U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida permanently blocked the Department of Justice from releasing former special counsel Jack Smith’s report about the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago for classified documents.
The government indicted President Donald Trump in 2023 after a huge FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. He faced 41 felony counts.
In May 2024, Cannon indefinitely proposed Trump’s trial “before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA [Classified Information Procedures Act] issues remaining and forthcoming.”
Two months later, Cannon ruled Smith’s appointment as unconstitutional and dismissed the case.
Cannon blasted Smith for piecing together the report after she ruled his appointment as unconstitutional.
“Special Counsel Smith and his team went ahead for months, undeterred, preparing Volume II using discovery collected in connection with this proceeding and expending government funds in the process,” wrote Cannon. “Defendants learned of this continued work in December 2024 through media reports and then timely raised their objections to Special Counsel Smith—but he continued unabated, offering defendants only the courtesy of brief review under strict conditions, including forced deletion of discovery materials in the custody of the defense.”
Cannon added: “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 also pointed out that releasing the report could possibly include “material protected by the attorney-client privilege or material covered by Rule 6(e) without any viable means of testing the parameters of those issues given Special Counsel Smith’s discovery-deletion precondition and the realities of departed personnel following Special Counsel Smith’s withdrawal.”
Cannon concluded that the report would lead to manifest injustice for the former defendants.
Manifest injustice is severe:
Manifest injustice refers to a clear, undeniable, and significant error in a legal proceeding that is so fundamentally unfair or wrong that it shocks the conscience and demands correction. It is not merely a minor mistake, but an obvious flaw that seriously undermines the integrity, impartiality, or fairness of the outcome, making it impossible to uphold the original decision.
“Special Counsel Smith, acting without lawful authority, obtained an indictment in this action and initiated proceedings that resulted in a final order of dismissal of all charges,” criticized Cannon. “As a result, the former defendants in this case, like any other defendant in this situation, still enjoy the presumption of innocence held sacrosanct in our constitutional order.”
Citizens must drop the “presumed guilty until found innocent” mindset. Every single person, no matter how you feel about them or the case, is always presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law.
“Moreover, while it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work, it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial,” continued Cannon. “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 pointed out that it is not customary for a prosecutor, especially one who received an indictment “that is later dismissed in a final order without an adjudication of guilt,” to publish a report of discovery put together in the case.
It is especially not customary for the prosecutor to demand that defense counsel destroy the discovery before they can review the report after a judge declares his appointment unlawful.
Smith moved to end all his cases against Trump after he demolished Kamala Harris in November, since the DOJ cannot prosecute a sitting president.
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