Ignore Aileen Cannon

Release the Jack Smith report, and then continue the fight for historical memory of January 6 every day.

I didn’t write about January 6 on Monday’s anniversary. I didn’t have any thoughts that weren’t obvious or trite or redundant. Nothing I’ve written over the past for years about Donald Trump’s attempted coup changes just because Trump won the election and will thus get away with it.

But a day later, the news gods delivered.

It actually started on the anniversary. Donald Trump’s legal team petitioned Aileen Cannon, the corrupt Florida judge he appointed in 2020, to prohibit Joe Biden’s Justice Department from releasing an official report by Special Counsel Jack Smith on his insurrection and stolen state secrets investigations.

Cannon has no jurisdiction over the January 6 investigation, and questionable jurisdiction over the stolen-documents case, which she dismissed last year on false pretext. Nevertheless, and predictably, she obliged. Her order temporarily enjoins Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department from transmitting the Smith report anywhere outside DOJ, with the unconcealed goal of burying it until Trump takes over and has it destroyed.

So now I do have something to say about January 6, and it’s this: January 6 is an anniversary, an occasion Democrats are right to observe. But they should recognize that this isn’t an observance like Pearl Harbor Day or 9/11 that, by consensus, can be relegated to a single day and then put out of mind. To the contrary, Democrats are now on the outgunned side of a battle for historical memory. That battle rages in public every day, not just on the anniversary.

They will be remiss any time they bypass an opportunity to strike a blow for the side of truth. Bending to Republican revisionism and evidence tampering would be a major civic abdication. Biden and Garland should thus ignore Cannon’s order. Biden should order Garland to transmit the report to the Oval Office, as is within his power; and once he receives it, he should publish it, as is also within his power. If the report doesn’t see the light of day before noon on January 20, it will be their final joint failure in the realm of Trump accountability.

GET A PRECLU

Cannon’s order may not hold, in which case the Smith report could still issue in due course, rather than as an act of defiance. But without a commitment to defiance, Republicans almost certainly will rewrite history. I don’t just mean in the hazy and trite sense of the verdict of the victors, but into literal history books that American children will learn from in their schools, in our lifetimes.

Fortunately, the basis for defying Cannon is clear: