Once more, former special counsel Jack Smith has reached out to Congress, expressing his willingness to openly defend his legal actions against President Donald Trump. However, there are uncertainties surrounding what he can reveal about the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, as U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has yet to make the investigation’s report public.

On Thursday, Smith addressed a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. The letter indicates Smith’s readiness to address and rectify “many mischaracterizations” concerning his investigations into the January 6 incident and the Mar-a-Lago affair involving Trump, suggesting this be done in “open hearings.”

In a recent discussion, Smith refuted claims from the president and his supporters, labeling accusations that he targeted Trump for political motives as “absolutely ludicrous.”

Regarding the Mar-a-Lago investigation, which was notably dismissed by Judge Cannon due to her ruling that Smith’s appointment was unlawful, Smith stated they had substantial evidence indicating that Trump deliberately kept classified documents and hindered their retrieval by the government.

Smith elaborated, “There was obstructive evidence, like publicly claiming ownership of the documents or similar statements, asserting a right to retain them. Evidence of refusing to return the documents, even when the government sought their return before launching a criminal probe, supports proving willfulness.”

Whether Smith can say more than that, according to his Covington & Burling lawyers, remains to be seen, because that the last thing they want is for him to be “punished.”

“He is prepared to answer questions about the Special Counsel’s investigation and prosecution, but requires assurance from the Department of Justice that he will not be punished for doing so,” the letter said. “To that end, Mr. Smith needs guidance from the Department of Justice regarding federal grand jury secrecy requirements and authorization on the matters he may speak to regarding, among other things, Volume II of the Final Report of the Special Counsel, which is not publicly available.”

As Law&Crime has reported, Cannon, a Trump appointee, issued an injunction in January that blocked the release of Volume II, given that Trump’s former co-defendants, valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira, still had pending appeals.

Although those appeals in those scuttled cases were dismissed at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February, the injunction remains in place to the present day, despite repeat efforts by intervening groups — the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight — to undo the block.

Multiple reminders about the groups’ attempted interventions have not moved Cannon to act. That inaction led another federal judge to reject the New York Times’ Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain Volume II.

Most recently, both the Knight Institute and American Oversight sought writs of mandamus at the 11th Circuit in late September, asking the appellate court to force Cannon to rule on whether or not to lift the injunction, to at least open the door to an expedited appeal.

The Knight Institute supported its arguments by calling Cannon’s “six-month delay” — and counting — “manifestly unreasonable” and an affront to its “constitutional right of access to judicial records” that the public has a right to know about, given that Smith’s Mar-a-Lago report “addresses allegations of grave criminal conduct by the nation’s highest-ranking official.”

To date, the 11th Circuit has not acted either.