Federal judge blocks release of report on Trump classified-documents case

A federal judge in Florida blocked public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s extensive report on the classified-documents case against President Donald Trump – a resounding victory for Trump’s efforts to block public viewing of what probably would be damaging details about his retention of classified materials after he left the White House in 2021.

The decision Monday morning from U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon resulted from litigation that has dragged on for more than a year in her courtroom. Cannon ruled that releasing the special counsel report could violate grand jury secrecy rules and could result in impugning the presumption of innocence for Trump and his co-defendants in a case that did not result in guilty verdicts.

The ruling can be appealed. Although Trump and the Justice Department both opposed the public release of the report, First Amendment advocacy groups and media outlets pushed in Cannon’s court for release.

Smith charged Trump in 2023 with 40 counts of illegally retaining classified defense information and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the materials. Two of Trump’s personal aides were charged with obstruction alongside him.

Cannon dismissed those charges in a decision that broke with legal precedent, ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed and therefore had no authority to bring charges. Her decision did not touch on the merits of the case, which Trump aides at the time believed was the strongest of the criminal cases against Trump that were brought during the Biden administration.

Smith appealed the ruling but dropped the appeal after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, citing federal regulations that say a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

In her Monday ruling, Cannon lambasted Smith for compiling the report even though she dismissed the charges in 2024. Using the discovery in the case to complete the report amounted to circumventing her ruling, she said.

In the final days before Trump took office, Smith submitted the final report to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland did not push to release it because, at the time, an appeal of Cannon’s dismissal order was still pending as the Justice Department tried to resurrect the case against Trump’s two co-defendants.

“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,” Cannon wrote.

“The Court need not countenance this brazen stratagem or effectively perpetuate the Special Counsel’s breach of this Court’s own order,” she continued.

Garland made public the first volume of Smith’s report, which detailed the case that prosecutors built against Trump over his alleged attempts to obstruct the 2020 election results. For 137 pages, Smith detailed the incriminating evidence he says he collected against Trump over his two-year investigation and said he was confident that he had ample evidence to obtain a conviction in court.

That case also never made it to trial, with the Justice Department asking a judge to dismiss it in the final weeks before Trump took office for his second term.

The second volume of the special counsel report was expected to similarly detail the incriminating evidence Smith collected against Trump and reveal what would have been the special counsel’s strategy at court.

Prosecutors already said that some of the documents found in the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and private club, contained information about top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials were kept in the dark about them.

Trump and his attorneys first asked Cannon to block the release of the report before he was inaugurated for his second term. Cannon temporarily blocked the release on Jan. 7, 2025 – about two weeks before Trump took office.

Once Trump regained the presidency, the Justice Department said it opposed releasing the report. Trump, in his personal capacity, also filed requests in Cannon’s court to block the release.

Cannon previously denied requests from two legal groups – the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight – that have sought to present arguments in favor of disclosure. The groups had already asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to intervene, an appeal that remains pending, with arguments tentatively scheduled for June.

“Judge Cannon’s ruling continues a troubling pattern of decisions that shield the president from public scrutiny and place secrecy above the public’s right to know,” Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement Monday.

Scott Wilkens, senior counsel for the Knight Institute, called Cannon’s decision “impossible to square with the First Amendment.”

A defense attorney for Trump, Kendra Wharton, celebrated Cannon’s decision on Monday, calling Smith’s report “illegal.”

“Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, and his unlawful investigation was improperly funded with tens of millions of U.S. taxpayers’ hard earned dollars,” Wharton said in a statement. “Any and all fruit of Smith’s poisonous tree should be treated accordingly and should never see the light of day.”

Smith has testified to Congress in recent months about his cases against Trump. He has said that he is limited in what he can reveal, in part, because of Cannon’s prohibition on releasing the report.

It is common practice for special counsels to release reports even if their investigations do not result in guilty verdicts.

Special counsel Robert K. Hur, for example, released a report in 2024 detailing his investigation into whether President Joe Biden unlawfully retained classified materials after his vice presidency. The damaging report explained why Hur opted against charging Biden.

Cannon attempted to differentiate the release of Smith’s report from other cases, saying that there was no precedent for releasing a report in a case in which the charges have been dismissed and the defendants maintain their innocence. The lack of precedent existed largely because Cannon’s order dismissing the case on the grounds that Smith’s appointment was unlawful was, itself, unprecedented.

“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, at least not in a situation like this one, where the defendants contested the charges from the outset and still proclaim their innocence,” Cannon wrote.