I don’t think anyone is surprised by this. She’s angling for the Supreme Court slot when Alito or Thomas retire (which will probably be soon.)
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report describing President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and allegations that he obstructed government efforts to reclaim them.
Cannon lit into Smith for a “brazen stratagem”: compiling the detailed report even after she ruled in July 2024 his appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional and dismissed the case against Trump and two co-defendants. The Justice Department had appealed Cannon’s decision but dropped the case altogether after Trump’s election.
“Special Counsel Smith and his team went ahead for months, undeterred, preparing [the classified documents report] using discovery collected in connection with this proceeding and expending government funds in the process,” Cannon wrote in a 15-page ruling issued Monday. “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 Trump-appointed judge said releasing the report now would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice” and amount to a “manifest injustice” because the case never reached a jury. It could also risk revealing information protected by attorney-client privilege and grand jury secrecy, she said.
“While it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work,” Cannon wrote, “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.”
Oh please. Everyone knows she had her thumb on the scale of that case and she will forever be known as Trump’s lackey.
It’s really a shame that we haven’t been able to see that report because it is the most damning of the cases. Trump stole documents and blabbed about classified intelligence to anyone who would listen. We know this for a fact. It would have been nice to see the whole thing put down in one place for posterity if nothing else.
I would imagine this report will be hidden in the same place they hid the torture report during the Obama administration. Someday they will come out and I have no doubt they will take your breath away.