Feb. 24, 2026, 4:31 a.m. ET
We finally know the two-pronged approach to get U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to act quickly when something is asked of her in the Southern District of Florida.
First, President Donald Trump, who appointed Cannon to the bench in his first term, must be the one asking.
And second, Cannon must feel an urge to move before a ruling on her actions arrives from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a conservative-leaning bunch that has taken a dim view of her previous decisions in Trump’s case.
It has been just 36 days since Trump asked Cannon to prohibit the release of the report compiled by former special counsel Jack Smith, based on the investigation and Trump’s 2023 indictment in hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
The judge predictably ruled in Trump’s favor on Feb. 23, permanently prohibiting the U.S. Department of Justice from releasing the special counsel’s report, even while the 11th Circuit considers whether the report should be made public.
And Cannon was so keen on protecting Trump from scrutiny that she suggested it was a “brazen stratagem” for Smith to write a report at all.
Judge Cannon adds another ruling in her ‘unprecedented deference’ to Trump
Cannon first dismissed the documents case against Trump in July 2024 on a technicality, accepting the president’s challenge of how Smith was appointed as special counsel. The Department of Justice dropped an appeal of that ruling in November 2024, not on the merits, but for another technicality.
Trump had just won another term, and the DOJ has a long-standing policy that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted.
But that doesn’t mean Americans can’t know what Trump did to get indicted in the documents case. American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute, two nonprofits that work on free speech and access to government documents, have been fighting in court for a year to get Cannon to release Smith’s report.
Cannon on Dec. 22 announced that she would release that report by Feb. 24, but she added that Trump could seek “appropriate relief before that deadline.” For a judge who always sees things Trump’s way, that must have been such a nice invitation.
The judge had also rejected efforts on Dec. 22 by American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute to intervene in the case and have the report released, so they appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals the next day. And the groups filed a motion on Feb. 9 with the Southern District of Florida, challenging Cannon’s jurisdiction in the case while an appeal was pending at the 11th Circuit.
Cannon ruled anyway, because that’s what Trump wanted. And she always does what Trump wants.
“Judge Cannon’s decision to permanently block the release of this extraordinarily significant report is impossible to square with the First Amendment and the common law,” said Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight Institute. “There is no legitimate basis for its continued suppression.”
American Oversight accused Cannon of showing “unprecedented deference” to Trump.
“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, the group’s executive director. “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.”
Cannon may see herself as Trump’s protector. That’s not what Americans need.
Smith had no public comment after Cannon’s ruling, according to a spokesperson for his attorneys.
The former special counsel in January testified in a U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing about another indictment against Trump, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That case was also dropped after he won reelection. Smith defended that indictment but was unable to answer questions in the public hearing about Trump’s documents case, due to a gag order Cannon had put in place.
But Smith also testified in a private hearing of the Judiciary Committee on Dec. 17 about both cases. The committee released a transcript of that testimony on Dec. 31.
Smith used his opening statement in that hearing to declare that his investigators working on the documents case “developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”
We should be able to see that evidence and decide for ourselves what it says about Trump and his actions. We’ll need action from the 11th Circuit, and then maybe from the U.S. Supreme Court, for that to happen.
That might be a long shot, but the 11th Circuit has come down on Cannon before. A three-judge panel from that appellate court in December 2022 chastised Cannon for trying to install a “special master” in the documents case who could bar investigators from reviewing documents seized with a search warrant.
Another three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit in November criticized Cannon for “undue delay” in acting on requests from American Oversight and the Knight Institute to release Smith’s report on the documents case, while giving her a 60-day deadline to act.
Cannon may see herself as Trump’s protector. But the 11th Circuit should let us all see how Trump handled classified documents after he lost the 2020 election, and the lengths he went to cover up his own behavior.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
