The Justice Department on Tuesday released the report from the special counsel who prosecuted President-elect Donald Trump for his effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. The report concludes that there was enough evidence to secure a conviction.
The 137-page report serves as a coda to the work of Special Counsel John L. “Jack” Smith, first appointed in 2022 to supervise two criminal probes into the former president. The report lays out the decision-making and Smith’s thoughts behind the effort to prosecute Trump in Washington for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.
The report reiterated that the case had to be dismissed after Trump’s victory in the presidential election last year only because the Justice Department interpreted the Constitution to forbid the federal prosecution of a private citizen who has already been indicted and is then elected president.
