American Oversight Condemns Judge Cannon’s Order Permanently Blocking Release of Volume II of Jack Smith Report

Monday, in an extension of her unprecedented deference to President Donald Trump, Judge Aileen Cannon granted motions filed by the president and his co-conspirators to permanently block the release of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the investigation into the president’s alleged mishandling of national security documents, preventing the public from accessing the full account of the evidence and the report’s findings. In a separate order, Judge Cannon also denied a joint motion by  the Knight First Amendment Institute and us, seeking a stay of proceedings while our appeal of her decision preventing us from participating in the criminal proceedings to seek the report’s release is pending with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In response, we released the following statement:

“Judge Cannon’s ruling continues a troubling pattern of decisions that shield the president from public scrutiny and place secrecy above the public’s right to know,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight. “By permanently blocking the release of Volume II of the Special Counsel’s report and denying our effort to seek a stay while our appeal moves forward, the court has ensured that the public is denied information of extraordinary national importance. This sweeping order once again gives the president exactly what he wanted — continued concealment of the factual record underlying the historic investigation into his misconduct. American taxpayers funded this investigation, and they have a right to know what their government uncovered, particularly on matters of national security. We will continue using every tool available to force this information into the open and to defend the public’s right to the truth through the release of this report.”

Last week, we sent a demand letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and senior officials at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) warning that any effort to destroy Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report would violate the Federal Records Act (FRA). The letter followed escalating legal efforts by President Trump and his co-conspirators, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, to convince Judge Cannon to not only enjoin release of the report permanently, but to require destruction of all copies as well. 

The letter asked that the DOJ and NARA take appropriate action to prevent destruction of the report. It followed a series of extraordinary developments in the case surrounding efforts to release Volume II of Special Counsel Smith’s report to the public. In today’s decision, Judge Cannon ultimately stopped short of ordering the destruction of Volume II.

On Feb. 9, we and the Knight First Amendment Institute filed briefs with the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in their appeals seeking to overturn Judge Cannon’s order preventing our participation in the criminal proceedings to seek the release of the report. 

The appeal challenged Judge Cannon’s late-December order denying our motions to intervene, which rejected 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.

Also on Feb. 9, following separate motions filed last month by Trump and his co-conspirators Nauta and De Oliveira asking that Judge Cannon prohibit the report’s release and require its permanent destruction, we filed a joint expedited motion to intervene in Judge Cannon’s court, which sought to prevent Cannon from ruling on these attacks on transparency and asked that the case be paused while the appeals courts make a decision.

The same week, we filed a mandamus action with the Eleventh Circuit asking the court to stay proceedings in Judge Cannon’s court while the Eleventh Circuit decides their appeal. Last week, we asked the Eleventh Circuit to expedite consideration of the mandamus action, after Trump and his co-conspirators filed a document with Judge Cannon asking her to rule on their motions to destroy the report or prevent its release, even after we had filed our appeal with the Eleventh Circuit. The Eleventh Circuit had not ruled on the mandamus action at the time of Judge Cannon’s orders today.

More than a year ago, 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 the 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 that he 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 bar the report’s release permanently 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 in response to our mandamus petition 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.”