Tonight in Your Rights: "Undue delay" on a Mar-a-Lago reckoning
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals tells Judge Cannon she has 60 more days to decide whether to release Jack Smith's report on Trump's Espionage Act case.
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Since late February, a free-speech group has been trying to unseal former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his indictment charging Donald Trump with violating the Espionage Act by mishandling and refusing to return classified documents that he stored at Mar-a-Lago.
On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been dragging her feet in ruling on that application, ordering her to decide the case within 60 days.
The three-judge panel included U.S. Circuit Judges Jill Pryor, an Obama appointee; Nancy Abudu, a Biden appointee; and Britt Grant, a Trump appointee. They found that Cannon exercised “undue delay” in deciding whether to make the report public and gave her 60 days to adjudicate the motion.
The Columbia University-based Knight First Amendment Institute filed the lawsuit to unearth Smith’s report.
The group’s senior counsel Scott Wilkens celebrated the finding that there was “no legitimate reason for the court’s months-long delay.”
This report is of singular importance to the public because it addresses allegations of grave criminal conduct by the nation’s highest-ranking official, and should be made public without further delay,” Wilkens said.
After Trump’s reelection last year, Smith released the first volume of his report on his charges that Trump conspired to defraud the United States in his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Judge Cannon blocked Smith’s attempt to disclose the report’s second volume before Trump took over the Justice Department.
The Knight First Amendment Institute took up the legal battle to disclose Volume II, arguing that the public has a right of access to the document.
This development represents Judge Cannon’s third rebuke from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in connection with Trump’s classified documents case.
During the investigation before Trump’s indictment, Judge Cannon blocked the FBI from investigating the classified documents seized during the raid on Mar-a-Lago before a privilege review could be conducted. The appeals court, in separate orders, lifted Cannon’s “radical” injunction and ended her review of the documents. Cannon became a reliably sympathetic audience for Trump during his investigation, his criminal case, and the public access battle that followed it.
At 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Allison Gill and I will break this development today on a Substack Live. Tune in!
Read the full order here.
Trump’s troops blocked again in Portland
After a three-day trial, a Trump-appointed federal judge issued an injunction blocking Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Portland.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut previously found that Trump’s depiction of a war-torn Portland was “untethered to the facts.” Under 10 U.S.C. 12406, Trump can only deploy the National Guard in the event of an invasion, rebellion or an inability to execute the laws of the United States using regular forces. Judge Immergut found that the evidence at trial established that none of those applied.
“Based on the trial testimony, this Court finds no credible evidence that during the approximately two months before the President’s federalization order, protests grew out of control or involved more than isolated and sporadic instances of violent conduct that resulted in no serious injuries to federal personnel,” Immergut wrote. “The violence that did occur during this time period predominately involved violence between protesters and counter-protesters, not violence against federal officers or the ICE facility.”
Immergut wrote that she plans to issue her final ruling by this Friday at 5 p.m. Pacific Time.
Last week, the Supreme Court indicated that it wasn’t in a rush to grant Trump’s request to unleash the National Guard in Chicago. Justice Amy Coney Barrett referred that case to the full court, which set a weeks-long schedule and ordered the parties to brief a legal question that could spell bad news for Trump.
Find out more in my recent video breakdown on the All Rise News playlist of MeidasTouch Network’s Legal AF.
Trump admin says it’ll pay out reduced SNAP benefits
After two federal judges blocked the suspension of SNAP benefits, the Trump administration announced in court that it will empty contingency funds to keep the program going, but the government claims that will only be enough to provide benefits for half of November.
Patrick Penn, the Deputy Under Secretary for Food Nutrition and Consumer Services at the Department of Agriculture, wrote in a sworn declaration that Food and Nutrition Services “intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
After adjusting for administrative fees in the 50 states, Puerto Rico and American Samoa, Penn said that only $4.65 billion of the contingency fund would be left to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments” through November.
The Democratic-led states, cities and nonprofit groups that successfully challenged Trump’s plan to suspend SNAP benefits in two federal courts have not yet formally responded to the federal government’s latest position.
What a crook. What did you do with the SNAP payouts, Donald? Weren’t those funds already allocated?
Watched you discussing some of these matters live with Allison Gill. Good conversation.