Pam Bondi moves to bury Jack Smith's final verdict on Trump's classified docs case forever: 'It belongs in the dustbin of history'
Pam Bondi decides Jack Smith’s conclusions are too explosive for daylight.
The Justice Department is telling a federal judge that the public should never see what former special counsel Jack Smith wrote about Donald Trump’s classified documents case, and it’s saying so in language that leaves very little room for ambiguity.
In a new court filing, the DOJ says Attorney General Pam Bondi has decided that Smith’s final report is strictly an internal document meant only for government officials, not the public. According to the department, the report is “privileged and confidential” and should “not be released outside the Department of Justice.”
This filing was submitted after Judge Aileen Cannon signaled that her earlier order blocking the report’s release would expire next month. The DOJ’s response warns that even if the court’s restriction lapses, the department does not believe the report should ever see daylight.
Trump’s DOJ didn’t just argue for secrecy. It attacked the legitimacy of the report itself.
The filing describes Smith’s investigation as “unlawful from its inception,” echoing Cannon’s earlier decision to throw out the case against Trump. That ruling claimed that Smith was improperly appointed and lacked the authority to wield the powers of a U.S. attorney. Bondi now says that flaw taints everything Smith produced while on the job.
During Jack Smith’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this week, Trump fired off a Truth Social post where he called for Smith to be arrested and prosecuted.
“Put simply,” the department writes, “Smith’s tenure was marked by illegality and impropriety,” adding that under “no circumstance” should his work be treated as an official or credible DOJ product.
DOJ also acknowledged something else that’s striking: current leadership hasn’t actually reviewed Smith’s report in detail. The department admits it only has “secondhand information” about how Smith handled sensitive material and says it can’t guarantee that confidential grand jury information was properly removed.
Rather than review the document line by line, DOJ told the court it doesn’t believe such a review is even necessary.
In plain terms, the Trump administration is saying: we don’t trust this report, we’re not going to thoroughly audit it, and we don’t think anyone else should read it either.
The filing also argues that releasing the report would unfairly harm Trump and his former aides, warning that it could expose private communications between Trump and his lawyers. The DOJ says that outcome would be unjustified and prejudicial, especially now that the case itself has been dismissed.
Then the department drops any remaining pretense of neutrality.
Smith’s report, DOJ declares, is the “illicit product of an unlawful investigation and prosecution” and “belongs in the dustbin of history.” The final line is blunt and unmistakable: “The United States will leave it there.”
In sum, Trump’s DOJ is formally washing its hands of a special counsel investigation that once represented the government’s most serious effort to hold Trump accountable for mishandling classified information.
Smith was appointed to provide transparency and public trust. Now, according to the department that empowered him, the public was never supposed to see what he found.
Now it remains to be seen of Trump and Bondi get their way.
