WASHINGTON — A South Florida federal judge permanently blocked the Justice Department Monday from publicly divulging former special counsel Jack Smith’s report dealing with President Trump’s hoarding of sensitive national security information at Mar-a-Lago following the end of his first term.
Fort Pierce US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, excoriated Smith and his team for their “brazen stratagem” in compiling the report after she ruled in 2024 that he was unconstitutionally named special counsel in the case.
“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,” the judge wrote in her 15-page ruling.
“The Court need not countenance this brazen stratagem or effectively perpetuate the Special Counsel’s breach of this Court’s own order.”
In 2022, days after Trump announced his re-election bid, Smith was appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to spearhead the Justice Department’s 2020 election and classified document cases against the Republican.
In July 2024, Cannon ruled that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, concluding that the Appointments Clause of the Constitution requires the president or Congress to make such appointments. She then dismissed the documents case against the 45th and 47th president.
Smith had appealed that ruling to the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to revive the case, only to drop the matter after Trump’s election victory in November 2024.
According to court documents, Trump’s legal team learned from media reports that Smith had forged ahead with his report on the case, despite dropping it.
Cannon concluded that it would be unfair to release the report now because the case hadn’t been scrutinized by a jury and its disclosure would risk attorney-client privilege and expose secret grand jury proceedings.
Her order, which applies to Attorney General Pam Bondi and her successors, specifically prohibits the Justice Department from “releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions” of the document probe report.
“While it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work,” the judge wrote in her ruling, “it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial.”
“The Court strains to find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.”
Cannon’s decision to block the disclosure of the report could be appealed.
The Smith report had been slated for public release on Tuesday. Trump’s legal team had filed a motion to block the report’s release last month, arguing that the special counsel “not only weaponized the Department of Justice against a leading presidential candidate in pursuit of an antidemocratic end, but he did so without legal authority and while targeting constitutionally protected activity.”
