US judge permanently blocks release of report on Trump classified documents case
Trump-appointed judge said releasing Jack Smith’s report now would be a ‘manifest injustice’ to the president
A US judge permanently barred the Justice Department on Monday from releasing a prosecutor’s report on the criminal case accusing US President Donald Trump of unlawfully retaining classified documents following his first term in office.
Florida-based US District Judge Aileen Cannon found that releasing the report would be a “manifest injustice” to the Republican president and two former associates who were charged alongside him because it would detail substantial allegations of criminal wrongdoing in a case that never reached a jury.
Cannon, who Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, dismissed all the charges in 2024. Trump was accused in the case pursued by Special Counsel Jack Smith of illegally storing documents related to US national defence, including the American nuclear programme, at his Mar-a-Lago social club and obstructing US government efforts to retrieve the material.
Cannon found that Smith had not been lawfully appointed by the Justice Department during Democratic former president Joe Biden’s administration.
Disclosure of Smith’s report “would contravene basic notions of fairness and justice in the process, where no adjudication of guilt has been reached following initiation of criminal charges,” Cannon wrote in Monday’s ruling.
The order means substantial information about one of the four criminal cases Trump faced in his years out of office may not be disclosed to the public.
