Corrupt Judge permanently bars DoJ from releasing Jack Smith's report on Trump documents
In a ruling on Monday, US federal judge #Aileen #Cannon permanently prohibited the justice department from releasing a report put together by former special counsel Jack Smith related to classified documents Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago.
Cannon, based in Florida, had previously dismissed the case against Trump in mid-2024 because, she concluded, Smith had not been properly appointed to a role as special counsel.
Smith continued to prepare a final report based on what he and his team had collected in the investigation, Cannon wrote in her ruling Monday.
“To say this chronology represents, at a minimum, a concerning breach of the spirit of the Dismissal Order is an understatement, if not an outright violation of it,” she wrote of Smith continuing to create a report.
Releasing the report would be a “manifest injustice” for the defendants, since the case didn’t go to a jury, she wrote. “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.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/feb/23/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-tariffs-epstein-immigration-latest-news-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
#Jack #Smith, the former justice department special counsel who led the aborted federal prosecution of Donald Trump,
told a congressional committee that he never spoke to #Joe #Biden about his cases,
according to the transcript of a depositionreleased on Wednesday.
In his behind-closed-doors testimony to the House judiciary committee earlier this month,
Smith defended the charges he brought against Trump for allegedly possessing #classified #documents
and attempting to #overturn the 2020 #election,
while warning of the consequences of allowing election #meddling to go unpunished.
“Theoretically, what happens if there is election interference and the people who are responsible for that are not held accountable?”
Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal asked.
🔥“It becomes the new norm,
and that becomes how we … conduct elections,”
Smith replied, according to the transcript.
“And so the toll on our democracy,
if you had to describe that, what would that be?”
the congresswoman asked.
💥“Catastrophic,” Smith said.
Trump and his Republican allies have alleged that the former special counsel was a key figure in a justice department that Biden had “weaponized” against his predecessor.
The Republican-controlled House judiciary committee earlier this year heard testimony from one of Smith’s top deputies,
and months later subpoenaed the former special counsel for private testimony.
Smith had offered to voluntarily testify in public, as special counsels typically do.
In questioning from Democratic congressman Dan Goldman,
👉Smith said he operated without interference from #Merrick #Garland, the attorney general who appointed him, or any other top justice department officials.
“Did President Biden ever give you any instructions about what you should or should not do related to these investigations?”
Goldman asked.
💥“No,” Smith replied,
later specifying he had not spoken to Biden about his cases in any way.
Smith was appointed in November 2022, and quickly brought the two federal cases against Trump, who also faced state-level charges of election interference in Georgia, and falsifying business records in New York.
While he would later be convicted of #34 #felonies in the Manhattan case,
neither of Trump’s federal indictments went to trial before he returned to office following the 2024 election,
after which Smith, in line with justice department policy, dropped the charges.
The election-interference case was slowed by pretrial motions, including a supreme court ruling that gave presidents #immunity for official acts and forced Smith to make changes to his case.
The classified-documents case was hampered by rulings from Florida judge #Aileen #Cannon, who at one point dismissed Smith’s indictment.
Smith authored a report into his prosecutions, and the portion covering the election interference case was released prior to Biden leaving office.
🆘However, Cannon has barred the chapter discussing the classified-documents charges from being made public, though Democrats on the judiciary committee have asked her to reverse her decision.
At the outset of the hearing, an attorney for Smith, Peter Koski,
told the committee the former special counsel had received an email from the justice department advising him to avoid talking about his evidence in the case because of Cannon’s ruling.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/31/jack-smith-house-testimony?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
"I’m sure she’ll take it under consideration and look at it seriously. …
Trump hasn’t made a secret about the retribution that he is asking some of his U.S. attorneys to take against his perceived enemies.
It is an extraordinary request, but maybe this is an extraordinary situation."
— Professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law,
in comments given to Law.com,
concerning a request made by ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s lawyers
to Chief District Judge Cecilia Altonaga of the Southern District of Florida,
👉to block Judge #Aileen #Cannon from hearing the case.
The letter submitted by Brennan’s lawyers to Altonaga reads, in relevant part:
“The United States attorney’s efforts to funnel this investigation to the judge who issued this string of rulings that consistently favored President Trump’s positions in previous litigations should be seen for what it is.”
https://abovethelaw.com/2025/12/lawyers-try-to-bench-aileen-cannon-from-case-arguing-shes-been-in-trumps-corner-one-too-many-times/
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Federal Judge #Aileen M. #Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July,
⚠️failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.
Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University.
At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges.
Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”
⭐️A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.
It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.
❌In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for #Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker #Leonard #Leo helped organize.
https://www.propublica.org/article/judge-aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case-travel-disclosures
Special counsel appeals Trump classified documents case dismissal
Jack Smith argued trial judge Aileen Cannon erred in tossing the charges on grounds he was illegally appointed
Special counsel prosecutors asked a federal appeals court on Monday to
❇️ reinstate Donald Trump’s criminal case over his retention of classified documents,
❇️ arguing the trial judge was wrong to toss the charges on grounds that the prosecution team’s appointment violated the US constitution.
The submission of the filing by the special counsel, #Jack #Smith, marks the start of what is likely to be a protracted legal battle that is likely to reach the US #supreme #court and with it, the viability of not just the documents case but Trump’s criminal case in Washington.
Over 81 pages, prosecutors argued that the US district judge #Aileen #Cannon erred in tossing the charges on grounds that the special counsel was illegally appointed,
complaining that 💥she ignored prior court rulings and misread at least four statutes that authorized Smith’s appointment.💥
The filing to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit merely starts a process that 👉could take months or potentially years to resolve, 👈
as prosecutors try to resuscitate their moribund case against Trump that once appeared the most legally perilous for the former president.
Cannon’s stunning decision to dismiss the classified documents case was based on a key distinction
– compared to other special counsels
– that Smith had been brought in externally and was not a Senate-confirmed justice department official when he was named to lead the Trump cases.
😨“Because special counsel Smith’s exercise of prosecutorial power has not been authorized by law, the court sees no way forward aside from dismissal of the superseding indictment,” Cannon wrote in h er ruling.
But prosecutors argued in their appeals brief that Cannon was wrong to focus on whether Smith was an existing justice department official or if he had been Senate confirmed, because ⭐️the attorney general has broad authority to appoint prosecutors under federal law.
“Under the appointments clause, ” prosecutors wrote, “Congress may vest a head of department with the power to appoint an inferior officer. Here, Congress has authorized the attorney general, by law, to appoint as an inferior officer the special counsel. ”
Judge #Aileen M. #Cannon’s stunning dismissal this week of the most serious charges faced by Donald Trump put her on shaky legal ground, according to experts,
who say she is🔸 on track to be reversed on appeal
🔸 and could even be removed from the case
— an extraordinary, but not unheard of step.
Because of the political calendar, however, any legal repercussions could be short-lived.
Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified national security records and obstruction of government efforts to retrieve the material
🔸may not matter if the former president and current Republican nominee is elected in November.
If he gets back to the White House, Trump could pressure his Justice Department to close the case.
He could also promote Cannon to the very appeals court that will soon examine her decision to toss the case.
Cannon’s finding that special counsel #Jack #Smith was improperly appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump
conflicts with numerous past court decisions and the nation’s long history
— during both Democratic and Republican administrations
— of allowing #independent #prosecutors to handle high-profile instances of alleged wrongdoing.
⭐️Smith has filed notice of his plans to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit,
which reviews decisions from the Florida district where Cannon,
a relatively inexperienced judge appointed by Trump in 2020, sits.
⭐️The court has already rebuked her twice for her handling of other aspects of the classified documents case,
sending what Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar described as a message that her decisions had been “way out of line.”
The question now, Amar said, is
💥how quickly and dramatically the appeals court acts on the latest ruling, 💥
which dismissed the entire indictment for Trump and his two co-defendants.
“They may not want to stick their head in a #buzz #saw if they can just let the case take its slow, deliberative course,” he said.
In her 93-page decision, Cannon said there is no specific statute authorizing the attorney general to appoint a special counsel.
She also said the Constitution requires someone with Smith’s authority to be confirmed by the Senate.
The judge acknowledged the tradition of special-attorney-like figures in moments of political scandal involving high-level government officials,
from #Watergate to #Iran-#contra to Russia’s attempts to #interfere in the 2016 election.
But Cannon said the practice of appointing such independent prosecutors has been inconsistent and based on a “spotty historical backdrop.”
Smith, she wrote, is “a private citizen exercising the full power of a United States Attorney, and with very little oversight or supervision.”
Conservative legal groups have long questioned the constitutionality of special counsel appointments.
Cannon repeatedly cited Justice #Clarence #Thomas, who raised the issue in a solo opinion this month as part of the Supreme Court’s decision granting Trump broad immunity from prosecution for official acts.
That Supreme Court case focused on Smith’s separate election interference prosecution of Trump in D.C.
She also embraced the arguments in a law review article by #Gary #Lawson of Boston University School of Law and #Steven G. #Calabresi, a Northwestern law professor and 🔸a co-founder of the Federalist Society, with which Cannon is affiliated.
Other legal experts, however, have joined former Justice Department officials and Smith’s legal team in saying
her ruling ignores the history of special counsel appointments and flouts Supreme Court precedent.
Most notably, the high court in 1974 unanimously required President Richard M. #Nixon to hand over recordings to a special prosecutor as part of the #Watergate investigation.
In that opinion, the justices endorsed the office, citing several statutes under which the attorney general had
“delegated the authority to represent the United States in these particular matters to a Special Prosecutor with unique authority and tenure.”
While lower-court judges are bound to follow the Supreme Court’s lead,
🔸Cannon took the unusual step of finding she was not required to abide by that aspect of the high court’s opinion in U.S. v. Nixon,
🔸saying the case did not directly address the validity of the office of special counsel.
Michael J. Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor who teaches about constitutional conflicts between presidents and Congress, said
Cannon cannot just brush aside a unanimous high court ruling.
“For a trial judge to ignore it is judicial malpractice,” he said, describing her most recent decision as
part of a “pattern of bias that leads her to endorse wacky or unfounded arguments,
and that’s a problem if you’re a judge.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/20/cannon-trump-florida-appeal-special-counsel/
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