A defense attorney for Donald Trump, who previously served as a senior ethics official at the Justice Department, has taken legal steps to prevent the release of a report by Special Counsel Jack Smith concerning the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The attorney, Kendra Wharton, has petitioned the judge who originally dismissed the Espionage Act charges against Trump to ensure the Department of Justice cannot make the report public.

Wharton filed a comprehensive 19-page motion requesting U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to expedite her decision on the matter. She criticized several liberal organizations for their ongoing efforts to disclose Volume II of Smith’s “Final Report” to the public.

For Trump’s legal team, Judge Cannon’s July 2024 ruling was pivotal. She dismissed the charges related to the retention of classified documents and obstruction, arguing that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had unlawfully appointed Smith as special counsel. According to Cannon, the funding for Smith’s position violated constitutional provisions, rendering any actions he took, including the creation of his final report, as illegitimate.

Judge Cannon, appointed by Trump, scrapped the case following an in-depth review. Her decision often referenced the solo concurrence of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court case Trump v. United States. Since January 21, 2025, an injunction has been in place to block the report’s release.

At the time, Trump’s former associates, valet Waltine Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira, were still pursuing appeals in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Following Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Justice, led by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and featuring Trump’s former defense attorney Todd Blanche as the second-in-command, decided to withdraw Smith’s appeal against Cannon’s dismissal.

While Volume I documenting Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation has been public since early 2025, American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University have since February 2025 tried to intervene for the purpose of lifting Cannon’s injunction and trying to bring Volume II public.

Law&Crime has reported how Cannon sat for half a year on the motions to intervene, only denying the motions in December after the 11th Circuit chided her for “undue delay” and put the judge on a 60-day deadline. This is the same appellate court that overturned Cannon’s 2022 appointment of a special master and block on the government from using evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago, an order that bogged down the case for months.

As an appeal of Cannon’s latest denials remains active, Trump has returned to Cannon’s court and urged her, with Smith scheduled to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning, to “permanently” prevent Smith and the DOJ from speaking about or releasing the contents of Volume II.

When Smith testified behind closed doors in December, he stated that he “chose not to review” his own report prior to the deposition, fearing that could have been construed as “violating [Cannon’s] order by looking at it[.]”

“It may well have been there, but I chose not to review it, because I didn’t want any implication whatsoever that I was somehow violating the order by looking at it, not being a member of the Department now,” Smith said, according to the transcript.

During the question and answer session, Smith also said “Cannon’s order is the reason” why Volume II and details about what it says cannot now go public.

And the result will be that Smith remains muzzled on Thursday, as the status quo has not changed.

Ultimately, even if the injunction were to be lifted, whether or how much of Volume II would go public is up to Bondi, but Trump’s private legal team is now endorsing a judicial block that would indefinitely hand DOJ a reason to keep Volume II secret.

Calling American Oversight and the Knight Institute “so-called” and “purported” nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations, linking the former group’s executive director to Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Wharton argued that Smith’s “preparation and submission of Volume II” to the DOJ was itself beyond his authority and “void” as the fruit of an unlawfully funded and appointed “Special Counsel.”

Wharton seemed to encourage Cannon to agree that Smith was on a mission to “unconstitutionally silence President Trump” through a gag order Cannon never issued, while he was on the 2024 campaign trail.

“Because President Trump is a former defendant in this since-dismissed criminal action, he unquestionably has direct, substantial, and compelling interests in obtaining a protective order to prevent the dissemination of Smith’s ultra vires work product,” the motion said, adding that allowing the public to read Volume II and decide for itself what it means would “improperly endorse and give legal effect to Smith’s unlawful investigation and prosecution in the Southern District of Florida and would irreparably harm President Trump and his former co-defendants.”

“The appropriate remedy is the invalidation of all of Smith’s ultra vires acts, including his subsequent preparation and submission of Volume II,” the motion stated, saying such a remedy would “protect the integrity of the constitutional role of the judiciary.”

Wharton cast Smith’s final report as an “inherently biased and one-sided document,” in that it likely details Trump’s alleged illegal retention of national defense information — such as a document “concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States — for storage in a bathroom, shower, and elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago, as well as his and his co-defendants’ alleged efforts to obstruct the government’s recovery of those files.

Volume II, prepared by Smith with “significant sums of taxpayer dollars” even after Cannon found he was unlawfully funded and tossed the case, is a product of his “apparent disdain and disrespect for this Court’s rulings” and “should not be tolerated,” the motion said, encouraging another smackdown.

In closing, Trump asked Cannon to rule — before her injunction automatically expires on Feb. 24 — and “permanently” block the DOJ, its current and former DOJ “officers, agents, officials, and employees,” like Bondi and Smith, from releasing Volume II “outside of the Department of Justice” or “otherwise releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions contained in Volume II or its drafts.”