The U.S. Department of Justice is firmly against the release of the second volume from former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigations into former President Donald Trump.

In December 2025, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, issued two significant rulings concerning the ongoing dispute over this report. The controversy has lingered for quite some time.

In her initial order, Judge Cannon rejected intervention efforts from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the transparency-focused nonprofit American Oversight. However, in a subsequent order, she allowed for the possibility that “any former or current party to this action” could request to intervene or seek appropriate relief by a specified deadline.

In a succinct three-page document, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami expressed alignment with Trump and his former co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, arguing that Smith’s report should not be disclosed.

The Department of Justice’s response stated, “Jack Smith’s investigation was unlawful from its inception. Smith not only weaponized the Department of Justice against a leading presidential candidate in pursuit of an antidemocratic end, but he did so without legal authority and while targeting constitutionally protected activity. Put simply, Smith’s tenure was marked by illegality and impropriety, and under no circumstance should his work product be given the full weight and authority of this Department.”

In formal terms, aside from telling the judge they agree with her about the authority – or lack thereof – under which Smith was operating, the DOJ is now saying the second volume of the report is “an internal deliberative communication that is privileged and confidential and should not be released outside the Department of Justice.”

The motion goes on to say the DOJ “cannot provide” Cannon “with additional assurance regarding the scope and adequacy” of grand jury materials that appear in Smith’s second volume.

“[C]urrent [DOJ] counsel has only secondhand information about the process by which Smith made redactions,” the motion continues. “Current [DOJ] counsel was not involved in Smith’s investigation, and the [DOJ] does not believe that a line-by-line analysis of Smith’s report, and the underlying discovery and grand jury materials, is warranted.”

Here, the DOJ makes explicit reference to the court’s original order denying the release of the second volume of the Smith report.

While the criminal case against Trump petered out due to Cannon’s novel use of the U.S. Constitution’s Appointments Clause in July 2024, the case against Waltine Nauta, Trump’s valet, and Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager, continued for a while.

In January 2025, Cannon used the then-ongoing prosecutions to justify keeping the second volume under judicial lock and key. Cannon’s order also “directed the parties to file a Joint Status Report within thirty days of the conclusion of all appellate proceedings and/or any continued proceedings” at the district court level.

The DOJ’s latest filing also reiterates the arguments made in that joint status report – which was eventually filed in March 2025.

From that months-old status report, at length:

The Court should also decline any invitation to conduct an in camera review of the grand jury materials related to this prosecution. The Attorney General has not ordered the release of Volume II, nor has any court of competent jurisdiction ordered the Department of Justice to release Volume II. Unless and until either of those contingencies comes to fruition, it would be premature for the Court to engage in a Rule 6(e) analysis.

Finally, the DOJ’s motion ends with a broadside against the entirety of the Mar-a-Lago documents case from inception to the present day.

“Especially when considering the extraordinary unfairness and prejudice that would fall to former defendants President Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira, including the release of information over which President Trump has assertions of attorney-client privilege, it is the position of the Attorney General and this Department that release of Volume II is unjustified,” the filing concludes. “The illicit product of an unlawful investigation and prosecution belongs in the dustbin of history. The United States will leave it there.”