Left: Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Capitol, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert). Right: Judge Aileen Cannon (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida).
The two groups that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon turned away in their quest to bring Volume II of ex-special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Mar-a-Lago to light are asking an appeals court to remember her “undue delay” and to reject President Donald Trump’s ask for more of the same.
When the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently moved up oral arguments from January 2027 to Nov. 2 — the day before the midterms — the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight finally seemed to be within striking distance of being heard.
Following Cannon’s dismissal of Trump’s classified documents and conspiracy indictment on grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel, the president, valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira each supported an injunction blocking the release of Volume II.
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At the time, Trump’s former co-defendants still had active appeals, and so the judge decided releasing Volume II publicly would jeopardize their “due process rights to a fair trial[.]” But the DOJ dismissed the Nauta and de Oliveira cases at the start of Trump’s second term.
The nonprofit groups used that fact and the public interest to repeatedly push for Volume II’s release, filing separate reminders for Cannon to issue a ruling on their attempted interventions. Eventually, the 11th Circuit agreed that the lower court jurist engaged in “undue delay” and put Cannon on a 60-day deadline to rule on motions to intervene.
The Trump-appointed judge — who invalidated all of the special counsel’s actions — responded by permanently blocking the Mar-a-Lago report’s release without ordering its destruction.
Trump, with the backing of his former co-defendants, responded to the new argument date by calling it an impossibility. His attorney Kendra Wharton argued that four weeks isn’t enough time before arguments for her to “meaningfully confer” with her client.
On Tuesday, the groups said the “nearly four weeks that remain leave ample time” for preparations and that pushing the date back again would “undermine” their long-running attempts to expedite the case.
“Appellants moved to intervene in February 2025, and this Court has already found undue delay in the district court’s adjudication of those motions. The question in these appeals is whether the public may see the report, and every further delay extends the withholding that Appellants contend is unlawful,” the filing said. “The Court properly expedited appeal, and a continuance would undermine that expedition.”
The groups asked the panel to “weigh heavily” the “urgency of the relief they seek,” which Cannon denied.
The opposition filing said Trump, Nauta and de Oliveira “have not shown good cause” because it’s “no surprise” that arguments ended up scheduled in November.
“But counsel had every reason to anticipate a November argument. From July 17 to August 25, argument was tentatively scheduled first for the week of November 2 and then for the week of November 16. For more than five weeks, then, counsel necessarily expected to prepare, and to confer with her client, in October and early November,” the filing said.
Knight Institute Senior Counsel Scott Wilkens similarly said in a statement that the former Mar-a-Lago defendants “should not be allowed to delay this case further” when details of “allegations of serious misconduct by the nation’s highest public official” are at issue.
“The court should reject this latest attempt at delay and hear the case on November 2,” Wilkens said.
The post Judge Cannon’s challengers urge appeals court not to forget her ‘undue delay’ and make it ‘weigh heavily’ against Trump first appeared on Law & Crime.
