The special counsel who investigated Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election results says his team “defended the rule of law.” The accusation was filed by the Department of Justice thanks to the Republican's electoral victory in 2024.
Special counsel Jack Smith said in a long-awaited report released Tuesday that his team “upheld the rule of law” while investigating President-elect Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In addition, he assured that he fully supports his decision to file criminal charges, which, he indicated, would have resulted in a conviction if voters had not returned him to the White House.
“The common thread of all of Mr. Trump was the hoax – knowingly false claims of election fraud – and the evidence shows that mr. “Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a function of the federal government fundamental to the United States democratic process,” the document stated.
The report, which was made public a few days before Trump returns to the White House on January 20, focuses attention again on his frantic but failed effort to cling to power in 2020.
With the indictment shelved thanks to the Republican's electoral victory, the document is expected to be the Justice Department's latest chronicle of a dark chapter in American history that threatened to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, which for centuries has been a pillar of democracy, and complements the accusations and reports already published.
Trump claims innocence
Trump responded early Tuesday with a post on his Truth Social platform in which he asserted that he was “totally innocent” and described Smith as “an inept prosecutor who failed to take his case to trial before the election.” ”The voters have spoken!” he added.
Trump was accused in August 2023 of working to overturn the election, but the case was delayed by appeals and ultimately significantly limited by a conservative-majority Supreme Court that held for the first time that former presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution. criminal prosecution for official acts.
Although Smith tried to salvage the indictment, the team dropped it entirely in November because of the Justice Department's long-standing policy that sitting presidents cannot face federal criminal prosecutions.
“The Department's view that the Constitution prohibits the continuation of the impeachment and trial 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 accusation, which the office fully supports,” says the report.
“In fact, if it were not for the election of Mr. Trump and his imminent return to the presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
A part remains secret
The Justice Department transmitted the report to Congress early Tuesday after a judge refused to block its release. A separate volume of the report, focused on Trump's accumulation of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, actions that formed the basis of a separate indictment against Trump, will remain secret for now.
Although most of the details of Trump's efforts to overturn the election result are already well known, the document includes for the first time a detailed assessment by Smith of his investigation, as well as the special counsel's defense against Trump's criticism. and his allies about the politicization of the investigation or that he worked in collaboration with the White House, an idea that he described as “laughable.”
“Although we were unable to prosecute the cases we charged, I believe the fact that our team upheld the rule of law matters,” Smith wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland attached to the report.
“I think the example our team set for others to fight for justice regardless of the personal costs matters.”
The challenges with Trump
The special counsel also laid out the challenges he faced in his investigation, including Trump's claim of executive privilege to try to block witnesses from providing evidence, forcing prosecutors to engage in secret court battles before the charges were filed. charges.
Another “significant challenge” was (Trump’s) “ability and willingness to use his influence and followers on social media to attack witnesses, courts, prosecutors,” which led prosecutors to request a restraining order to protect potential witnesses to the harassment, Smith wrote.
“The appeal of Mr. “Trump’s intimidation and harassment during the investigation was not new, as his actions during the charged conspiracies demonstrated,” the special counsel added.
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“A fundamental component of Mr. Trump underlying the charges in the Election Case was his pattern of using social media — at the time Twitter — to publicly attack and try to influence state and federal officials, judges and election workers who refused to support false claims that the election had been stolen or who otherwise resisted complicity in mr. Trump,” he added.
Smith explained for the first time the reasoning behind his team's prosecution decisions, noting that his office decided not to charge the former president with incitement in part because of free speech concerns, or insurrection, because at the time he was the acting president and there were doubts about the possibility of prosecuting this crime, for which there was no evidence that it had been prosecuted before.