In the time between his two presidential administrations, Donald Trump was famously the subject of four separate criminal indictments, two of which were spearheaded by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Given that Trump will soon be in charge of the Department of Justice, Smith ended both cases in November. This week, Smith's report pertaining to Trump's conduct after losing the 2020 election was released. Much of the information was already in the public domain, but even so, the evidence laid out is particularly damning and paints a portrait of an unhinged executive using any possible maneuver to stay in power.
Within hours of the polls closing in 2020, Trump cried foul, insisting he had won the election outright and that any further vote counting was evidence of fraud. In the weeks thereafter, he filed dozens of lawsuits and cozied up to whomever espoused the looniest theories to explain his loss. He leaned on officials in states he lost to interfere in the process of counting and ratifying vote totals. These efforts came to a head on January 6, 2021, when hundreds of supporters—fired up by Trump at a rally near the White House—stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election for Joe Biden.
