The federal judge who smacked down special counsel Jack Smith’s partisan investigation of Donald Trump just delivered another stinging blow.

District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled Monday that Smith’s report on his investigation of Trump for allegedly retaining classified documents after his first term should remain permanently sealed, The Associated Press reported.

And some of her wording was scathing about the man Democrats hoped would derail Trump’s political career once and for all.

🚨 IT'S OFFICIAL: U.S. Judge in Florida Aileen Cannon BLOCKS release of Jack Smith's weaponized witch hunt report on President Trump

Big win!

Judge Cannon has CRUSHED IT through the entire process. We need more like her in the federal judiciary 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/vHSc6x1wSg

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 23, 2026

“Special Counsel Smith, acting without lawful authority, obtained an indictment in this action and initiated proceedings that resulted in a final order of dismissal of all charges,” Cannon wrote.

“As a result, the former defendants in this case, like any other defendant in this situation, still enjoy the presumption of innocence held sacrosanct in our constitutional order.”

A special counsel “acting without lawful authority.” Is there a more damning description than that?

Cannon is the Trump-appointed judge, based in Fort Pierce, Florida, who’d determined in July 2024 that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful in the first place.

At that time, Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Trump and two co-defendants, Walt Nauta, a Trump aide, and Carlos De Oliviera, property manager at the Mar-a-Lago Club, where Trump lives in Palm Beach, Florida.

Cannon’s ruling Monday came in response to motions filed by Trump and his co-defendants — motions that were not opposed by the Justice Department.

Attorney General Pam Bondi had already determined the report was “an internal deliberative communication that is privileged and confidential and should not be released,” according to the AP.

In sharper wording, a Justice Department filing in January, according to the AP, described the report as the “illicit product of an unlawful investigation and prosecution” and declared it “belongs in the dustbin of history.”

Mouthpieces from the leftist end of the political spectrum disagreed.

The establishment media won’t identify them as “leftist mouthpieces.” They’re just “nonpartisan.” You know, “watchdog groups” with nothing but the best interests of the United States at heart.

One is the supposedly nonpartisan group American Oversight. The group’s own website declares that it was founded in 2017 “in response to the unprecedented challenges that the Trump administration posed to our nation’s democratic ideals and institutions.”

Its leadership is chockablock with the kind of apparatchiks who get interviewed on NPR under benign-sounding titles whenever there’s a controversy to enflame:

The group’s executive director is Chioma Chukwu, an adviser to the late Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings; its vice president of litigation is Peter Kenny, who “helped lead high-profile investigations into government corruption and national security failures during the first Trump administration;” and its communications director Karl Frisch, whose resume includes work for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the almost laughably leftist website Media Matters.

(That’s all from the group’s own website. Imagine what’s not on the website.)

In a statement, according to the AP, Chukwa vowed her group “will continue using every tool available to force this information into the open and to defend the public’s right to the truth through the release of this report.”

Conservative Americans know full well how much “truth” could be expected from a report authored by Smith and his team of Trump witch hunters.

It’s a good bet lefties like “American Oversight” — seriously, could there be a more authoritarian name than that? — know how much truth is in it, too.

But they also know how much Democrats can use the ammunition in a report like that against Trump and his administration, with the avid assistance of the establishment media. It’s a prosecution that’s tried in the court of the establishment media, in which the defendant is always guilty — if the defendant’s name is Donald Trump.

Leftists played the same game with the “Russia collusion” hoax, a smear that bedevilled Trump’s first administration until the Democrats’ own special counsel’s report admitted there was no there there.

They played the same game with Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked committee to “investigate” the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.

And there’s no doubt — no doubt whatsoever — that they’d planned to play the same game with Smith’s report, even though it was from a special prosecutor who never should have been appointed in the first place.

Cannon delivered a blow for the rule of law when she tossed Smith’s prosecution 18 months ago. She delivered one again a month ago when she ordered a temporary seal on Smith’s report about the classified documents case.

And she delivered a hammer on Monday.

Democrats might not like it. Democrats who disguise themselves as “nonpartisan” D.C. institutions might hate it.

But all Americans should be glad there are judges who see just how dirty Democrats will fight.

And who aren’t afraid to hit back — with the full force and logic of law.

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