Cannon, a Trump appointee, was randomly assigned one of Smith’s cases in June 2023—the one involving Trump’s hoarding of highly classified materials at Mar-a-Lago. The dismissal was a bow to reality—DOJ guidance bars the prosecution of a sitting president, and Trump had vowed to dismiss it and fire Smith anyway—but it also paved the way for Smith to release a report laying out his findings before Trump could take charge and bury it. Cannon’s ruling appears to try to block the release of information related not only to the classified-documents case but also to a separate case involving Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election, which was in federal court in Washington, D.C. Smith moved to dismiss that case after Trump’s victory as well.