Democrats, Led by Jamie Raskin in Bid To Embarrass Trump, Demand Judge Release Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago Report

The demand by Democratic lawmakers — led by Congressman Jamie Raskin — that Judge Aileen Cannon release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final Mar-a-Lago report highlights how the party hopes to harvest political hay from the undisclosed dossier.The ratcheting up of pressure on Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in 2020 — he has called her “strong” and “brilliant” — comes after the declassification last week by the Department of Justice of an internal memorandum from Mr. Smith’s office. The memo detailed the extensive surveillance operation of Republican lawmakers and aides to Mr. Trump that Mr. Smith oversaw during his Biden-area January 6 probe. It also exposed information about Mr. Smith’s other investigation related to the retention of documents at Mar-a-Lago. Judge Cannon has blocked releasing Mr. Smith’s final report on the Mar-a-Lago documents case, arguing that it is the tainted product of a “brazen stratagem” by the special counsel to say his piece even after she disqualified him. Democrats now reason in a statement that since the “DOJ has released some of Jack Smith’s investigative materials, it is time for her to reconsider her order and put an end to these selective leaks by lifting her gag order on Special Counsel Smith and requiring the DOJ to release his report.”In June 2023, Mr. Smith charged Mr. Trump and two associates with multiple felonies regarding his retention of some classified documents from his first term at Mar-a-Lago. The charges followed a FBI search on Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the documents, an intrusion that enraged Mr. Trump. Mr. Smith was appointed three months later and raced against the clock, ultimately unsuccessfully, to convict Mr. Trump before the November 2024 election.Mr. Smith still filed his final report, which is assumed to be highly critical of Mr. Trump. Now Mr. Raskin has found what he sees as a new opportunity to trigger the report’s release by seizing on the secret memo released by the DOJ that exposed Mr. Smith’s surveillance dragnet, but also other information.Mr. Raskin declares, in a statement directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi, that “blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to level an attack against Special Counsel Smith… you have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded.”Ms. Bondi’s top deputy, Todd Blanche, denied that imperative and insists that “Jack Smith is a proven liar, consistent with these fake accusations from his failed vendetta against the President. There is absolutely zero proof of wrongdoing, which is precisely why they didn’t include it in their indictment that was tossed out by the court.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt alleges that Mr. Raskin “took untrue and salacious claims in a memo that was produced by Jack Smith, who has been completely discredited for his lawfare and his witch hunts against this president.” Republicans are outraged by the disclosures that Mr. Smith’s election interference investigation, codenamed “Operation Arctic Frost,” surveilled telephone metadata from 14 GOP lawmakers, including 10 senators. Mr. Smith was also surveilling Trump allies such as the current chief of staff, Susie Wiles and the current leader of the FBI, Kash Patel. Internal communications also released by House Republicans show that Mr. Smith’s team acknowledged that the operation could be vulnerable to constitutional challenge on the basis of the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.Mr. Smith’s memorandum also included details of his Mar-a-Lago case. The document speculates that Mr. Trump’s retention of secret documents was motivated by profit, and that in one instance he showed a battle map of Iran to Ms. Wiles. Mr. Smith also alleges that Mr. Smith retained a document so secret that only six people were ever authorized to view it.The question now, though, is whether the release of the dossier violated Judge Cannon’s command that it be kept secret on account of both Mr. Smith’s disqualification and the due process rights of Mr. Trump and his erstwhile co-defendants and employees — the valet Waltine Nauta and the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, Carlos De Oliveira. Two liberal legal groups, American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, are pushing for the report’s release.That cause has been joined by Yale Law School and now Mr. Raskin, who served as the lead impeachment manager for the second failed attempt to remove Mr. Trump from office. Judge Cannon has so far denied those requests, which in June will be weighed by the 11th United States Appeals Circuit. The DOJ insists that Judge Cannon’s order “was not violated, and none of the documents produced by the DOJ violated” her ruling because “none of them disclosed matters occurring before a grand jury.” Judge Cannon determined that releasing any part of Mr. Smith’s summary of his case would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice.” She could find no case analogous to this one where a “special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.”Mr. Trump’s attorney in the litigation, Kendra Wharton, has declared that “Judge Cannon’s courage and judicial resolve on these important due process issues should be recognized and taught in law school classrooms across America.” American Oversight and the Knight Institute, though, claim that no due process concerns apply in a case that has already been dismissed and that the public possesses a First Amendment right to view the document. Not immediately clear is how Mr. Raskin, who is not a party to litigation over the dossier, can impact the case after Judge Cannon has already ruled. She could reprimand the government sua sponte, or of her own initiative. Another possibility is that the 11th Circuit could take the disclosures into account when deciding whether to reverse her ruling.Ms. Bondi has already intervened in the fight over the report to argue that the document should not only be blocked but “consigned to the dustbin of history.”

Democrats, Led by Jamie Raskin in Bid To Embarrass Trump, Demand Judge Release Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago Report

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