including the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and American Oversight. Cannon denied those intervention bids, while noting that former or current parties could still seek relief by the court’s stated deadline.
The filing also revisits the procedural history that kept the second volume under seal. After Cannon dismissed Trump’s case in July 2024 using a then-novel interpretation involving the Constitution’s appointments requirements, the prosecutions of Nauta and De Oliveira continued for a period. In January 2025, Cannon cited those ongoing matters as a reason not to release the second volume and directed the parties to submit a joint status report after appellate and any remaining district court proceedings concluded. That status report was later filed in March 2025, arguing it would be premature for the court to conduct a grand-jury-disclosure analysis unless and until the attorney general ordered release or a competent court required it.
In its conclusion, the DOJ says publication would create “extraordinary unfairness and prejudice” to Trump and the former co-defendants, including potentially exposing information Trump claims is protected by attorney-client privilege. The filing ends with a blunt message: in the department’s view, releasing Volume II is unjustified, and the document “belongs in the dustbin of history.”
