Main: An aerial view of former President Donald Trump”s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 31, 2022 (AP Photo/Steve Helber/File). Right inset: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida).
While asking the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss as a sanction an appeal that sought “extraordinary” aid, lawyers for President Donald Trump and his former co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents prosecution are defending U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon and slamming “frivolous claims” about her.
Before Cannon permanently blocked the DOJ from releasing Volume II of ex-special counsel Jack Smith’s report, as an extension of her July 2024 dismissal of the Trump case on Appointments Clause grounds, the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight set two different appeals in motion.
The groups had tried to intervene in the shuttered case against Trump, valet Waltine Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira, for the purpose of lifting an injunction Cannon had in place since January 2025 and bringing Volume II public. When the denial came nearly a year later, she kept the door open for Trump and his former co-defendants to seek a permanent injunction.
One appeal challenged the denials of the nonparties’ motions to intervene in a closed criminal case for the purpose of releasing a redacted version of Smith’s report reviewed by Cannon in her chambers. That is currently set for oral argument in late June.
The other appeal, a petition for a writ of mandamus, asked the 11th Circuit to force the Trump-appointed judge to halt the proceedings before she could rule, with emphasis on Nauta and De Oliveira’s demand for the “destruction” of Volume II.
Trump’s legal team downplayed that request as one for the “constitutional expungement” of the report, said an “unfounded sense of urgency” wasn’t enough for mandamus relief when other appellate options existed, and dismissed the “highly speculative and bombastic claims” of “liberal organizations” and “purported” nonpartisan nonprofits that seek to unmuzzle Smith.
When “extraordinary” mandamus relief did not immediately come, Cannon lowered the boom on Smith, pointedly criticizing him for preparing the report in the first place in a “breach of the spirt,” “if not an outright violation” of her dismissal order, and permanently blocked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her successors from releasing Volume II.
What Cannon did not do is order the destruction of Volume II, and that has Trump and his former co-defendants taking something of a victory lap at the 11th Circuit. The doomsday “destruction” scenario contemplated by the petitioners, cited prominently to support the relief they sought, did not come to pass, and that makes the mandamus petition for a stay moot and fit for dismissal, court documents said Thursday.
Of particular concern for attorneys Kendra Wharton, Richard Klugh, and John Irving was the groups’ “rhetoric” that Cannon “acted to obstruct appellate review” by ruling when she did, before her injunction was automatically set to expire.
“Petitioners now baselessly accuse the District Court of ‘obstruct[ing] this Court’s appellate jurisdiction’ and ‘abus[ing] judicial power’ by ruling on the then-pending motions. But the District Court expressly addressed its jurisdiction when ruling on the pending motions, and noted ‘there is no pending notice of appeal that divests this Court of jurisdiction to enter this order,'” the filing said, slamming as an “extraordinary exercise in sanctionable conjecture” the notion that mandamus is still necessary because Cannon could take further action.
In a footnote, the lawyers encouraged the 11th Circuit to dismiss the petition as an “appropriate sanction” for making statements with “no reasonable factual basis” for the claims.
“Indeed, the District Court has expressly denied destruction relief, which is not presently challenged, and Petitioners identify no concrete basis for presuming that there will be any future challenge or forthcoming motion for relief,” the filing went on, inviting the “imposition of sanctions against Petitioners for their frivolous claims and statements.”
