The judge who has repeatedly aided Donald Trump’s legal defense is now in position to do another big favor: bar public disclosure of a new report spelling out the most serious criminal charges against him – mishandling highly sensitive secret documents at his Mar a Lago private club.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon of Fort Pierce, Fla., will hold a hearing Friday afternoon to consider requests from President-elect Trump and two of his Mar-a-Lago employees to block the release to the public and to key members of Congress of federal prosecutors’ final report detailing what they found in the classified documents case.
If Cannon does so, the practical effect could be that her order would stand for several days, maybe long enough to allow Trump to be officially inaugurated on January 20, which would put him in a position to pardon the Mar-a-Lago employees and order that the volume be destroyed or at least withheld from release throughout his Presidency.
Earlier this week, the first of two volumes prepared by Special Counsel Jack Smith on his two-year investigation of Trump was released over Trump’s objections. That volume dealt not with the documents case, but with Smith’s separate prosecution of Trump for trying to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election – an effort that led to a violent mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Because the charges against Trump in both cases have now been dismissed, mainly because Trump will soon be President again and will gain legal immunity, the end of those cases did not spare Trump from potential deep embarrassment when Smith issued final official accounts of his investigation. Trump, well known for his vanity, has had his legal team make repeated efforts to keep those reports from emerging.
Although there was legal resistance to release of Smith’s January 6 report, Judge Cannon did allow that to be made public after finding no legal basis for withholding it. A more intense courthouse battle is now unfolding over release of the still-secret report on Trump’s handling of classified documents.
The documents case against Trump and two of his employees, Waltine Nauta and Carlos DeOliviera, has been unfolding since charges were filed in early June 2023. It has been stalled repeatedly as a result of procedural orders issued by Judge Cannon, significantly aiding the Trump team’s core strategy of delaying the case to put off an actual trial. Last summer, Judge Cannon dismissed all 37 charges against Trump as well as lesser charges against his employees; her ruling declared that Smith’s appointment to investigate was illegal and he was illegally using federal funds to pay for the probe.
Smith’s team appealed that ruling to a federal appeals court; that appeal is still in progress, although Smith, as noted, has dismissed the case against Trump. Lawyers for the two workers have been attempting recently to block release of both of Smith’s final reports, claiming they will impair their right to a fair trial, if one ever occurs.
It is because those charges against Nauta and DeOliviera are still pending that Judge Cannon has taken back control, deciding – with no interference yet from the appeals court – whether to permit Smith’s reports to go public. Earlier this week, she allowed release of the January 6 volume. Friday afternoon’s hearing will deal with the volume about the classified documents probe.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, at the suggestion of Smith, has said he will not release the report on the Mar-a-Lago case, in order to protect the rights of the two workers should there be a trial. The Department told Judge Cannon on Thursday that that is still its position on that report.
Smith or his Justice Department superiors might have ended the remaining dispute over releasing Smith’s reports by opting to dismiss the charges against Nauta and DeOliviera. The Department’s main reason for not doing so appears to be a desire to try to salvage the power to appoint special prosecutors in high-profile criminal cases. Thus, the dispute before Judge Cannon continues.
Even though the proceedings before Cannon probably would have ended if Nauta and DeOliviera were freed from charges, there is one option left to Cannon to stop release of Smith’s documents case report. That option arose when President-elect Trump’s legal team moved to get involved in the current dispute. The Justice Department has resisted Trump’s intervention, but that has failed so far.
Trump’s lawyers argued that, since Judge Cannon had ruled that Smith’s appointment was not valid, Smith had no authority even to make or to disclose any reports from his arguably illegal investigation. That is what Cannon will hear tomorrow, along with continuing requests by lawyers for the Mar-a-Lago workers to block the report about the documents investigation. She has not indicated when she will rule.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the 18 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote a letter to Attorney General Garland, urging him to take any step necessary to release Smith’s second volume to the public and to leaders of the two congressional Judiciary Committees, arguing that the American people have a “right to know” what Smith found. Judge Cannon has temporarily blocked even the release to House and Senate committees’ leaders.
The Democratic lawmakers argued that, if necessary to assure release, Garland should simply drop the charges against Nauta and DeOliviera. The letter said that “Volume 2 will almost certainly remain concealed for at least four more years if you do not release it before President-elect Trump’s inauguration on January 20.”
If those charges are not dropped, the letter contended, there have been “many indications that Mr. Trump will simply end the prosecutions against his co-conspirators upon taking office anyway and then instruct his DOJ to permanently bury this report.”
