Trump engaged in ‘unprecedented criminal efforts,’ the special counsel said in the final report of the 2020 election case.
Donald Trump engaged in “unprecedented criminal efforts” to “unlawfully retain power” after losing the 2020 election, said Jack Smith in a report published early Tuesday by the US Department of Justice, with the special counsel expressing confidence in the ability to convict. a case that will not happen now that Trump is back in the White House.
The report details the special counsel’s decision to bring four indictments against Trump, accusing him of conspiring to block the collection and verification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.
It concluded that the evidence was “insufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction” during the trial, but his election victory on November 5 effectively ended the case. Previous Justice Department guidance has advised against impeaching a sitting president, and Trump would undoubtedly move to close the investigation after he returns Jan. 20 instead.
Smith’s report asserted that Trump’s allegations of voter fraud — whether unsubstantiated allegations of non-citizen voting or voting machine fraud — “are symptomatic and, in many cases, patently false.”
“Trump has used this lie,” Smith wrote, “as a weapon to defeat the work of the federal government that is the foundation of the democratic process in the United States.”
Trump’s vice president and other senior administration officials, as well as federal officials closest to the administration of the election, have publicly and privately dismissed his allegations of fraud.
“Mr. Trump’s false claims have been repeatedly refuted, often directly by people who are ready to find the truth,” Smith wrote.
Former Trump attorney William Barr has said he told the president at the time that there was no corruption in the election, and cybersecurity divisions in the Trump administration have reached the same conclusion. This happened before a mob of his supporters tried to stop the Congress from confirming the election on Jan. 6, 2021, which led to violence at the Capitol.
The decision to waive the imposition of the Sedition Act is explained
Much of the evidence cited in the report has previously been made public.
But it includes new details, such as prosecutors considering charging Trump with inciting the attack on the US Capitol under the US law known as the Sedition Act.
Prosecutors ultimately concluded that such a case posed legal jeopardy and there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended the “full scope” of violence during the violence.
“The office has not found a case where a criminal defendant charged with treason participated in the government to maintain power, as opposed to overthrowing it or blocking it from the outside,” said Smith.
The indictment charged Trump with conspiring to obstruct the election process, defraud the United States of accurate election results and disenfranchise American voters.
Smith’s office has determined that charges may be appropriate against other associates accused of helping Trump carry out the scheme, but the report said prosecutors have not reached a definitive conclusion.
Many of Trump’s lawyers have previously been identified as co-conspirators in the indictments.
Prosecutors have given a full overview of their case against Trump in previous court cases. A congressional panel in 2022 published its 700-page account of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.
Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, sought to use voter fraud groups to pledge to vote for Trump in states won by Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
The effort culminated in the attack on Jan. 6, 2021 at the US Capitol, where a crowd of Trump supporters stormed Congress in an unsuccessful attempt to block lawmakers from confirming the vote.
Smith’s report noted that Trump’s pressure campaign was selective.
“What is important is that he made election requests only to members of Parliament and officials who are politically aligned and who are his political supporters, and only in the districts in which he lost,” he wrote.
Smith’s case faced legal challenges even before Trump won the election. It was put on hold for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions he took as president.
A majority of the Supreme Court largely agreed with him, giving former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
“Prior to this case, no court had ever found that presidents are immune from prosecution for their official acts, and there is no text in the Constitution that expressly provides such criminal immunity for the president,” Smith wrote.
“I [special Counsel] The office is from the same place,” he said.
After the acquittal, Trump, on his Truth Social website, called Smith a “disabled prosecutor who can’t get his trial before the election.”
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland released by the US Department of Justice, Trump’s lawyers called the report a “politically motivated attack” and said releasing it before Trump’s return to the White House would hurt the presidential transition.
Report on pending documents
The second part of the report details Smith’s lawsuit accusing Trump of illegally keeping sensitive national security documents after he left the White House in 2021, which also led to criminal charges.
Smith was appointed by Garland to investigate both issues in November 2022 — the same month Trump announced his plans to run for the 2024 election.
The Justice Department has pledged not to make that part public while legal action is pending against the two Trump associates charged in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.
The charges against Trump himself were dropped in a ruling by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, which Smith’s team had previously planned to file before Trump won the election on November 5.
Cannon has ordered the Justice Department to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review portions of the report’s documents.
Smith, who resigned last week and has faced unrelenting criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.
United States President-elect Donald Trump will not have to serve a prison sentence or pay a fine, but he will be the first American president with a criminal record when he takes office later this month after a judge granted him an unconditional discharge in the Bush money laundering case.
“Mr. Trump’s claim that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in short, ludicrous,” Smith wrote in a letter explaining his report.
Trump was convicted in New York state of 34 counts involving a scheme to falsify business records about payments to a sex actress, but a judge last week spared him a fine or prison sentence. The conviction will still ensure that Trump will be the first president to take office with the worst conviction on his record.
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