By Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. special prosecutor Jack Smith has concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to hang on to power after losing the 2020 election, but was prevented from making the case by the president-elect’s election victory in November, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The report details Smith’s decision to file a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of conspiring to interfere with the collection and verification of votes following his 2020 defeat of Democratic President Joe Biden.
It concluded that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, scheduled 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.
“Mr. Trump’s claim that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, ludicrous,” Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.
After his release, Trump called Smith “the one prosecutor who failed to prosecute his case before the election” in a post on his Truth Social page.
Trump’s lawyers, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland released by the Justice Department, called the report a “politically motivated attack” and said its release before Trump’s return to the White House would harm the presidential transition.
Much of the evidence cited in the report has already been made public.
But it includes some new details, such as that prosecutors were considering charging Trump with inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, under a U.S. law known as the Sedition Act.
Prosecutors ultimately concluded that such a charge posed a legal risk and that there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended the “full extent” of violence during the riots, a failed attempt by crowds of his supporters to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election.
The indictment charged Trump with conspiracy to interfere with the certification of elections, defraud the United States of accurate election results, and deprive American voters of their voting rights.
Smith’s office determined that charges may have been warranted against some co-conspirators accused of helping Trump carry out the plan, but the report said prosecutors had not reached final conclusions.
Several of Trump’s former lawyers were previously identified as co-conspirators named in the indictment.
The second part of the report details Smith’s case accusing Trump of illegally withholding sensitive national security documents after he leaves 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, who left the Justice Department last week, dropped both cases against Trump after he won last year’s election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting the sitting president. None of them made it to trial.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly attacking Smith as “deranged,” Trump described the cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.
Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case tried to block the release of the report, days before Trump was due to return to office on January 20. The courts rejected their requests to prevent its publication altogether.
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 portions of the report related to the documents.
Prosecutors have detailed their case against Trump in previous court filings. The 2022 Congressional Caucus released its own 700-page report on Trump’s actions after the 2020 election.
Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud after the 2020 election and pressured state legislators not to certify the vote, and ultimately also tried to use fake groups of electors who pledged to vote for Trump, in states that actually won Biden, in an attempt to prevent Congress from confirming Biden’s victory.
The effort culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in an unsuccessful attempt to stop lawmakers from confirming the vote.
Smith’s case faced legal hurdles even before Trump’s election victory. It was paused for months while Trump argued that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from prosecution.
