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Cannon Blocks Classified Docs Report as Trump Targets Ex-Officials Over ‘Sensitive’ Info
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has denied the Department of Justice’s request to share Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with Congress. Her order came just hours after now-President Trump signed an executive order to hold former government officials accountable for “unauthorized disclosure” of “sensitive” information, and “for election interference.”
Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee whose rulings have been highly criticized, refused to allow members of Congress to review Smith’s final report. Trump was investigated for alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return sensitive, classified, and top secret documents, reportedly including nuclear and defense secrets. The FBI executed a lawful search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence to retrieve some of the documents.
Part of her reasoning, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, is that Congress “hasn’t asked for it and it’s not clear they need it, she says.”
“The ruling will make it easier for Trump to bury the report on the special counsel’s criminal probe,” Politico adds.
Late Monday night, one of the reportedly dozens of executive orders President Trump signed also addressed sensitive and classified information.
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In it, he revoked the security clearances of dozens of former federal government officials, including some who had worked in his first administration, like former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, whom he criticized.
The list includes the 51 former U.S. intelligence officials who signed a letter reportedly stating that the disclosure of emails purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“Many of the former officials are long retired and no longer hold active clearances — meaning that the move may have limited practical impact on their careers — but the order nevertheless suggests that Trump intends to act on threats he’s made to penalize national security and intelligence professionals whom he deems to be his enemies,” CNN reported.
“They should be prosecuted for what they did,” Trump had said.
“National security is … damaged by the publication of classified information,” the executive order reads. “Former National Security Advisor John R. Bolton published a memoir for monetary gain after he was terminated from his White House position in 2019. The book was rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government. The memoir’s reckless treatment of sensitive information undermined the ability of future presidents to request and obtain candid advice on matters of national security from their staff. Publication also created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.”
In 2023, Bolton commented on the classified documents criminal case against Trump, at the time 37 felony charges, most of which were under the Espionage Act.
“Trump appeared to have a ‘pattern’ of wanting to collect materials ‘of interest to him,’ including classified documents,” Bolton said, as The Hill reported. He also “knocked Trump’s behavior as ‘very disturbing.'”
Bolton told MSNBC, “there were some [documents] that we did get back. Others, the most famous, to me, it demonstrates why I don’t need to read the indictment or believe its allegations are true, although I’m pretty confident they are — was the famous tweet that he did after getting an overhead picture of a failed Iranian missile launch, which he was shown during an intelligence briefing. [He] didn’t give [it] back, and it was tweeted before the intelligence officials got back to their office.”
Bolton was “referring to a 2019 tweet from the then-president.”
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Trump’s order on Monday also stated: “It is the policy of the United States that individuals who hold government-issued security clearances should not use their clearance status to influence U.S. elections.”
Among the intelligence professionals the order revokes security clearance from are well-known cable news commentators, and political and national security experts.
In addition to Bolton, some on the list include: James Clapper, Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, John Brennan, Jeremy Bash, and Nada Bakos.
Margaret Brennan, CBS News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and “Face the Nation” moderator noted that Trump revoking “the security clearances of a long list of former intelligence officials … makes it hard for his own team to seek informed counsel from them.”
Mark Zaid, an attorney who specializes in national security issues, including security clearances, noted, “no President has ever done this before.”
Watch video of Trump below or at this link.
Trump signs an executive order “relating to holding former government officials accountable for unlawful disclosure of sensitive information” pic.twitter.com/po6qMhU2Ss
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 21, 2025
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Image via Reuters
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
