Judge Cannon blocks Jack Smith report release

A Florida federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump blocked the public release of a final report by former special counsel Jack Smith on his prosecution of Trump for retaining classified documents after leaving the White House at his Mar-a-Lago club and for blocking efforts to retrieve them.

Judge Aileen Cannon, in her order, cited her July 2024 ruling that Smith was not legally appointed as special counsel, which led to her dismissing the criminal case against Trump, as the key reason she said that Volume II of his final report on the case should not be made public.

Smith had obtained a grand jury indictment of Trump on charges related to those documents in June 2023, more than two years after Trump ended his first term in the White House.

Cannon also on Monday rejected a request by Trump’s two co-defendants in the case to have Smith’s report destroyed.

In her order permanently blocking the release of that report, Cannon blasted Smith for his “brazen stratagem” of compiling evidence and other material obtained during his investigation and “compiling it into a final report” to the attorney general after she ruled his appointment as special counsel violated the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Smith had taken those actions while appealing the judge’s dismissal of the criminal case against Trump. The Department of Justice dropped that appeal after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Cannon, in her ruling Monday, said releasing Smith’s report “would cause irreparable damage to former defendants from disclosure of non-public” material that was exchanged between Smith’s prosecution team and defense lawyers, which involved “still-contested grand jury and privilege concerns.”

“And it would contravene basic notions of fairness and justice in the process, where no adjudication of guilt has been reached following initiation of criminal charges,” Cannon wrote in her order in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

“There is the matter of manifest injustice to the former defendants that would result from disclosure of Volume II,” she wrote.

“Special Counsel Smith, acting without lawful authority, obtained an indictment in this action and initiated proceedings that resulted in a final order of dismissal of all charges. As a result, the former defendants in this case, like any other defendant in this situation, still enjoy the presumption of innocence held sacrosanct in our constitutional order.”

Trump’s co-defendants in the case,…