With less than two weeks until U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Justice Department announced Wednesday that outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland will release the portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report that delves into the Republican’s attempt to overturn his election defeat in the United States 2020 – an effort that culminated in the violent storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The full report Smith sent Garland on Tuesday is in two parts – one for each federal case, which Smith took on in 2022 but later dropped due to Trump’s victory in November. Volume one is about election subversion, and volume two is about the ex-president’s alleged misuse of classified materials, which led to a raid on Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence.

“The Attorney General intends to make Volume One available to Congress and the public in accordance with 28 CFR § 600.9(c) and to promote the public interest in informing a peer branch and the public about this important matter,” the DOJ stated in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

The filing refers to an attempt by Trump’s co-defendants in the second case – valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira – to block release of the report. The DOJ said: “To avoid any risk of prejudice to defendants Nauta and De Oliveira, the Attorney General, upon the recommendation of the Special Counsel, has decided not to publicly release Volume Two while the criminal cases against the defendants are still pending.”

“The second volume will initially be made available for in-camera review only to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, provided they have requested and agreed not to publicly release information from volume two,” the DOJ added . “This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership informed about an important matter within the Department while protecting the interests of the defendants.”

The filing does not indicate when Garland will release volume one. The revelations of his plans came a day after Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — who dismissed the classified documents case last July, leading to an appeal — ordered the Justice Department to withhold Smith’s final report, despite doubts about her There is authority to do so.

Government watchdog groups and ethics experts have criticized Garland for not moving quickly and forcefully enough against Trump over his various alleged crimes – which critics say could have prevented his looming return to office.

The president-elect is scheduled to be sworn in on January 20th. His lawyers claimed in a Monday letter to Garland that releasing Smith’s report “would violate the Presidential Transition Act and the doctrine of presidential immunity.”

Trump’s lawyers have seen a draft of Smith’s report and previewed it in the letter to Garland, writing, among other things, that “volume one of the draft report falsely asserts, without any jury decision, that President Trump and others ‘an “were engaged in an unprecedented criminal act’.” others had committed ‘criminal behavior’.”

Politicopointed out Wednesday that “Trump welcomed the release of previous special counsel reports, including special counsel Robert Hur’s damning assessment of President Joe Biden.”

The Republican-controlled Senate is already preparing to hold confirmation hearings for Trump nominees, including Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and the president-elect to replace the Biden appointee Garland.

Trump, meanwhile, has said he is considering quickly pardoning his supporters who were charged and convicted in the storming of the U.S. Capitol four years ago. Opponents warned that this was “an affront to our democracy.”