Attorney General Merrick Garland will release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the 2020 election interference case against President-elect Trump, according to a court filing.

The Department of Justice told the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Wednesday that Garland intends to release Volume One of Smith’s report to Congress, which covers the allegations that Trump attempted to illegally undo the results of the 2020 presidential election.

However, Garland will not release Volume Two, which covers the classified documents case against Trump, as two defendants in that case still face criminal proceedings. 

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates. 

The decision by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to end Facebook’s work with third-party fact-checkers and ease some of its content restrictions is a potentially ‘transformative’ moment for the platform, experts said, but one that is unlikely to shield the company from liability in ongoing court proceedings.

The updates were announced by Zuckerberg, who said in a video that the previous content restrictions used on Facebook and Instagram — which were put into place after the 2016 elections — had ‘gone too far’ and allowed for too much political bias from outside fact-checkers.

Meta will now replace that system with a ‘Community Notes’-style program, similar to the approach taken by social media platform X, he said. X is owned by Elon Musk, the co-director of the planned Department of Government Efficiency.

‘We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.’

The news was praised by President-elect Donald Trump, who told Fox News Digital that he thought Meta’s presentation ‘was excellent.’  ‘They have come a long way,’ Trump said.

Still, it is unlikely to ease the legal liability for Meta, which in recent months has been hit with the possibility of a multibillion-dollar class action lawsuit stemming from a privacy scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. 

The Supreme Court in November rejected Meta’s effort to block the lawsuit, leaving in place an appellate court ruling that allowed the class action suit to move forward. 

Meta has also been the target of multiple Republican-led investigations in Congress. Republicans on the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government probed Meta’s activity and communication with the federal government and the Biden administration last year as part of a broader investigation into alleged censorship. 

The platform also came under scrutiny by the House Oversight Committee in August, as part of an investigation into claims that the platform suppressed information about the July 13 assassination attempt of Trump. 

Combined, these factors make it unlikely that Meta will see its legal problems go away anytime soon, law professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley told Fox News Digital in an interview.

‘Facebook is now looking at a tough patch ahead,’ he said. ‘Not only do the Republicans carry both houses of Congress as well as the White House, but there is ongoing litigation in the social media case in Texas.’

Additionally, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is also unlikely to be sympathetic to the views of Meta in any case centered on First Amendment protections and rights to free speech.

The House investigations and litigation have both forced more of Meta’s actions into public view— something Turley said expects to come under further scrutiny in the discovery process in Missouri v. Biden, a case that centers on allegations of political censorship.

‘That discovery is still revealing new details,’ Turley said. ‘So Meta understood that in the coming months, more details would be forthcoming on its censorship program.’

Still, he said, this ‘could be a transformative moment,’ Turley said. 

‘And an alliance of Zuckerberg with [Elon] Musk could turn the tide in this fight over free speech,’ Turley said. ‘And as one of Zuckerberg’s most vocal critics  I welcome him to this fight.’

President-elect Trump on Wednesday morning filed an emergency petition to the United States Supreme Court in an effort to block his sentencing in New York v. Trump. 

Judge Juan Merchan set Trump’s sentencing in New York v. Trump for Jan. 10 after a jury found the now-president-elect guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree, stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and has appealed the ruling but was rejected last week by Merchan. 

‘President Trump’s legal team filed an emergency petition with the United States Supreme Court, asking the Court to correct the unjust actions by New York courts and stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt,’ Trump spokesman and incoming White House communications director Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital. 

‘The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Constitution, and established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed.’ 

Cheung said the ‘American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the remaining Witch Hunts.’ 

He added: ‘We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.’

Trump’s lawyers, in its petition to the high court, said it should ‘immediately order a stay of pending criminal proceedings in the Supreme Court of New York County, New York, pending the final resolution of President Trump’s interlocutory appeal raising questions of Presidential immunity, including in this Court if necessary.’ 

‘The Court should also enter, if necessary, a temporary administrative stay while it considers this stay application,’ the filing states. 

Trump attorneys also argued that New York prosecutors erroneously admitted extensive evidence relating to official presidential acts during trial, ignoring the high court’s ruling on presidential immunity. 

The Supreme Court, earlier this year, ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution related to official presidential acts. 

Trump’s legal team is arguing Merchan should not be permitted to move any further, and said their appeal on the ruling ‘will ultimately result in the dismissal of the District Attorney’s politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the very beginning, centered around the wrongful actions and false claims of a disgraced, disbarred serial-liar former attorney, violated President Trump’s due process rights, and had no merit.’ 

‘In the meantime, the New York trial court lacks authority to impose sentence and judgment on President Trump—or conduct any further criminal proceedings against him—until the resolution of his underlying appeal raising substantial claims of Presidential immunity, including by review in this Court if necessary,’ the filing states. ‘As discussed herein, this Court should order an immediate stay of criminal proceedings against President Trump in the New York trial court, including but not limited to the criminal sentencing hearing scheduled for January 10, 2025, at 9:30 a.m.’ 

New York has to file a written response by Thursday at 10:00 a.m. 

The filing to the United States Supreme Court comes after a judge in New York on Tuesday denied Trump’s motion to stay the Jan. 10 sentencing, which is currently set for Friday, Jan. 10, at 9:30 a.m.  

Merchan set the sentencing date last week but said he will not sentence the president-elect to prison. 

Merchan wrote in his decision that he is not likely to ‘impose any sentence of incarceration,’ but rather a sentence of an ‘unconditional discharge,’ which means there would be no punishment imposed. 

Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States on Jan. 20. 

Trump has maintained his innocence in the case and repeatedly railed against it as an example of ‘lawfare’ promoted by Democrats in an effort to hurt his election efforts ahead of November. 

Fox News’ Shannon Bream and Bill Mears contributed to this report. 

A prominent fact-checking organization used by Facebook to moderate political content reacted to news that it will revamp its fact-checking to better avoid bias with an article outlining its disappointment and disagreement with the move. 

‘Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed to first learn through media reports and a press release about the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking Partnership of which Lead Stories has been a part since 2019,’ Lead Stories editor Maarten Schenk wrote on Tuesday in response to an announcement from Meta that it would be significantly altering its fact-checking process to ‘restore free expression.’

Lead Stories, a Facebook fact checker employing several former CNN alumni including Alan Duke and Ed Payne, has become one of the more prominent fact checkers used by Facebook in recent years. 

Fox News Digital first reported on Tuesday that Meta is ending its fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to ‘restore free expression’ across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have ‘gone too far.’ 

‘After Trump first got elected in 2016 the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,’ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message on Tuesday. ‘We tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S..’

‘What political bias?’ the article from Lead Stories asks before explaining that it is ‘disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse the organizations in Meta’s U.S. third-party fact checking program of being ‘too politically biased.’’

‘Especially since one of the requirements Meta imposed for being part of a partnership included being a verified signatory of the IFCN’s Code of Principles, which explicitly requires a ‘commitment to non-partisanship and fairness,’’ the article states. ‘In all the years we have been part of the partnership, we or the IFCN never received any complaints from Meta about any political bias, so we were quite surprised by this statement.’

Meta said in its announcement that it will move toward a system of moderation that is more in line with Community Notes at X, which Lead Stories seemed to take issue with. 

‘However, In our experience and that of others, Community Notes on X are often slow to appear, sometimes downright inaccurate and unlikely to appear on controversial posts because of an inability to reach agrement [sic] or consensus among users,’ Lead Stories wrote. ‘Ultimately, the truth doesn’t care about consensus or agreement: the shape of the Earth stays the same even if social media users can’t agree on it.’

Lead Stories added that Community Notes is ‘entirely non-transparent about its contributors: readers are left guessing about their bias, funding, allegiance, sources or expertise and there is no way for appeals or corrections’ while ‘fact-checkers, on the other hand, are required by the IFCN to be fully transparent about who they are, who funds them and what methodology and sources they use to come to their conclusions.’

Schenk added, ‘Fact-checking is about adding verified and sourced information so people can make up their mind about what to believe. It is an essential part of free speech.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Duke said that Lead Stories plans to press on.

‘Lead Stories will continue, although we have to reduce our output with no support from Meta,’ Duke said. ‘We are global, with most of our business now outside the USA. We publish in eight languages other than English, which is what will be affected.’

Some conservatives took to social media to blast Lead Stories over their article lamenting the change at Meta after years of conservative pushback to Facebook’s fact checkers as a whole on key news stories, including the suppression of the bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.  

‘Of all the fact-checking companies, Lead Stories is the worst,’ British American conservative writer Ian Haworth posted on X. ‘Couldn’t be happier that they’ll soon be circling the drain.’

The executive director of Politifact, a fact checker also used by Facebook, issued a strong rebuke of Zuckerberg following Tuesday’s announcement. 

‘If Meta is upset it created a tool to censor, it should look in the mirror,’ Aaron Sharockman said in a statement he posted on X following Zuckerberg’s announcement.

Sharockman fumed, ‘The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation program in the United States has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision could not be less subtle.’

He threw back Zuckerberg’s accusation of political bias, stating that Meta’s platforms, not the fact-checkers, were the entities that actually censored posts. 

‘Let me be clear: the decision to remove or penalize a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not fact-checkers. They created the rules,’ Sharockman said.

At the conclusion of his Lead Stories post, Schenk wrote, ‘Even though we are obviously disappointed by this news, Lead Stories wishes to thank the many people at Meta we have worked with over the past years and we will continue our fact checking mission. To paraphrase the slogan on our main page: ‘Just because it’s now trending without a fact-checking label still won’t make it true.’’

Fox News Digital’s Gabriel Hays and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.