American Oversight Appeals Judge Cannon Order That Could Clear Way for Trump to Permanently Destroy Jack Smith Report
We also filed an expedited motion to prevent Cannon from granting Trump, co-conspirators’ requests to keep public in dark.
Monday, American Oversight filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit seeking to overturn U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order preventing us from participating in the criminal proceedings to seek the release of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the investigation into President Trump’s handling of classified documents.
Additionally, following separate motions filed last month by Trump and his co-conspirators Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira asking that Judge Cannon prohibit the report’s release and require its permanent destruction, respectively, we also filed a joint expedited motion to intervene with the press freedom watchdog Knight First Amendment Institute, which seeks to prevent Cannon from ruling on these attacks on transparency, and asking that the case be paused while the appeals courts make a decision.
The appeal challenges Judge Cannon’s late-December order denying motions by the Knight First Amendment Institute and us to intervene, rejecting arguments that transparency and public access interests warrant our participation in a matter of significant public importance. Cannon declined to order the immediate release of the report, and instead granted President Trump and his co-conspirators a 60-day window to challenge disclosure and keep the report under seal during any appeal process — effectively providing the president with a roadmap for keeping the report hidden indefinitely.
“We will not allow the president and his guard dogs to bury information that belongs to the American people,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight. “For more than a year, Judge Cannon has kept the Special Counsel’s final report under seal, long after any legitimate claims by Trump’s co-conspirators expired. By blocking our effort to challenge her gag order, the court handed President Trump a roadmap for burying the report through delay and procedural gamesmanship. As Special Counsel Jack Smith recently testified, the report documents powerful evidence that the president willfully retained highly classified information after leaving office, putting national security at risk. We are seeking immediate relief to reverse Judge Cannon’s decision and prevent her from ruling on motions that would permanently erase this report from the historical record. The public deserves the truth, not a justice system that can be manipulated to hide it.”
Our appeal challenges Judge Cannon’s denial of our motion to intervene, which itself challenged the continued enforcement of her Jan. 21, 2025, gag order barring the DOJ’s public release — even to Congress — of Volume II of Smith’s report. The joint expedited motion to intervene follows a request from Trump to permanently enjoin the release of the report and his co-conspirators’ request to destroy it.
On Feb. 10, 2025, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and motion for preliminary injunction against the DOJ in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after the agency failed to respond to our request demanding the release of the report, which would ordinarily be subject to disclosure under FOIA. The district court ultimately denied the motion, citing Judge Cannon’s gag order in dismissing our suit.
Cannon’s Dec. 2025 decision allowing the gag order to remain in effect for 60 days so Trump and his co-conspirators could request that it not be released came just days after Smith spent more than eight hours testifying behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee. There, he revealed that his investigation produced “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Trump unlawfully attempted to overturn the 2020 election and had uncovered “powerful evidence” that the president willfully retained highly classified documents after leaving office. During a public hearing last month, Smith acknowledged that the DOJ’s interpretation of Cannon’s gag order effectively barred him from testifying publicly about the contents of the report. In response to Cannon’s order, Trump and his co-conspirators filed their respective motions to permanently bar the report’s release and destroy it.
We filed our Sep. 2025 mandamus petition after repeated efforts to force Judge Cannon to lift her order. Although Trump’s appeals in the criminal case were dismissed in Nov. 2024, and the others in early Feb. 2025, Cannon allowed the prohibition of release to remain in effect 60 days beyond her Dec. 2025 order. This move was sparked by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s November finding that Cannon’s failure to rule on our motion to vacate the gag order seven months after it was fully briefed constituted an “undue delay.”