Victory for Trump as Appeals Court Denies Liberal Groups’ Request To Release Jack Smith’s ‘Brazen’ Mar-a-Lago Report

The 11th United States Appeals Circuit’s denial of an ‘extraordinary’ request by left-leaning legal groups to liberate Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago report from under seal is a victory for President Trump — and for the judge who has blocked its release, Aileen Cannon.The long-running battle over the final report on the documents case that some saw as the strongest of the four criminal ones levied against Mr. Trump is not over. What a three judge panel of the court just denied, unanimously, was a request for a direct order to open the file. Still to come is a hearing, before another panel, on the merits of whether the report should be kept secret. That second question remains active, with arguments before the 11th Circuit scheduled for June. The decision by the circuit court to deny a writ of mandamus, though, is a temporary setback for those hoping to publish the highly-anticipated final word from Mr. Smith about the case he brought accusing Mr. Trump with dozens of violations of the 1917 Espionage Act and other crimes. Mr. Smith charged Mr. Trump with illegally hoarding classified documents from his first term at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump claims that as president, he could declassify any documents he chose to and that retaining the documents, some top secret, was well within his prerogatives. In August 2022, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. Ten months later, Jack Smith secured an indictment. His sealed report is the final remnant of that prosecution.The case — previously upheld by legal experts as the strongest against Mr. Trump of the four criminal cases brought against him — has been undermined in recent months by reports that the FBI had objected to the raid, raising doubt about probable cause, and only carried it out due to pressure from the Biden Justice Department.The decision this week by the panel — two of the jurists were appointed by Mr. Trump, and one by Mr. Obama — comes two weeks after Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump in 2020, permanently blocked the release of the special counsel’s final report. She ruled that its publication would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice in the process, where no adjudication of guilt has been reached.”Judge Cannon declared that the defendants —who include Mr. Trump, his valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira —“still enjoy the presumption of innocence held sacrosanct in our constitutional order.” She accused Mr. Smith of pursuing a “brazen stratagem” whereby he persisted in compiling his report even after she ruled, after what she called “careful study,” that he had been unlawfully appointed by Mr. Garland. Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida. Via Wikimedia CommonsMr. Smith’s report — which likely excoriates the president — is his final vehicle to make his case that he would have won a conviction had Mr. Trump not won reelection. The cause of the report’s release, which Mr. Smith submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland days before Mr. Trump swore the oath for a second time, is being championed by two left-leaning groups, American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. They argue that the public possesses a First Amendment right to read the dispatch.The Knight Institute — based at Columbia, which has been tangling with the Trump Administration over antisemitism on campus — responded to Judge Cannon’s ruling in a statement , saying that her “decision to permanently block the release of this extraordinarily significant report is impossible to square with the First Amendment and the common law. There is no legitimate basis for its continued suppression.” Judge Cannon did not grant the defendants’ request for “constitutional expungement” — meaning a physical destruction of the report. On Thursday,, the 11th Circuit declined the invitation of those groups to reach for mandamus, which is what the law considers to be an “extraordinary” remedy. If such a writ is approved, a higher court commands a lower one to undertake a specific action that they have so far failed to perform. It is usually invoked to accelerate unreasonable delays or repair abuses of discretion.The 11th Circuit determined in this instance, though, that American Oversight and the Knight Institute failed to show “clear and indisputable evidence” that mandamus was justified on account of a “usurpation of power or a clear abuse of discretion.” However, the panel clarified that mandamus was denied “on the understanding” that Judge Cannon “will not enter any order directing, permitting, or allowing, the destruction” of the report.That course is being advocated by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has intervened to share the view of the Department of Justice that the report should be “consigned to the dustbin of history.” Mr. Trump’s attorneys contend in a statement that “Judge Cannon’s recent ruling” — the one blocking the report — “protects the rights of President Trump and others wrongfully targeted by Jack Smith’s unlawful and unconstitutional investigation.”Federal regulations mandate that every special counsel “shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.” The attorney general then “may determine that public release of these reports would be in the public interest.” Mr. Garland attempted to release the report to a small group of lawmakers, but was stopped by Judge Cannon.The contest over the fate of the report is drawing in new parties ahead of June arguments. A conservative law firm, America First Legal Foundation, founded by a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, Stephen Miller, has weighed in with an amicus brief arguing that because the report “documents an unauthorized and terminated investigation, its continued retention perpetuates unwarranted invasions of personal privacy. Disclosure is therefore a legally inappropriate outcome.” The firm calls for “disposal of all copies.”The 11th Circuit has not hesitated to overrule Judge Cannon before — in this case. At the beginning of the prosecution, before Mr. Smith was appointed, she named a special master to oversee the government’s collection of material from the search of Mar-a-Lago. The appellate court, though, found that the decision amounted to “a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations.” Even if the Mar-a-Lago report is never published, a preview of its contents could be gleaned from Mr. Smith’s report on his January 6 case, which was released by Mr. Garland. Mr. Smith wrote that he would have convicted “but for” the outcome of the 2024 election. In public testimony the special counsel declared that Mr. Trump was guilty of a “criminal scheme” and that the DOJ assembled “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” of guilt.

Victory for Trump as Appeals Court Denies Liberal Groups’ Request To Release Jack Smith’s ‘Brazen’ Mar-a-Lago Report

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