A federal judge in Florida cleared the way today for the Justice Department to soon release a portion of a report written by special counsel Jack Smith detailing the decisions he made in charging President-elect Donald Trump with plotting to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

But in a five-page order, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, ruled that prosecutors and defense lawyers would have to appear before her in court Friday to argue over whether the Justice Department could release to members of Congress the part of Smith’s report dealing with the case she oversaw: the one in which Trump was accused of refusing to return classified documents after he left office.

Under the ruling, the Justice Department would be free to release the part of the report about the election case as early as just after midnight Tuesday. Trump’s lawyers could still ask an appeals court or the Supreme Court to stop that part of Smith’s report from coming out.

Cannon’s order, filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida, was the latest twist in a weeklong battle over the release of the two-volume report, which represents Smith’s final word on the two defunct criminal cases he brought against Trump.

In one of those cases, overseen by Cannon in Florida, Trump was charged with illegally holding on to a trove of state secrets after leaving office in 2021 and then conspiring with two of his aides to obstruct the government’s efforts to retrieve the material. In the other case, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, he was accused of three intersecting conspiracies to illegally maintain his grip on power after losing the presidential race.

The Justice Department has already said that Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to release the volume about the classified documents case privately to congressional leaders, not to the public, because the matter is still active against two aides to Trump who were charged with him as co-defendants.

But lawyers for the co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, expressed concern that lawmakers might leak the contents of the volume.

After Trump won the 2024 election, Smith dropped both cases against him, bowing to a long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits pursuing criminal prosecutions against sitting presidents.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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