Judge Cannon’s ruling may not be the last word on Jack Smith

In 2024, Donald Trump became the first GOP presidential candidate in U.S. history to win his party's nomination despite the fact that he was facing four criminal indictments: two at the federal level, one in Georgia, and one in New York State (which found a Manhattan jury convicting him on 34 felony counts). Moreover, Trump was an unindicted co-conspirator in an election interference case from Arizona Attorney General Kris Mays.

But the four Trump indictments were doomed when he narrowly defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024's general election. And then-special counsel Jack Smith, citing the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) policy against prosecuting a sitting president, said that his two federal cases against Trump should not proceed.

Before then-President Joe Biden and then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland left their positions, however, Smith prepared a two-part final report on his cases. The first part, focusing on his election interference case, was released — whereas the Mar-a-Lago/classified documents part of the report was not. And Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee assigned to the documents case, recently ruled that it should remain unreleased.

But according to conservative National Review reporter Andrew McCarthy, Cannon's ruling may not be the last word on the classified documents section of Smith's report.

"Even if Garland was politically motivated," McCarthy argues in an article published on March 1, "he had authority as AG, under the governing regulation, to publicize Smith's final reports. And he had history on his side. Over the years, it has become standard practice for such reports to be released to Congress and the public. That is because special counsels tend to be appointed in cases involving allegations of political corruption and abuse of power. Even if the misconduct is not prosecutable — and much abuse of power is not — there is a high public interest in holding accountable those who abuse offices of public trust…. As we've noted, because of long-standing DOJ guidance against prosecuting a sitting president, the Biden DOJ knew it had to dismiss, as to Trump, its Eleventh Circuit appeal of Cannon's disqualification of Smith."

McCarthy laments that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is "prioritizing" Trump's "personal desires over her department's legitimacy."

"She rationalizes that Smith's appointment was invalid and, therefore, that everything he did was corrupt and lawless," McCarthy writes. "Bondi is committed to promoting the president's false narrative that he did nothing wrong and the cases against him collapsed because they were baseless. It's laughable. Neither indictment was dismissed on the merits…. I don't believe that Cannon's ruling could withstand challenge if there were a litigant who had standing to complain."

McCarthy adds, "Again, Smith could have conducted his investigation, never brought any charges regarding the Mar-a-Lago documents, and provided a final report that Garland could have made public. No court would have had any basis to forbid publication."