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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 president-elect’s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday (Jan 14).
The report details 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.
Smith, who has faced relentless criticism from 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,” Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.
After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election”.
Trump’s lawyers, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, made public by the Justice Department, called the report a “politically-motivated attack” and said releasing it ahead of Trump’s return 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 inciting the Jan 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 there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended for 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 charged Trump with conspiring to obstruct the election certification, defraud the United States of accurate election results and deprive US voters of their voting rights.
Smith’s office determined that charges may have been justified against some co-conspirators accused of helping Trump carry out the plan, but the report said prosecutors reached no final conclusions.
