US special counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the president-elect’s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The report details Mr Smith’s decision to bring a four-count indictment against Mr Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic president Joe Biden. It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Mr Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for January 20th, made that impossible.
Mr Smith, who has faced relentless criticism from Mr Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it. “The claim from Mr Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” Mr Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.
After the release Mr Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Mr Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election”.
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Mr Trump’s lawyers, in a letter to US attorney general Merrick Garland made public by the justice department, called the report a “politically-motivated attack”, and said releasing it ahead of Mr Trump’s return to the White House would harm the presidential transition.
Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public. But it includes some new details, such as that prosecutors considered charging Mr Trump with inciting the January 6th, 2021, attack on the US Capitol under a US law known as the Insurrection Act. Prosecutors ultimately concluded that such a charge posed legal risks and there was insufficient evidence that Mr Trump intended for the “full scope” of violence during the riot, a failed attempt by a mob of his supporters to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election.
The indictment charged Mr Trump with conspiring to obstruct the election certification, defraud the United States of accurate election results and deprive US voters of their voting rights.
Mr Smith’s office determined that charges may have been justified against some co-conspirators accused of helping Mr Trump carry out the plan, but the report said prosecutors reached no final conclusions.
Several of Mr Trump’s former lawyers had previously been identified as co-conspirators referenced in the indictment.
A second section of the report details Mr Smith’s case accusing Mr Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021. The justice department has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.
Mr Smith, who left the justice department last week, dropped both cases against Mr Trump after he won last year’s election, citing a long-standing justice department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither reached a trial.
Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Mr Smith as “deranged,” Mr Trump depicted the cases as politically-motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.
Mr Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case sought to block the release of the report, days before Mr Trump is set to return to office on January 20th. Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether.
US district judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the justice department for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.
Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Mr Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Mr Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.
Both investigations concluded that Mr Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Mr Trump, in states actually won by Mr Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Mr Biden’s win.
The effort culminated in the January 6th, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.
Mr Smith’s case faced legal hurdles even before Mr Trump’s election win. It was paused for months while Mr Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.
The supreme court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution. – Reuters