由 President Donald Trump 任命、被視為保護他的法官佛羅里達州的 Aileen Cannon，被形容為“partisan hack”，並遭 House Democrats 批評。她如今正面臨新的壓力：要求公開前 special counsel Jack Smith 的一份報告，而她一直在努力將其維持於公眾視野之外。

Law and Crime 的 Colin Kalmbacher 週二寫道：“A public advocacy group is urging a federal court of appeals to use any means available and necessary to unseal the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith's final report on his criminal investigations into President Donald Trump.” 他補充說：“Late last year, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, issued two orders related to the long-running dispute over the second volume.”

Kalmbacher 進一步表示：“In the first order, Cannon denied efforts to intervene by the Knight First Amendment Institute and transparency-focused nonprofit American Oversight. In her second order, Cannon acknowledged ‘any former or current party’ may move ‘for leave to intervene.’”

Trump 先前曾讚揚 Cannon 竭盡所能阻止 Smith 的報告曝光。不過，American Oversight 與 Knight First Amendment Institute 認為，公眾有權知道報告內容。他們主張，《Freedom of Information Act》支持他們的立場，並要求公開報告內容，將這場爭議界定為政府紀錄存取問題，而非刑事案件本身的實體爭點。

“Appellees urge this Court to bar American Oversight's intervention in the district court based on a fundamental misunderstanding of American Oversight's interest as a prospective intervenor,” 他們的簡報主張。“Because it had no other recourse to vindicate its rights under FOIA, Appellant sought intervention in the below proceedings—which were governed by federal criminal statutes.”

該簡報續稱：“American Oversight's statutory rights do not govern the underlying criminal proceedings, nor has it asserted any interest related to ‘the prosecution or nonprosecution’ of the former defendants. American Oversight's interest is more akin to that of media organizations that seek and are granted intervention in criminal cases for access to judicial records… FOIA does not govern the underlying criminal proceedings but provides American Oversight with a federal right, implicated by the district court's order barring the release of Volume II, to seek non-exempt public records from the federal government.”

Trump 政府也特別關注讓 Smith 的報告持續保密。5 月時，政府針對 Southern District 的前 managing assistant U.S. attorney Carmen Mercedes Lineberger，指控她試圖將這些文件寄到她的個人帳戶。

Trump’s Justice Department 於 5 月指稱：“The defendant concealed her actions by saving electronic copies of the government records in question under the misleading files names ‘chocolate cake recipe’ and ‘bundt cake recipe’ before electronically transmitting those records to her personal email accounts,” 並補充：“As to the DOJ report, the indictment further alleges the defendant acted knowing that her transmission of the record outside DOJ directly violated the court order and impaired the proper administration of the underlying criminal prosecution.”