Donald Trump is in full panic mode — and once again, he’s sprinting straight to his favorite safety net in a robe: Judge Aileen Cannon.
At the center of the meltdown is Volume Two of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report. This is the part Trump fears most: the deep dive into how he walked out of the White House with classified and top-secret documents, stashed them at Mar-a-Lago, and then played games with the FBI when they tried to get them back. We’re talking about documents that may even include nuclear secrets.
Jack Smith has a simple message: I’ll testify. Let’s do it in public. Let the world see.
Trump’s message: Bury it. Hide it. Delay it. Forever.
Smith has publicly said he’s willing to testify in front of both the House and Senate — under oath, on camera, with Volume Two in hand. He wants the American people to see what he found and how he found it, especially as MAGA politicians like Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson, and James Comer run around right-wing media screaming about “unlawful raids” and “Biden’s weaponized DOJ.”
Smith’s position is basically:
You want to talk tough on Fox? Cool.
Now ask me those questions to my face — live.
But for that to happen, Volume Two needs to be released.
That’s where Trump and Cannon come in.
Back in January 2025, Judge Cannon granted an order blocking the release of Volume Two, after Trump’s co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira begged her to keep it sealed. Trump himself tried to formally intervene but was only allowed to participate as an amicus curiae — a “friend of the court” — still giving him a voice in the fight to keep the report in the dark.
Then something inconvenient happened for Trump: the case ended.
No trial. No conviction. No public airing of the evidence. The prosecution was basically squashed. But that also removed the old excuse of “we can’t release the report because it might prejudice the defendants.” Case over means the public’s right to know becomes even more important.
Enter two watchdog groups — American Oversight and the Knight Institute — who moved to intervene and asked the court to finally unseal Volume Two and put it on the public docket. They argued what should be obvious in any functioning democracy:
If you’re not going to put the former president on trial for what he did, the least you can do is let the country know what actually happened.
But Judge Cannon did what Judge Cannon does best: nothing.
She sat on it. For months. Motions filed in March. Status reports. Briefs. Arguments. And she just… didn’t rule. The clock ticked. The public stayed in the dark. Trump stayed protected.
It got so bad that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — her judicial bosses — had to step in and essentially say: Judge, you have to do your job. You’re not allowed to just sit on this forever.
Only after that pressure did Trump rush back in with a new filing on December 2, 2025, desperately asking Cannon to reaffirm his “amicus” role — just so he can once again argue against releasing Volume Two.
His pitch to Cannon is simple:
Let me in the room, so I can remind you why this must stay buried.
There is no legitimate public-interest argument for secrecy left. Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira are off the hook. They’re not going to trial. There’s no jury to taint. There’s no verdict to compromise.
What’s left is one question:
Do the American people get to know what their former president actually did with their secrets… or not?
Every other major special investigation in modern history — Iran-Contra, 9/11, independent counsels, special counsels — has ended with some kind of public reckoning. A report. A hearing. A testimony. Something.
This Trump-era version? It’s a three-step con:
- Kill the prosecution.
- Bury the report.
- Replace the truth with a fake story on TV.
Trump wants to shut down the official record, then go on Truth Social and Fox and invent his own version. The Mar-a-Lago “raid” was illegal. The FBI was corrupt. He’s the victim. Jack Smith is the criminal.
Meanwhile, Jack Smith is saying:
Put me under oath and hit record. Let’s see whose story survives sunlight.
Judge Cannon now sits at the center of this. If she blocks the release, expect the 11th Circuit to get involved again — and this time, legal experts say they may not just gently nudge her. They may impose deadlines, instructions, even specific timelines for redactions, to stop her from playing the delay game for another year.
Because everyone can see the pattern:
Cannon’s loyalty isn’t to transparency, or to history, or to the public.
It’s to Trump.
And that’s why Trump is panicking — not because he’s brave, not because he’s fearless, but because he knows the one thing more dangerous than Jack Smith’s evidence is Jack Smith’s evidence going public.
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