Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon said releasing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report now would be a ‘manifest injustice’ to the president
A US judge permanently barred the Justice Department on Monday from releasing a prosecutor’s report on the criminal case accusing President Donald Trump of unlawfully retaining classified documents following his first term in office.
Florida-based US District Judge Aileen Cannon found that releasing the report would be a “manifest injustice” to the Republican president and two former associates who were charged alongside him because it would detail substantial allegations of criminal wrongdoing in a case that never reached a jury.
Cannon, who Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, in 2024 dismissed all the charges.
Disclosure of Smith’s report “would contravene basic notions of fairness and justice in the process, where no adjudication of guilt has been reached following initiation of criminal charges”, Cannon wrote in Monday’s ruling.
Source: News - South China Morning Post
