Aileen Cannon Locks Up the Jack Smith Report For at Least 30 More Days

Aileen Cannon issued her ruling withholding any sharing of Jack Smith’s Volume Two — which she extended to thirty days after all appellate proceedings.

2. Attorney General Garland or his successor(s), the Department of Justice, its officers, agents, officials, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals, are enjoined from (a) releasing, sharing, or transmitting Volume II of the Final Report or any drafts of Volume II outside the Department of Justice, or (b) otherwise releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions in Volume II or in drafts thereof

3. This Order remains in effect pending further Court order, limited as follows. No later than thirty days after full conclusion of all appellate proceedings in this action and/or any continued proceedings in this Court, whichever comes later, the parties shall submit a joint status report advising of their position on this Order, consistent with any remaining Rule 6(e) challenges or other claims or rights concerning Volume II, as permitted by law. Any disagreements between the parties can be denoted separately.

She claims the report — which would only be released in redacted form — includes non-public information (and also revealed that Trump was claiming attorney-client privilege over some of the material).

Volume II includes detailed and voluminous discovery information protected by the Rule 16(d)(1) Protective Order entered in this case [ECF No. 27]. Much of this information has not been made public in Court filings. It includes myriad references to bates-stamped information provided by the Special Counsel in discovery and subject to the protective order, including interview transcripts, search warrant materials, business records, toll records, video footage, various other records obtained pursuant to grand jury subpoena, information as to which President-Elect Trump has asserted the attorney-client privilege in motions in this proceeding [ECF No. 571 (sealed); ECF Nos. 641, 656], potential Rule 404(b) evidence, and other non-public information.

Along the way, she notes that no one from Congress has asked for the report, but that the Democratic members of HJC called for its public release.

12. With respect to the Department’s assertion of congressional interest in Volume II, there has been no subpoena by Congress for review or release of Volume II. There is no record of an official request by members of Congress for in camera review of Volume II as proposed by the Department in this case. There is, however, a recent letter by some of those same members urging Attorney General Garland to release Volume II to the public immediately, even if doing so requires dismissal of the charges as to Defendants Nauta and De Oliveira.10 Finally, although the Department refers generally to “legislative interest” concerning special counsels as a basis to deny Defendants’ Emergency Motion as to Volume II [ECF No. 703 p. 3 n.2], the Department has identified no pending legislation on the subject or any legislative activity that could be aided, even indirectly, by dissemination of Volume II to the four specified members whom the Department believes should review Volume II now.

Note that she ignores Kash Patel’s pending confirmation proceedings.

Cannon also makes a patently false claim — that DOJ has never released Special Counsel information prior to the conclusion of criminal proceedings.

Never before has the Department of Justice, prior to the conclusion of criminal proceedings against a defendant—and absent a litigation-specific reason as appropriate in the case itself— sought to disclose outside the Department a report prepared by a Special Counsel containing substantive and voluminous case information. Until now.

The Mueller Report did that: It included (but redacted) information on both the Prigozhin troll case and the Roger Stone one.

Ah well. I did say that Jamie Raskin would have been better off attempting to intervene personally.

Cannon, having released the order after folks at SDFL quit, now makes much of the fact that no one from SDFL is noticed on this matter.

Update: As a reminder, I posted on some of the stuff that would appear in the report here. It sounds like the report itself has a lot more description of surveillance footage.