Special counsel Jack Smith’s closing report on Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified data and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago after his first time period is not going to be launched, a Trump-appointed decide in Florida dominated Monday.
The decision by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who threw out the case Smith introduced in opposition to the president earlier than he was re-elected, is a serious win in Trump’s efforts to maintain the special counsel’s findings ceaselessly hidden from public view.
Smith had turned over his closing, two-volume report to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier than he left his submit in early 2025. The first half of the report, which detailed Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election, was launched earlier than Trump returned to the White House. But a authorized struggle waged by Trump and his co-defendants in the case saved the second half of that report underneath seal.
Cannon mentioned in her 15-page ruling that “it is certainly not customary” for a prosecutor whose case was thrown out to later be allowed to “publicly disseminate large swaths of discovery generated in the case.”
“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,” she wrote.
Cannon, who concluded in 2024 that Smith was unlawfully serving as special counsel, went on to chide him for even writing the report in the first place, saying it violated her earlier choices placing an finish to the work of his workplace on the classified documents matter.
“The Court need not countenance this brazen stratagem or effectively perpetuate the Special Counsel’s breach of this Court’s own order,” she wrote.
Cannon declined a request from two of Trump’s former co-defendants in the case to order the report to be destroyed.
Transparency round Smith’s closing report on the South Florida federal case in opposition to Trump and two of his staff, referred to as Volume II, remains to be being examined in appeals introduced by public transparency teams.