The cases ended.
The evidence was not acquitted.

First: allegations are not convictions

A grand jury's indictment is permission to prosecute, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The documents indictment alleged willful retention, conspiracy to obstruct, concealment, false statements, and conduct involving surveillance footage.1 Trump, Walt Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira were entitled to the presumption of innocence. No jury decided those allegations.

Dismissed for who appointed the prosecutor

On July 15, 2024, Cannon held that the Attorney General lacked statutory authority to appoint Smith with the powers he exercised and dismissed the classified-documents indictment.7 That is a serious constitutional ruling. It is also a ruling about prosecutorial authority, not about whether the charged acts occurred. DOJ later published its contrary statutory and constitutional analysis; that disagreement is an executive-branch legal position, not an appellate holding.5

The government appealed. After Trump won the election, it dropped the appeal as to him under the sitting-president rule and later dismissed the remainder as to his co-defendants with prejudice.8 The Eleventh Circuit issued no merits opinion affirming Cannon's appointment analysis.

A prior Cannon ruling was reversed

Before the indictment, Cannon asserted jurisdiction over Trump's civil challenge to the Mar-a-Lago search and appointed a special master. A unanimous Eleventh Circuit panel reversed, writing that the answer to whether the district court had equitable jurisdiction was “no,” and ordered the civil case dismissed.2

That reversal does not prove every later Cannon ruling wrong. It does prove that “the appeals court upheld her handling” is not an honest description of the earlier special-master litigation.

The election case ended for a different reason

The Supreme Court's intervening immunity decision defined protections for official presidential conduct but did not itself dispose of every allegation.3 After the 2024 election, Smith moved to dismiss the federal election prosecution without prejudice. The filing said DOJ's constitutional position barred indictment and prosecution of a sitting president and that the conclusion did not depend on the gravity of the charges, the strength of the government's proof, or the merits.4

Smith later wrote that his office believed the admissible evidence would have been sufficient to convict. That is a prosecutor's assessment, not a verdict.4 The disciplined conclusion cuts both ways: Trump was neither convicted nor exonerated by a trial that never happened.

The second report remains sealed

Volume I, covering the election case, is public. Cannon permanently prohibited release of Volume II, covering the documents case, outside DOJ and declined to order its destruction.9 The consolidated appeals remained pending without a merits decision through August 23, 2026.

This page does not characterize the unreleased volume. “Nonpublic under an injunction being appealed” is the status; “destroyed,” “judicially disproved,” and “publicly verified” are not.