'Very little is known': Expert warns Trump secrets lost with end of classified docs case

Details of the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case against Donald Trump could be lost to the public if special counsel Jack Smith doesn't act, warned former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance in an analysis for MSNBC.

This comes as Smith, who was behind both federal criminal cases against Trump, looks to wind them down in accordance with the Justice Department's longstanding guidance against prosecuting a sitting president.

The federal election interference case is likely to end with a report similar to one issued by former special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation. It's unclear whether and how much of that report will be made public. The classified documents case is in a much more complex situation, Vance wrote, because it technically doesn't exist at the moment.

"The case is on appeal after it was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled the special counsel’s appointment was unconstitutional," she noted. "That’s an important legal issue, with legs beyond this particular prosecution, that the Justice Department will want resolved so it knows what the rules are for future special counsel cases." So far there's no indication of how Smith plans to move ahead with the appeal.

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How the case moves ahead matters, wrote Vance, because whereas in the election case there is a public record of evidence, "aside from the material in the search warrant affidavit, very little is known beyond the basic facts. We don’t know a lot about a case in which America’s next commander in chief is charged with mishandling classified information and obstructing the investigation into it. We don’t know what Trump’s motive was or what he did with any of the information."

And that means it's down to the Justice Department to try to get a similar record on the books for this case before it vanishes into the ether, Vance concluded.

"Given this imperfect situation, there should be, at minimum, a permanent public record of the evidence, in so far as releasing it complies with other legal restrictions," she wrote. "That’s a decision the Justice Department has the opportunity to make in the next two months, perhaps the most momentous one left to it in these cases."