Opinion: Cannon’s classified documents ruling is the first court decision of Project 2025

The initial impulse on reading Judge Aileen Cannon’s pseudo-scholarly 93-page dismissal of the classified documents case against Donald Trump is to list the legal errors and overreaches that demonstrate its brazenness and likelihood of being reversed.

The opinion, which throws out the case on the dubious premise that special counsel Jack Smith was not properly appointed, could serve as target practice for any first-year law student who has learned about statutory construction and precedent...