Left inset: Judge Aileen Cannon (U.S. District Court). Right inset: Jack Smith sits for House Judiciary Committee deposition in defense of his investigations on Dec. 17, 2025 (House Judiciary Committee/YouTube). Main: President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One after arriving at Zurich International Airport for the World Economic Forum, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Zurich, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
A criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump and former senior Justice Department ethics official in the sitting president's administration has asked the judge who dismissed the then-candidate's Espionage Act indictment to "permanently" block the DOJ from releasing "so-called Special Counsel" Jack Smith's "unlawfully prepared" report on the Mar-a-Lago prosecution.
Kendra Wharton, in a 19-page motion asking U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to rule on an "expedited" basis, slammed the "multiple liberal organizations" that have tried for nearly a year to secure public disclosure of Volume II of Smith's "Final Report."
For Trump's legal team, Cannon's July 2024 dismissal of the willful retention of classified documents and obstruction case on grounds that Biden administration U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland unlawfully appointed Smith as special counsel and unlawfully funded Smith through a "permanent indefinite appropriation," in violation of the Constitution, means that any action he took was unlawful — including the production of his "so-called 'Final Report.'"
Cannon, a Trump appointee who repeatedly blasted Smith over the course of the case, dismissed it after "careful study" while repeatedly citing conservative Justice Clarence Thomas' solo concurrence in the Supreme Court's immunity case Trump v. United States, has had an injunction in place since Jan. 21, 2025.
At the time, Trump's former co-defendants, valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira, were still involved in active appeals at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
After Trump's inauguration, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's DOJ, which features Trump's ex-criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche as the department's No. 2 lawyer, dismissed Smith's appeal of Cannon's dismissal.
While Volume I documenting Smith's Jan. 6 investigation has been public since early 2025, American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University have since February 2025 tried to intervene for the purpose of lifting Cannon's injunction and trying to bring Volume II public.
Law&Crime has reported how Cannon sat for half a year on the motions to intervene, only denying the motions in December after the 11th Circuit chided her for "undue delay" and put the judge on a 60-day deadline. This is the same appellate court that overturned Cannon's 2022 appointment of a special master and block on the government from using evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago, an order that bogged down the case for months.
As an appeal of Cannon's latest denials remains active, Trump has returned to Cannon's court and urged her, with Smith scheduled to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning, to "permanently" prevent Smith and the DOJ from speaking about or releasing the contents of Volume II.
When Smith testified behind closed doors in December, he stated that he "chose not to review" his own report prior to the deposition, fearing that could have been construed as "violating [Cannon's] order by looking at it[.]"
"It may well have been there, but I chose not to review it, because I didn't want any implication whatsoever that I was somehow violating the order by looking at it, not being a member of the Department now," Smith said, according to the transcript.
During the question and answer session, Smith also said "Cannon's order is the reason" why Volume II and details about what it says cannot now go public.
And the result will be that Smith remains muzzled on Thursday, as the status quo has not changed.
Ultimately, even if the injunction were to be lifted, whether or how much of Volume II would go public is up to Bondi, but Trump's private legal team is now endorsing a judicial block that would indefinitely hand DOJ a reason to keep Volume II secret.
Calling American Oversight and the Knight Institute "so-called" and "purported" nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations, linking the former group's executive director to Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Wharton argued that Smith's "preparation and submission of Volume II" to the DOJ was itself beyond his authority and "void" as the fruit of an unlawfully funded and appointed "Special Counsel."
Wharton seemed to encourage Cannon to agree that Smith was on a mission to "unconstitutionally silence President Trump" through a gag order Cannon never issued, while he was on the 2024 campaign trail.
"Because President Trump is a former defendant in this since-dismissed criminal action, he unquestionably has direct, substantial, and compelling interests in obtaining a protective order to prevent the dissemination of Smith's ultra vires work product," the motion said, adding that allowing the public to read Volume II and decide for itself what it means would "improperly endorse and give legal effect to Smith's unlawful investigation and prosecution in the Southern District of Florida and would irreparably harm President Trump and his former co-defendants."
"The appropriate remedy is the invalidation of all of Smith's ultra vires acts, including his subsequent preparation and submission of Volume II," the motion stated, saying such a remedy would "protect the integrity of the constitutional role of the judiciary."
Wharton cast Smith's final report as an "inherently biased and one-sided document," in that it likely details Trump's alleged illegal retention of national defense information — such as a document "concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States — for storage in a bathroom, shower, and elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago, as well as his and his co-defendants' alleged efforts to obstruct the government's recovery of those files.
Volume II, prepared by Smith with "significant sums of taxpayer dollars" even after Cannon found he was unlawfully funded and tossed the case, is a product of his "apparent disdain and disrespect for this Court's rulings" and "should not be tolerated," the motion said, encouraging another smackdown.
In closing, Trump asked Cannon to rule — before her injunction automatically expires on Feb. 24 — and "permanently" block the DOJ, its current and former DOJ "officers, agents, officials, and employees," like Bondi and Smith, from releasing Volume II "outside of the Department of Justice" or "otherwise releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions contained in Volume II or its drafts."
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