The following can be attributed to Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

“The Special Counsel’s report concerns allegations of grave misconduct by President Trump and should be released to the public. Every day that the report stays under seal deprives the American public of the information necessary to judge for themselves the character and fitness of the nation’s highest official. The Eleventh Circuit should reverse Judge Cannon’s orders that are keeping the report secret and direct that it be made public as soon as possible.”

Read today’s brief here. 

Read more about the case here.

For more information, contact: Gabriel Tyler, gabriel.tyler@knightcolumbia.org

The following can be attributed to Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

“Judge Cannon’s justifications for permanently suppressing the Special Counsel’s report don’t withstand scrutiny. The report is a government record of profound public importance that must be released. The public has the right to see this report under the First Amendment, common law, and Freedom of Information Act. It’s that simple.”

Read today’s brief here.

Read more about the case here.

For more information, contact: Gabriel Tyler, gabriel.tyler@knightcolumbia.org

“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.”

Today’s ruling would permanently bar the report’s release, largely based on Judge Cannon’s view that Special Counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed when he prepared it. The court denied the defendants’ request to order the report destroyed.

“A major purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment protects the public’s right of access to documents filed in connection with criminal trials,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight Institute. “Given the significance of the Special Counsel’s report, and the role it played in earlier proceedings before Judge Cannon, there is really no question that both the common law and the First Amendment require the report’s release.”

Earlier this month, the Knight Institute asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to reverse an earlier order by Judge Cannon refusing to release the Special Counsel’s report. The Institute also filed a separate motion in the district court explaining that Judge Cannon lacks jurisdiction to order the report’s destruction and that she has been divested of authority over issues relating to the report in light of the Institute’s pending appeal before the Eleventh Circuit. The appeal stems from a motion filed by the Institute last year requesting that Judge Cannon lift an injunction prohibiting the Department of Justice from releasing the Special Counsel’s report. The Institute also asked Judge Cannon to post the report on the court’s public docket, arguing that the First Amendment and common law guarantee the public a right of access to records submitted in connection with criminal proceedings. 

Read today’s decision here. 

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Scott Wilkens, Jameel Jaffer, Alex Abdo, and Noah Kim for the Knight First Amendment Institute, and David Buckner for Buckner & Miles.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org 

“There is no good reason for withholding this report from the public,” said Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment  Institute. “The public has a right to the report under the First Amendment and common law, and the Freedom of Information Act requires its release as well.” 

In February of last year, the Institute filed a motion asking Judge Cannon, who presided over the Justice Department’s now-abandoned prosecution of President Trump, to lift her injunction prohibiting the Justice Department from releasing Smith’s report. The Institute also asked Judge Cannon to post the report on the court’s public docket, arguing that the First Amendment and common law give the public a right of access to it because it was submitted in connection with a criminal proceeding. After Judge Cannon failed to rule on the Institute’s request for 218 days, the Institute asked the Eleventh Circuit to intervene. That court held that Judge Cannon had unduly delayed the adjudication of the Institute’s motion and ordered her to rule within 60 days. Judge Cannon denied the Institute’s motion 11 days before the expiration of that period.

“This is an official Justice Department report that addresses alleged criminal activity by the nation’s highest official—it should have been released to the public months ago,” said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director. “The First Amendment has long been understood to require the release of records filed in connection with criminal trials. There is no exception for records that concern the president.”

In a separate filing today, the Institute informed Judge Cannon that she lacks jurisdiction to order the destruction of Jack Smith’s report, which President Trump’s co-defendants have asked her to do. (The Justice Department has also asked that the report be relegated to the “dustbin of history.”) The Institute argues that Judge Cannon has been divested of jurisdiction over issues relating to the report because the Institute’s appeal is now before the Eleventh Circuit. 

Read the Institute’s Eleventh Circuit brief here. 

Read the Institute’s motion filed with Judge Cannon here.

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Wilkens, Jaffer, and Alex Abdo for the Knight First Amendment Institute, and David Buckner for Buckner & Miles.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org. 

In February, the Knight Institute filed a motion to intervene in the case arguing that the public has a First Amendment right to review the report, which concerns allegations of grave criminal conduct by the nation’s highest-ranking official. In September, the Institute asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to compel Judge Cannon to rule on its motion to intervene, which had been pending for more than six months. On November 3, the appeals court found that the lower court had unduly delayed its ruling on the motion and said that it would hold the Knight Institute’s petition for 60 days with the expectation that Judge Cannon would issue a ruling within that time frame. That period was set to expire on January 2, 2026. 

Read today’s decision here.

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Wilkens, Jameel Jaffer, Alex Abdo, and Noah Kim for the Knight First Amendment Institute, and David Buckner for Buckner & Miles.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

The following can be attributed to Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University: 

“We’re pleased that members of the House Judiciary Committee recognize the importance of making the Special Counsel’s report public. The release of the report will shed light on the scope and integrity of the Special Counsel’s investigation and on the character and actions of the nation’s highest official. Judge Cannon should release the report without further delay.”

In February, the Knight Institute filed a motion to intervene in the case asking Judge Aileen Cannon—who presided over the now-abandoned prosecution of President Trump under the Espionage Act—to release volume II of the Special Counsel’s report, arguing that it should be made public under the First Amendment and common law right of access to judicial records. The Institute also asked the court to lift an injunction prohibiting the Department of Justice from releasing the report. In September, the Institute asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to compel Judge Cannon to rule on its motion to intervene, which had been pending for more than six months. On November 3, the appeals court found that the lower court had unduly delayed its ruling on the motion and said that it would hold the Knight Institute’s petition for 60 days with the expectation that Judge Cannon would issue a ruling within that time frame. That period will expire on January 2, 2026. 

Read today’s brief here.

Read more about the case here.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org. 

The Justice Department abandoned the case against Mr. Trump after he won the 2024 election, citing a longstanding departmental policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the Justice Department has worked hand in glove with his current lawyers to suppress the department’s report about its investigation of his actions. Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a Trump appointee who presided over Mr. Trump’s case, has issued an order prohibiting the Justice Department from disseminating the report—and effectively prohibiting Jack Smith, the special counsel who wrote it, from speaking about it publicly or even testifying about it to Congress.

Judge Cannon’s order should be vacated and Mr. Smith’s report released. There is a respectable argument for sparing a sitting president the burden of defending himself from criminal charges, but if presidents are to be immune from prosecution while in office, it’s all the more important that Congress and the public have access to the information that would empower them to hold the president accountable in other ways.

The Justice Department began its investigation of Mr. Trump in early 2022 after the National Archives and Records Administration discovered that some of the records he had taken from the White House were classified. Later that year, when Mr. Trump declared himself a candidate for the presidency, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Mr. Smith as a special counsel to take over the investigation—a move meant to ensure the investigation’s political independence.

Mr. Smith eventually sought an indictment in the Southern District of Florida, and in June 2023 a grand jury returned one. Mr. Trump was accused of taking documents to Mar-a-Lago, lying about whether he had them, showing them to people not authorized to see them and refusing to return them even after having been served with a subpoena. The indictment also charged Mr. Trump’s valet, Waltine Nauta, with helping him conceal the documents. Just over a month later, a superseding indictment added charges against Mr. Trump, Mr. Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira, Mr. Trump’s property manager at Mar-a-Lago.

If a jury had convicted them on these charges, Mr. Trump’s associates would probably have been sentenced to substantial prison terms, and Mr. Trump himself might have spent the rest of his life behind bars.

The Justice Department policy that spared Mr. Trump this possible fate—the policy against prosecuting sitting presidents—originates in a legal opinion that the department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote in 1973 and reaffirmed in 2000. It stems mainly from the concern that requiring a president to answer criminal charges would compromise his or her ability to discharge the duties of the office. The department’s lawyers reasoned that it would be “incongruous” to allow a jury of 12 citizens to interfere so profoundly with a president’s ability to govern. They concluded that if a president’s mandate was to be terminated, it should be through impeachment.

It is no surprise, given this policy, that Mr. Smith abandoned the prosecution once voters returned Mr. Trump to the White House. But the suppression of Mr. Smith’s report is highly irregular and disturbing.

After the Justice Department abandoned the case against Mr. Trump in 2024, Mr. Smith completed his report and submitted it to the attorney general, as departmental regulations required. Mr. Trump and his co-defendants asked Judge Cannon to issue an order prohibiting the Justice Department from disseminating the report, contending that its release would compromise Mr. Nauta’s and Mr. De Oliveira’s rights to a fair trial.

In January 2025, Judge Cannon issued the order, even though Justice Department regulations authorized the attorney general to release the report, even though Mr. Smith had created a version of the report that minimized the identification of witnesses and co-conspirators and redacted other sensitive information, and even though Mr. Smith himself had made clear that the report should not be released to the public while the charges against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira remained pending.

In February 2025, the Justice Department dropped the charges against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira, making the concerns about their fair-trial rights moot. But just a few months ago, Judge Cannon reaffirmed her order, this time contending Mr. Smith had been appointed unconstitutionally and that therefore his report should be suppressed forever.

The current Justice Department, controlled as it is by lawyers who have demonstrated repeatedly that they are more loyal to Mr. Trump than to the rule of law, has made plain that it will not release the report even if Judge Cannon lifts her order; in one brief, department lawyers wrote that the report “belongs in the dustbin of history.” (Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general whom Mr. Trump has nominated to lead the Justice Department, was Mr. Trump’s lead counsel in the classified documents case.)

But Judge Cannon’s order does more than just constrain the Justice Department; it has also prevented civil liberties and news organizations from securing the report’s release under the Freedom of Information Act. The Knight Institute, which I direct, requested the report under the act last year; the Justice Department pointed to Judge Cannon’s order to justify rejecting our request. A federal judge in New York dismissed a similar request made by The New York Times on the grounds that Judge Cannon’s injunction could be challenged before Judge Cannon or not at all.

As it happens, Judge Cannon may have inadvertently provided a way to force the report’s disclosure. Before prohibiting the Justice Department from releasing the report, she insisted on reviewing the report herself. That brought the report within the scope of the First Amendment, which gives the public a presumptive right of access to most judicial hearings and related documents. Judge Cannon rejected a petition filed by the Knight Institute asserting a First Amendment right of access to Mr. Smith’s report, but we have appealed her ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has said it will hear oral argument in the fall.

Mr. Smith investigated Mr. Trump for conduct that appears to have entailed an astonishing betrayal of the public’s trust as well as the nation’s security. Legislators and ordinary citizens should have the opportunity to read the report for themselves. It is incoherent to immunize the president from prosecution on the theory that he can be held accountable through the political process—and then to deny Congress and the public information that would help them do so.