Florida Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-picked jurist who’s broken precedent and seemingly gone out of her way to shield the former and soon-to-be president in the purloined classified documents case concerning his keeping secret records at Mar-a-Lago, has gifted the president-elect yet another lifeline by moving to block the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report to Attorney General Merrick Garland on his federal investigations. Her ruling must not stand and the report must be published.
Like all special counsels, when they are done, they submit a report to the AG, who makes it public. That’s what happened with Special Counsel Robert Hur’s probe of Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents. The write-up of both of Smith’s two investigations, on the documents in Florida and the election interference case in Washington, must be released.
Cannon’s ruling comes as classified documents co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira contend that the potential release of even a redacted report would be prejudicial to their ongoing cases after Trump was dropped as a defendant post-election.
Trump has already managed to evade essentially all conceivable consequences for the crimes in which was charged, including everything related to the run-up to Jan. 6, during that fateful day, and afterwards. What he is seeking now, and what Cannon is granting, is that not only will the federal prosecutions against him go nowhere — and it’s worth noting his lawyers are similarly trying to get New York hush money conviction sentencing derailed on practically no rationale at all, beyond that he’s been elected president — but that the evidence, decision-making and process behind the prosecutions never fully see the light of day.
Trump wants the record of his actions scrubbed, as if they hadn’t happened at all, in service to his ultimate goal of rewriting his own history. While the Trump defense team has characterized these as necessary delays while appeals courts consider motions, we all know that the goal here is to actually run out the clock until Trump takes over the presidency on Jan. 20, installs these very lawyers into the top ranks of the DOJ, and then makes sure the report and the evidence is forever buried.
It’s not entirely clear that Cannon has the power to stop Garland releasing the report, particularly the volume of it that involves the election interference case, in which she has no direct role. In any case, the creation and transmission of these reports to the attorney general is Justice Department policy, and doesn’t really form part of the prosecution itself.
Cannon’s D.C. counterpart, Judge Tanya Chutkan, has disagreed with Cannon’s absurd contention that Smith was himself unlawfully appointed, and it has been the consistent approach of Garland and the department to release versions of these reports for the various special counsel investigations that have taken place over the last few years.
Recall that Hur’s report on Biden instantly became fodder for the president’s political enemies even as Hur declined to proceed with any prosecution against Biden. Biden could have moved to have his Justice Department bury this report, but he understood that a level of transparency was important to the public and the credibility of the office. Trump, clearly, does not ascribe to this view, and would like nothing more than to use his power to deflect any accountability away from himself.
For all of Garland’s foibles, many driven by an overabundance of caution when faced with extreme circumstances, he can use his remaining time atop the nation’s federal law enforcement apparatus to do the right thing, and release the report.
