The Justice Department on Tuesday released the report from the special counsel who prosecuted President-elect Donald Trump for his effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. The report concludes that there was enough evidence to secure a conviction.
The 137-page report serves as a coda to the work of Special Counsel John L. “Jack” Smith, first appointed in 2022 to supervise two criminal probes into the former president. The report lays out the decision-making and Smith’s thoughts behind the effort to prosecute Trump in Washington for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.
The report reiterated that the case had to be dismissed after Trump’s victory in the presidential election last year only because the Justice Department interpreted the Constitution to forbid the federal prosecution of a private citizen who has already been indicted and is then elected president.
“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President 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 said.
“Indeed, 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,” the report said.
Trump posted several times Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social about the report, claiming without evidence that it was based on “illegally destroyed” evidence from the select panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!” Trump said.
The report reiterated Smith’s argument that Trump sought several avenues to overturn the results of the election, ranging from exhorting officials to stop counting votes in states he lost, organizing an effort to present false slates of electors and pressure Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the votes of states Trump lost.
Trump’s efforts culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, precipitated by Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, the report said. The report characterized the effort as “one more attempt to retain power,” where he repeated “lies” about election fraud and directed the crowd’s anger at Pence, who presided over the counting of electoral votes that day.
Later, the report says Trump’s actions were unprecedented in history and that the impeachment trial for Trump’s effort in February 2021 was insufficient. “Impeachment, however, was never intended to be a substitute for criminal prosecution,” the report said.
Report on documents case not released
The report only covers one of the criminal cases Smith pursued against Trump. The Justice Department said in court filings that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland would not release the second, which dealt with charges that Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Florida club after his presidency, while the charges against two of his co-conspirators were still pending.
In court filings, the DOJ said that portion of the report would be made available to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary committees.
Those co-defendants launched a court fight last week seeking to block the release of the entire report. They got a brief injunction from the district judge supervising their case in Florida to delay the report’s release, before ultimately losing an effort to block the report entirely.
In a letter released alongside the report, Trump’s attorneys claimed Smith was an “out-of-control private citizen unconstitutionally posing as a prosecutor” and argued that the prosecution was an illegitimate attempt to interfere with Trump’s transition to the presidency.
Garland named Smith to head ongoing probes against Trump in 2022, after Trump announced his reelection bid. In a letter accompanying the report, Smith defended his work and that of members of the office. The DOJ said in a court filing over the weekend that Smith resigned from his position on Friday.
“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,” Smith said.
Smith also defended his independence in the letter, saying that neither Garland nor the Biden administration pressured him to make any decisions in the case and that he did not violate any policies around election interference.
“The Office had no interest in affecting the presidential election, and it complied fully with the letter and spirit of the Department’s policy regarding election year sensitivities,” Smith wrote.
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