The special prosecutor says Trump would have been convicted of trying to overturn the 2020 election had he not won the 2024 election.
Donald Trump would have been convicted of “criminal attempts to retain power” after the 2020 United States presidential election had he not won the 2024 race, prosecutors said.
A report released Tuesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland includes the allegations he made US Special Prosecutor Jack Smith that the president-elect planned to obstruct the collection and verification of votes after losing to Joe Biden in 2020.
The released document concluded that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Trump at trial had it not been for his re-election in November.
“As noted in the original and superseded indictments, when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that legal means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal attempts to maintain power,” the report said.
The new president was impeached in August 2023 on allegations that he worked to nullify the election.
However, the case was delayed by appeals and eventually significantly narrowed by the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which ruled that former presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for official acts.
In response to the report, Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20, called Smith “a vindictive prosecutor who failed to prosecute his case before the election.”
The new president, who regularly criticized the special counsel during the investigation, called Smith “an embarrassment to himself, his family and his country.”
The case with confidential documents
The second part of the report describes another case in which Smith accuses Trump of illegally withholding sensitive national security documents after he left the White House in 2021.
The Justice Department has pledged not to release that portion while the legal proceedings against the two Trump associates charged in the case are ongoing.
Smith dismissed both cases after Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s election, citing the Justice Department’s longstanding policy against prosecuting the sitting president. Not a single case made it to trial.
Trump has repeatedly called Smith “crazy,” claiming the cases are politically motivated and an attempt to damage his campaign and political movement.
Trump tried to block the release of the report, but the courts rejected his request.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, ordered the Justice Department to temporarily halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately view relevant portions of the report.
