jack smith‘S The final report on Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election doesn’t contain much new information, but how long did it last?
The document, released around 1 a.m. Tuesday, less than a week before President Trump’s inauguration, takes aim at claims by Trump and his lawyers that the conclusion of Smith’s indictment would amount to the president-elect’s “complete innocence.”
“That is false,” Smith wrote in a letter included in the report, noting that the case against Trump was dismissed not because he was acquitted, but simply because he won the election.
Smith made it as clear as he could that the only reason he dismissed the Jan. 6 case was a Justice Department policy barring prosecution, along with a separate case regarding Trump’s attempt to cling to classified documents he removed from the White House. president.
The special prosecutor said, “The Justice Department’s opinion that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and indictment of the President is categorical and does not disregard the seriousness of the crime charged, the strength of the government’s evidence, or the merits of the prosecution.” I resigned last week and wrote the last line of my report. “While true, given President Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office has assessed that the admissible evidence is sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
It is normal for federal prosecutors to decide whether they can convict the people they indict. They rarely take cases they expect to lose. But this is the first time prosecutors have argued that they could have convicted the president-elect of a felony just days before the inauguration.
Trump clearly hopes that his return to power will leave the words of January 6th as a stain on his record. He even seems to see his re-election as validation of his lies about his 2020 loss. Smith’s report reads like an attempt to ensure that Trump can never be freed from responsibility for carrying out the violent attack on Congress to illegally maintain power, even though he has avoided criminal conviction for the matter.
In a footnote explaining why he decided not to charge Trump with violating anti-riot laws or conspiring to obstruct or injure a U.S. officer, Smith also says: Mr. Trump could have foreseen that he caused it and that he and his co-conspirators leveraged it to carry out the conspiracy.”
The report also suggests that Smith is considering filing criminal charges against some of the six co-conspirators mentioned but not named in Trump’s August 2023 indictment. “The Office’s investigation uncovered evidence that some individuals shared criminal responsibility with President Trump,” the document states. The investigation also revealed that one of the co-conspirators “may have committed” an unrelated crime, which was referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Although Smith did not name names, the alleged co-conspirators are identifiable. This includes Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney. former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark; and former Trump lawyers John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell. Trump adviser Boris Epstein has also been identified as another unindicted co-conspirator, according to media reports. All denied wrongdoing in the incident.
It’s unclear who Smith is considering charging or who he believes may have committed unrelated crimes. Smith wrote that his report “should not be read to assert that any person other than Mr. Trump committed a crime, nor should it be read to exonerate any person.”
President Trump called the report “fake” and attacked Smith in a series of posts early Tuesday morning. “Jack is such a dumb prosecutor that he couldn’t get his case tried before the presidential election I won in a landslide,” Trump wrote in an early morning post. “The voters spoke!!!”
It could be argued that it’s unfair to suggest that Smith would have found Trump guilty at trial, even though he couldn’t actually get both cases in front of a jury. That complaint might have been stronger had Trump not worked so publicly and aggressively to delay the trial until he could win the election and avoid it altogether.
Nonetheless, Smith’s report asserting Trump’s guilt highlights the federal judicial system’s epic failure to address Trump’s criminal liability for subverting the 2020 election before the next election takes place.
Critics have faulted Attorney General Merrick Garland’s slow start to the high-profile Jan. 6 investigation, the partisan Supreme Court’s hopes of crafting presidential immunity rules that serve Trump’s interests, and the ease with which wealthy defendants can stall the case. You can do it. Anyway, the system failed. The result is a tragedy in American politics.
