The special counsel who investigated and charged Donald Trump over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election said in a final report released by the U.S. Justice Department early Tuesday that the former president would have been convicted for “a series of criminal efforts to retain power” had he not won another White House term in November.
“But for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” wrote Jack Smith, who resigned from the Justice Department late last week ahead of Inauguration Day.
Smith pointed to the Justice Department’s view that “the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president,” a position he said is “categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind.”
The report, which Trump’s legal team sought to bury, is the first of two volumes that Smith’s team produced following the completion of its investigations into the former president’s unlawful election interference and hoarding of classified documents. Smith dropped the two cases shortly after Trump’s victory in the 2024 election.
According to the Justice Department, Smith has urged that the volume on the classified documents probe not be released to the public while the case against Trump’s former co-defendants is still pending.
In the newly released report, Smith detailed how Trump and his allies tried to “induce state officials to ignore true vote counts,” manufactured “fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost,” directed “an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election,” and leveraged “rioters’ violence to further delay it.”
“In service of these efforts, Mr. Trump worked with other people to achieve a common plan: to overturn the election results and perpetuate himself in office,” the report added.
Trump responded furiously to the report’s release, ranting on social media that “Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were.”
In his introduction to the report, Smith rejected as “laughable” Trump’s claim that the investigations were politically motivated or influenced in any way by the Biden administration.
“While we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters. I believe the example our team set for others to fight for justice without regard for the personal costs matters,” Smith wrote. “The facts, as we uncovered them in our investigation and as set forth in my report, matter. Experienced prosecutors know that you cannot control outcomes, you can only do your job the right way for the right reasons. I conclude our work confident that we have done so, and that we have met fully our obligations to the department and to our country.”
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