WASHINGTON – Special Counsel Jack Smith said his team “championed the rule of law” in the investigation of President-elect Donald Trump. Efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 electionenroll a highly anticipated report announced Tuesday that he fully stands behind his decision to pursue criminal charges that he believes would have resulted in a conviction had voters not returned Trump to the White House.
“The common thread of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts was deception – knowingly making false claims of election fraud – and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used those lies as a weapon to destroy a function of the federal government vital to the United States’ democratic process is fundamental,” the report says.
The report arrived just days before Trump took office Returns to office on January 20thdraws new attention to the Republican's desperate but failed attempt to stay in power in 2020 after losing to Democrat Joe Biden. With prosecutions shuttered due to Trump's 2024 election victory, the document is expected to be the Justice Department's final chronicle of a dark chapter in American history that threatened to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power that has been and has been a cornerstone of democracy for centuries published supplements charges and reports.
Trump responded early Tuesday with a post on his Truth Social platform in which he claimed he was “totally innocent” and called Smith “a lame-duck prosecutor who was unable to bring his case to trial before the election.” . He added: “THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!”
Trump was impeached in August 2023 for working to overturn the election, but the case was delayed by appeals and other proceedings ultimately significantly restricted by a Supreme Court with a conservative majority It established for the first time that former presidents enjoy comprehensive immunity from prosecution for official acts. Smith's report said that decision left unresolved legal questions that likely would have required another trip to the Supreme Court to advance the case.
Although Smith tried to save the indictment, the team dismissed it in November because of the Justice Department's long-standing policy that says sitting presidents cannot face federal prosecution.
“The Department's view that the Constitution prohibits the continued impeachment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not depend on the seriousness of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government's evidence, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office fully supports “stands,” the report says. “In fact, absent Mr. Trump’s election and his impending return to the presidency, the office concluded that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and maintain a conviction at trial.”
The Justice Department sent the report to Congress early Tuesday after a judge rejected a defense effort to block its release. A separate volume of the report focused on Trump's hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-LagoActions that formed the basis of a separate indictment against Trump remain sealed for now.
The report is blunt in its details of Trump's plans to derail the presidential election, accusing him of an “unprecedented criminal attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to remain in power.”
It concerns his role in attempting to force the Justice Department to use its law enforcement agencies to advance his personal interests by engaging in a recruitment program wrong voters in battleground states that Biden won and after he “sent an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct Congress’ certification of the presidential election and then exploited rioters’ violence to further delay it.”
And it documents his dispute with his Vice President Mike Pence over Trump's demands that he refuse to certify the voter count before Congress on January 6, 2021. It says that shortly before he left the White House to give a speech at the Ellipse that day, he called Pence one last time and when the vice president told him he wanted to make a public statement that he was not authorized, to do what Trump had asked, he said: “Mr. Trump was angry with him. He then instructed staff to reinsert language he had previously drafted for Mr. Pence into his planned ellipse speech.”
Although most of the details of Trump's efforts to overturn the election are already known, the document contains for the first time a detailed assessment by Smith of his investigation, as well as a defense by Smith against criticism from Trump and his allies that the investigation was politicized or that he had worked with the White House – an assessment he described as “ridiculous”.
“Although we were unable to bring the cases we prosecuted to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law is significant,” Smith wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland accompanying the report. “I believe the example our team has set for others to fight for justice regardless of personal cost is significant.”
The special counsel also laid out the challenges he faced in his investigation, including Trump's assertion of executive privilege to try to stop witnesses from testifying. which forced prosecutors into sealed court battles before the case was prosecuted.
Another “significant challenge” is Trump's “ability and willingness to use his influence and following on social media to target witnesses, courts and prosecutors,” which led prosecutors to seek a gag order to prevent potential To protect witnesses from harassment, Smith wrote.
“Mr. “Trump's resort to intimidation and harassment during the investigation was not new, as his actions during the indicted conspiracies demonstrate,” Smith wrote.
“A key component of Mr. Trump's conduct underlying the charges in the election case was his behavior in using social media – then Twitter – to publicly attack and influence state and federal officials, judges and election officials who refused to do so.” Support false claims that the election was stolen or otherwise oppose complicity in Mr. Trump’s plan,” he added.
Smith also explained for the first time the thought process behind his team's prosecution decisions, writing that his office decided not to charge Trump with sedition, in part because of free speech concerns, or with insurrection because he was the sitting president at the time and this was in doubt about going to trial for the offense – for which there was no record of her having been previously prosecuted.
Richer, Tucker and Long write for the Associated Press. AP writer Zeke Miller contributedIs Report.