President Donald Trump's drive to keep Jack Smith's report on his alleged illegal activity secret could be undone by his own Justice Department's push to release recordings of former President Joe Biden.Two transparency groups filed briefs with a federal appeals court this week, asking it to lift the order blocking the public release of former special counsel Jack Smith's report on Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents.The groups — American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University — argue the appeals court has both the power and the obligation to act, according to reply briefs filed in the 11th Circuit.Court records show the report has been blocked from public release since January 2025, when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, sitting in Florida, barred the Justice Department from releasing it to protect the fair-trial rights of Trump's co-defendants, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. The criminal case collapsed weeks later — but Cannon made the order permanent in February 2026 anyway.Earlier this year, according to court filings, Trump's Justice Department reversed a years-long policy. It moved to release audio recordings of Biden's private conversations with his biographer, framing the move as a push for government transparency. Trump personally pushed to make the recordings available as a part of his years-long smear campaign against the former president."I'd like to see it," Trump said at a May Cabinet meeting. "The man was grossly incompetent."Biden sued to block the release. On July 21, according to CBS News, a federal appeals court in Washington denied his request in a 2-1 ruling, finding he had not shown that privacy laws barred the recordings from disclosure."If the government does not oppose that motion, and the court grants it, that information, no matter its public import, will remain forever hidden because there is no avenue for a third party to challenge the order," American Oversight wrote in its reply brief, calling the Biden case "curiously familiar" and turning the ruling directly against Trump's injunction.The Washington court had also found that the public holds a "weighty" and "significant" interest in scrutinizing special counsel investigations — even when no charges are brought, American Oversight noted. The group argued that interest is even stronger when charges were filed, and a prosecution proceeded before the case collapsed.The Knight First Amendment Institute separately noted in its own reply brief that neither Trump's legal team nor the Justice Department has attempted to argue that the public's right of access has been overcome — and that silence, the group argued, is enough for the court to rule against them.The 11th Circuit now holds the question.