Cover-Up of Trump’s Hoarding of Classified Documents Is Almost Complete

District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has done yeoman’s work in making sure that Donald Trump never has to stand trial for his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing justice. On Monday, she sought to make sure that he also won’t be judged in the court of public opinion.

Cannon, who slow-walked proceedings and issued many controversial decisions favoring Trump before dismissing the case on procedural grounds in 2024, ruled that special counsel Jack Smith’s final report should be kept hidden from the American people.

The judge, whose loyalty to the president is a major reason why experts believe she is on the short list of potential Supreme Court nominees if a spot were to open up, blasted Smith for proceeding with compiling the final report even after she dismissed the case and proclaimed him to be illegally appointed.

“Special Counsel Smith and his team went ahead for months, undeterred, preparing [the classified documents report] using discovery collected in connection with this proceeding and expending government funds in the process,” Cannon stated in her decision. “To say this chronology represents, at a minimum, a concerning breach of the spirit of the Dismissal Order is an understatement, if not an outright violation of it.”

However, the reason why Smith continued his work was simple: There was a reasonable expectation that a higher court would throw out Cannon’s puzzling decision to dismiss the case. Unfortunately, we never got to find out because the Department of Justice dropped its appeal after Trump won the 2024 election.

In her ruling, Cannon said it would be unfair to release the final report because the case never reached a jury. Of course, with her delaying tactic and pro-Trump decisions, she is the reason why it didn’t go to trial.

Cannon also acknowledged that, in the past, other special counsels did release their final reports.

“While it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work,” she wrote, “it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial. The Court strains to find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.”

Cannon must not have looked all that hard.

In May of 2023, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice released the unclassified 316-page report that special counsel John Durham had compiled on the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

That four-year investigation resulted in a total of three indictments; two of them went to trial, and both of those ended in acquittals. One individual, a former FBI lawyer, pleaded guilty to altering an email and was sentenced to 12 months of probation and community service.

Then again, Cannon has never been about pursuing justice, it has always been about protecting the man who appointed her to her position… and perhaps about proving that she is loyal to Trump above all in case he needs to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

For the sake of transparency, we hope that her ruling will be appealed and overturned.

For now, if Americans want to find out more about Trump’s hoarding of classified documents and his attempts to obstruct justice, they’ll just have to read Smith’s superseding indictment, which can be found here.