Trump would have been convicted if he had not been elected: US Justice Dept report
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The two cases against Trump were dropped after he won the Nov 2024 US presidential election.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON - 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 then former president’s November 2024 election victory, according to a report published on Jan 14.
The report details Mr Smith’s decision to bring a four-count indictment against 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 Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan 20, made that impossible.
Mr Smith, who has come under relentless criticism from President-elect 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 report’s release, 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”.
Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.
Another section of the report details Mr Smith’s case, accusing 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 on Jan 10 he won the election,
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Mr Smith as “deranged”, Trump depicted the cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.
Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case sought to block the release of the report, which comes days before Trump is set to return to office on Jan 20. 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 Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 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, pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote and ultimately sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Mr Biden, in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Mr Biden’s win.
The effort culminated in the Jan 6, 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 Trump’s election win. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.
The US Supreme Court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution. REUTERS
