Did Attorney General Pam Bondi Violate Judge Aileen Cannon’s Command That Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago Case Stay Secret?

Congressman Jamie Raskin’s accusation that Attorney General Pam Bondi violated a gag order that she requested in respect of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final Mar-a-Lago report suggests Democrats sense an avenue of attack in the long-dismissed case.Mr. Raskin, who managed the first impeachment of President Trump, wrote to Ms. Bondi this week that her office “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 from Judge Aileen Cannon.”The allegation follows the declassification of documents at the Department of Justice that relate to Mr. Smith’s prosecutions of President Trump for election interference and the storage of classified documents. Much of the material covered details of “Operation Arctic Frost,” the January 6 probe that surveilled 14 GOP lawmakers and led to criminal charges against Mr. Trump.The dossier, though, also covered behind the scenes details of Mr. Smith’s Espionage Act case against the 47th president. It alleges that Mr. Trump retained a document so secret that only six people, including the president, were authorized to see it. Mr. Smith’s office also planned to argue in court that Mr. Trump kept the documents for financial gain and showed his current chief of staff, Susie Wiles, a map detailing a possible attack against Iran.Those details are so tantalizing because of Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling that Mr. Smith’s final report be “permanently” barred from release. That was the request from Mr. Trump and his two co-defendants, who also happened to be his employees — the valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago’s property manager, Carlos De Oliveira. They argued that even though the case was dismissed, release of the report could injure their due process rights.That position was also taken by Ms. Bondi, who intervened in the litigation to express the DOJ’s position that Mr. Smith’s report ought to be “consigned to the dustbin of history.” The defendants pushed for “constitutional expungement,” meaning destruction. Judge Cannon ultimately demurred from that step, but did find that Mr. Smith had engaged in a “brazen stratagem” by compiling his report after she had ruled that he was unlawfully appointed. Now Ms. Bondi’s top deputy, Todd Blanche — who served as an attorney for Mr. Trump in the Mar-a-Lago case — declares 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.”Prosecutors, though, often will not put all of their evidence in an indictment, reasoning that surfacing it at such an early stage gives the defense time to strategize. The DOJ counters on X that “Jack Smith’s team was desperate to prosecute Biden’s top political opponent, so it is no surprise that his files contain salacious and untrue claims about President Trump.”White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that Mr. Raskin “has zero credibility” and was engaged in a “political stunt.” She calls Mr. Smith a “prosecutor on a witch hunt against” Mr. Trump. Mr. Raskin’s letter to Ms. Bondi tells the attorney general that “blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted … you have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct.”The internal communications among Mr. Smith’s team shows that prosecutors considered that Mr. Trump’s hoarding of the documents at Mar-a-Lago amounted to “an aggravated potential harm to national security” and were “the type of documents that only presidents and officials with the most sensitive authority have.”Judge Cannon’s ruling bans the DOJ from “releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions in” Mr. Smith’s report. That conclusion is being appealed to the 11th United States Appeals Circuit by two liberal legal groups, American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Yale Law School has also joined that effort. Even if Mr. Raskin wanted to allege in court that Ms. Bondi violated Judge Cannon’s order, it is not immediately clear who would have standing to mount that case. The natural candidate would be Mr. Trump and his co-defendants — they would be injured by such a disclosure — but here it is his Administration that ushered Mr. Smith’s memo into public view.Judge Cannon could also initiate hearings on the subject sua sponte, or on her own motion. The release of the material related to Mr. Smith is likely to come up before the 11th Circuit in June. American Oversight and the Knight Institute could argue that Mr. Trump has already begun the process of disclosure of its own accord.

Did Attorney General Pam Bondi Violate Judge Aileen Cannon’s Command That Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago Case Stay Secret?

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