Liberal Groups Frantically Try To Stop Judge From Ordering ‘Destruction of All Copies’ of Jack Smith’s Secret Mar-a-Lago Report

The effort by two left-leaning legal groups — American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia — to draw in a powerful appeals court to release Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago report underscores how the secret dossier’s destiny hangs in the balance.The motion, filed in the Southern District of Florida last week, asks the 11th United States Appeals Circuit to freeze the proceedings over the report’s fate that are underway before Judge Aileen Cannon — and to order its release. Judge Cannon is a 2020 appointee of President Trump who dismissed the criminal documents case Mr. Smith brought against the 47th president and two of his employees. The case is now over — it was dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning that it could technically be refiled — but Mr. Smith left behind his report as a kind of closing argument. The dispatch is likely to be extremely negative about Mr. Trump and filled with examples of what Mr. Smith claims are sloppy document retention that rose to the level of crimes. The president’s adversaries at Columbia and elsewhere have been aggressively seeking its release.Mr. Trump and those two employees — Waltine Nauta, a valet, and Carlose De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager — have asked Judge Cannon for a permanent injunction to block the report’s release. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ have swung behind that request. The attorney general calls the report “illicit” and declares that it belongs in the “dustbin of history.” Both the DOJ and the defendants want to report “destroyed.” American Oversight and the Knight Institute argue to the 11th Circuit that such an outcome would “thwart the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals” and injure their own “statutory, common law, and First Amendment” right of access to the report. The special counsel regulations mandate that such a “confidential” document be created at the end of the special counsel’s work. Discretion as to whether to release the report is assigned to the attorney general. Mr. Smith’s two reports — for the documents case as well as for the election interference one — were submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland days before Mr. Trump swore the oath of office for a second time. The 86th attorney general promptly released the one relating to January 6. In that one, Mr. Smith defiantly claimed that he would have convicted Mr. Trump “but for” the results of the 20204 election.Mr. Garland’s notion was to release the Mar-a-Lago dispatch only to Congress, and only in secret. That’s because the criminal cases against Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveira were still ongoing, albeit on appeal. Judge Cannon ruled that releasing the report in any form — and certainly to a Congress known for leaks — would impair the due process rights of the defendants. In December, Judge Cannon acknowledged that after the cases were dismissed, her “immediate basis” for delaying release no longer pertained.The Florida jurist decreed that “absent any further order of the court” the injunction blocking the report’s release will expire on February 24. That deadline is what spurred Mr. Trump and the DOJ to both push for the document to be permanently sealed off from the public ken. Now the two groups argue that “the press and public have standing to intervene in criminal cases to assert common law and First Amendment rights of access to judicial proceedings and documents.”The groups contend that Mr. Smith’s report ought to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act “because it is a record in the possession of the Justice Department.” That right of access, they argue, does not depend on the “constitutionality of the Special Counsel’s appointment.” Judge Cannon disqualified Mr. Smith after finding he was unlawfully appointed. Ms. Bondi contends that Mr. Smith’s disqualification makes his appointment invalid.American Oversight and the Knight Institute write that they “know of no case holding that an agency record otherwise subject to FOIA is not subject to it because it was created by an unconstitutionally appointed official.” They also tell the 11th Circuit that any effort to order the “destruction of all copies” of Mr. Smith’s report “would be violating federal law—specifically, the Federal Records Act.” The 11th Circuit, which is Atlanta-based and whose jurisdiction covers large swaths of the Southeast, has had stern words for Judge Cannon before. It chided her for “undue delay” in this case, and more significantly, reprimanded her for appointing a special master in the wake of the search of Mar-a-Lago. The circuit accused her of “a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and violating “bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” ________Correction: Mr. Smith’s Mar-a-Lago case was dismissed without prejudice. Its status was misstated in an earlier edition.

Liberal Groups Frantically Try To Stop Judge From Ordering ‘Destruction of All Copies’ of Jack Smith’s Secret Mar-a-Lago Report

Liberal Groups Frantically Try To Stop Judge From Ordering ‘Destruction of All Copies’ of Jack Smith’s Secret Mar-a-Lago Report

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