The motions to permanently prohibit the release of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith's final report were "unopposed" because Trump now sits on both sides of the case — he is the defendant, and he is also the man who runs the Department of Justice that is nominally the plaintiff. The DOJ filed a response agreeing with Trump's motion, because of course it did. Meanwhile, Judge Cannon denied every third party that tried to intervene and argue for disclosure, then granted the motions as "unopposed" with a straight face.

Today Judge Aileen Cannon issued a 15-page order granting those motions, permanently enjoining the Department of Justice from releasing Volume II — the volume dealing with the classified documents prosecution — or sharing "any information or conclusions" from it with anyone outside the Department. A sweeping, perpetual gag order.

The procedural mechanics are worth understanding. Trump's lawyers filed an "unopposed expedited motion" seeking permanent suppression. Co-defendants Nauta and De Oliveira filed a similar motion. The DOJ — now run by Attorney General Pam Bondi — filed a response agreeing that Volume II should not be released, characterizing it as the unlawful work product of an unconstitutionally appointed special counsel and invoking the deliberative process privilege. No party opposed the motions because the only party that would have — the government that prosecuted the case — no longer exists in the case in any meaningful sense. The Trump DOJ is not going to argue for the release of a report about Trump.

Outside parties tried to fill that void. The Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight both moved to intervene, seeking to argue for public disclosure under the First Amendment and common-law right of access. Cannon denied their motions in December 2025, ruling that they had no basis for party status in a criminal proceeding. Their appeal of that denial is pending in the Eleventh Circuit. With intervenors excluded and the DOJ captured, Cannon had constructed the conditions under which "unopposed" became a foregone conclusion.

The order itself rests on four grounds: that release would violate Cannon's own dismissal order declaring Smith's appointment unconstitutional; that it would breach the Rule 16 protective order governing discovery materials; that it risks disclosure of grand jury and attorney-client privileged material that can no longer be properly reviewed because Smith's team has departed and defense counsel was forced to delete their discovery copies; and that releasing prosecutorial work product after charges were dismissed without an adjudication of guilt would cause "manifest injustice."

Each of these arguments has surface plausibility and each obscures something important. The dismissal order is Cannon's own ruling on the Appointments Clause — a ruling that was never tested on appeal because Smith dropped the case against Trump after the 2024 election and the Trump DOJ dismissed the remaining appeals. The protective order argument treats a report prepared by the special counsel as equivalent to raw discovery. The privilege concerns are bootstrapped from conditions Smith's office created during the transition. And the fairness argument — that defendants who were never convicted should not face public disclosure of evidence — would be more persuasive if Cannon had not also rejected every attempt by non-parties to make the counter-argument.

What Cannon has done is seal off from public view the complete prosecutorial account of how classified national defense documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago and what happened when the government tried to get them back. Volume I, covering the separate January 6th investigation, was released in January 2025. Volume II will remain locked inside a DOJ that has no interest in ever letting it see daylight. The order does deny the defendants' request to destroy Volume II, so it will continue to exist — somewhere in the Department, behind Bondi's privilege designation, gathering dust.

The Eleventh Circuit still has the intervenors' appeal. That may be the last avenue for any challenge to this order. But for now, Judge Cannon has ensured that a federal criminal investigation into a former and current president will be permanently hidden from the public it was meant to serve.

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