Federal prosecutors said on Wednesday that they planned to hold off on releasing a portion of a report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, detailing his investigation into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s refusal to give back a trove of classified documents he took from the White House after leaving office.
But if the Justice Department can overcome a court order blocking the report from coming out, prosecutors said they plan to release a separate volume concerning Mr. Smith’s other investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
The department’s decisions — laid out in a filing to a federal appeals court in Atlanta — brought a measure of clarity to what amounts to the final chapter of Mr. Smith’s work, which began more than two years ago and led to the first federal indictments of a former president in American history.
With all of the charges against Mr. Trump now dismissed, the two-volume report — only part of which may now see the light of day — was meant to be Mr. Smith’s valedictory word on his efforts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for a remarkable array of criminal allegations.
The Justice Department’s steps on Wednesday almost certainly meant that the incoming Trump administration will get to decide whether to release the documents portion of Mr. Smith’s report. And that seemed unlikely: Mr. Trump’s own lawyers have been fighting its disclosure.
The battle over the report had been building since Mr. Trump was re-elected in November. His victory prompted Mr. Smith to drop both of the cases — one being heard in Florida, the other in Washington — under a longstanding Justice Department policy that prohibits pursuing criminal cases against sitting presidents.
But under separate Justice Department regulations, Mr. Smith is still obliged to file a report about his work to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, explaining why he brought the charges he did and why he did not bring other charges he may have been considering.
In their court filing on Wednesday, prosecutors acknowledged that publicly releasing the volume about the classified documents case was legally problematic. That was because, even though Mr. Trump’s role in the matter has ended, the case is still active with regard to his two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, and any new revelations about it could harm their efforts to defend themselves….