Written by Andrew Godward and Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial after the president-elect won the November election. According to a report published on Tuesday.
The report details Smith's decision to file a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of conspiring to obstruct the collection and certification of votes after his 2020 defeat to Democratic President Joe Biden.
The report concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict Trump at trial, but that his imminent return to the presidency, scheduled for January 20, made that impossible.
Smith, who has faced relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.
“Mr. Trump’s claim that my decisions as Attorney General were influenced or directed by the Biden Administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.
After his release, Trump, in a post on Truth Social, called Smith a “feckless prosecutor who couldn't get his case tried before the election.”
Trump's lawyers, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland published by the Justice Department, called the report a “politically motivated attack” and said publishing it before Trump returns 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 Trump with incitement of the January 6, 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 that there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended to commit 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 accused Trump of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election, defraud the United States to obtain accurate election results, and deprive American voters of their voting rights.
Smith's office decided that charges may have been justified against some of the conspirators accused of helping Trump carry out the plan, but the report said prosecutors had not reached final conclusions.
Several former Trump lawyers were previously identified as co-conspirators in the indictment.
The second section of the report details the Smith case, in which Trump is accused of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
The Department of Justice has committed not to release this part publicly while legal proceedings continue against two of Trump's associates accused in the case.
Smith, who left the Justice Department last week, dropped the two cases against Trump after he won last year's election, citing the Justice Department's longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither of them reached trial.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. Trump regularly attacked Smith as “unhinged” and portrayed these cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.
Trump and his two former defendants in the secret documents case sought to prevent the report from being published, days before Trump returns to office on January 20. The courts rejected their demands to completely prevent publication of the report.
US District Judge Eileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, ordered the Justice Department for now to halt plans to allow some senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.
Prosecutors have detailed their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional committee in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump's actions after the 2020 election.
Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud after the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote and, ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent pools of electors who had pledged to vote for Trump, in states he won. Biden already. In an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's victory.
The efforts culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying the vote.
Smith's case faced legal hurdles even before Trump won the election. He was suspended for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be sued for official actions he took as president.
The conservative majority on the Supreme Court largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
