US Justice Dept releases report on Trump bid to overturn 2020 election

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an "unprecedented criminal effort" to hold onto 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.

It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan. 20, made that impossible.

Smith, who has come under 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."

Special Counsel Jack Smith's signature is seen on a revised indictment in the 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump after U.S. prosecutors obtained the indictment in Washington, U.S., August 27, 2024. U.S.Reuters

Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.

A second section of the report details Smith’s case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The Justice Department has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.

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 a sitting president. Neither reached a trial.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Smith as "deranged," Trump depicted 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 sought to block the release of the report, days before Trump is set to return to office on Jan. 20. Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the Justice Department for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.

Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.

Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden's win.

The effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.

Smith's case faced legal hurdles even before Trump's election win. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim 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 criminal prosecution.