HEADS UP: The 11th Circuit has ordered Briefs in Judge Cannon's Volume II Case

Trump's Past Is Catching Up With Him
Joyce Vance
May 30, 2026
We’ve discussed Trump’s ongoing efforts to prevent the release of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the now-dismissed classified documents prosecution against the president. That issue has now resurfaced. As we discussed at the time, Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump and has always ruled in his favor, was never going to order the release of Volume II of the Special Counsel Report, which covers the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. But now the matter is in the hands of a different court, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which has not hesitated to correct Cannon’s errors in the past.

There is a fascinating resonance between Cannon’s decision to prevent the release of Volume II and the issue we’ve seen surface in Trump v. IRS, the case whose “settlement” led to the creation of the slush fund Trump can use to give taxpayer dollars to January 6 defendants while erasing his and his family’s liability for debts owed to the government, like back taxes from tax audits. The common thread is cases where, instead of a legitimate adversarial process, with opponents duking it out in court, Trump is the actual party in interest on “both sides of the v.” In both of these situations, it’s Trump v. Trump, which leaves the president to decide what positions government agencies will take in these supposed legal conflicts. In the case of the special counsel’s report, DOJ, which would normally argue for its release, has taken Trump’s side. And Judge Cannon has played along.

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