US Special Counsel 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.
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.
The evidence against Trump was “sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” Special Counsel Jack Smith wrote in a partially released report.
It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for January 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.
