Judge blocks release of Jack Smith’s report on Trump documents case | Donald Trump
A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump on Monday barred the Justice Department from releasing former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the president’s mishandling of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago club after his first term.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling marks the latest attempt to block the report from being sent to Congress or otherwise made public.
In scathing language, Cannon condemned Smith for what she called a “brazen ploy” of writing a report even after dismissing the case on the grounds that he was illegally appointed, a move that ran counter to historical precedent.
“To say that this timeline represents, at a minimum, a disturbing violation of the spirit of the termination order is an understatement, if not an outright violation thereof,” she wrote in her 15-page ruling.
Cannon also ruled that releasing the Classified Documents Affair report, known as Volume II after the first volume addressed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, would disclose secret grand jury documents that could cause irreparable harm to the president.
In doing so, she supported the view expressed by Trump’s personal lawyers — one of whom, Todd Blanche, is now an assistant U.S. attorney general — that the report should never see the light of day because the prosecutor who wrote it should never have been appointed.
Cannon admitted that previous special advisers wrote reports on their work that were later made public by the Justice Department, as Robert Mueller did with his report on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and efforts to obstruct that investigation.
But she blocked Smith from doing the same, saying the circumstances of the case — in which Trump was charged but never tried — meant it wasn’t right for Trump to make details of the case public.
Volume II of Smith’s report reportedly contains details of Trump’s efforts to keep highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, as well as his subsequent efforts to obstruct government attempts to recover them.
Smith charged two co-defendants in addition to Trump — his valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos de Oliveira — with moving boxes of classified documents around the club after Trump received a grand jury subpoena demanding their return.
After Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in 2024, Smith challenged the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. But after Trump’s re-election, Smith chose to abandon the appeal and resigned.
Smith also dropped his election interference lawsuit, overseen by another federal judge in Washington who did not consider him illegally appointed, after the 2024 election. The report on that case was made public in January 2025.
Last month, Smith testified before Congress to defend his decision to file charges against Trump in the election interference case. Prohibited by Cannon’s protective order, he was unable to discuss the classified documents matter during his testimony.
