Trump downplays demand for 'destruction' of Jack Smith's Mar-a-Lago report while alerting Cannon to appeal

Source: Law & Crime

Feb 18th, 2026, 11:12 am


Lawyers for President Donald Trump and his former co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case urged U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to order the "constitutional expungement" of special counsel Jack Smith's report, while also alerting the jurist to an appeal that seeks to prevent that outcome.

In a brief Tuesday filing jointly submitted by President Donald Trump, valet Waltine Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira, the collective former defendants in the unlawful retention of classified documents and obstruction case expressed that they have had "enough." The question is whether Cannon has also had enough.

The Trump-appointed judge who threw out Jack Smith's prosecution of the then-former president, ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel, has been asked for approximately one year to allow American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University to intervene in the closed criminal case.

The groups, repeatedly dismissed by Trump's team as "liberal organizations" and "purported" nonpartisan nonprofits, were met with Cannon's silence for months as they tried to make the case that a January 2025 injunction the judge issued — one blocking members of Congress from reading Volume II of Smith's report on the Mar-a-Lago investigation — should be lifted.

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/enough-is-enough-trump-downplays-demand-for-destruction-of-jack-smiths-mar-a-lago-report-while-alerting-cannon-to-appeal-that-could-stop-her/