Evidence shows Trump ‘caused and benefited’ from the violent attack. The law and the country weren’t prepared for a case showing how a sitting president, not an outside force, could be responsible, Alex Woodward reports. Why wasn’t Donald Trump ever charged with the crime of insurrection?.
![[Smith ultimately decided against prosecuting Trump for insurrection, fearing the courts would wade into unfamiliar territory that could derail his investigation]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/14/18/2024-10-22T201023Z_1152502437_RC2VPAAXWXXC_RTRMADP_3_USA-COURT-TRESPASS.jpg)
It’s a question that has been looming over the federal prosecution of the president-elect, with his allies and supporters using the fact that he wasn’t to downplay the charges against him as well as the January 6 attack itself. “The office recognized why courts described the attack on the Capitol as an ‘insurrection,’ but it was also aware of the litigation risk that would be presented by employing this long-dormant statute,” Smith explained.
![[Smith resigned as special counsel for the Department of Justice on January 10 after handing in his final report on his investigations into Trump’s conduct]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/14/18/2192845525.jpg)
Case law reviewed by his office found that an insurrection “typically involves overthrowing a sitting government, rather than maintaining power, which could pose another challenge to proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump’s conduct on January 6 qualified as an insurrection given that he was the sitting president at that time,” the report says.
![[Lawmakers inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021 were forced to evacuate chambers and hide from a pro-Trump mob that broke into the building]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/14/19/986f7d816ac24aa98775dd7c6fc1f788.jpg)
But the evidence fit, according to Smith. Evidence showed that violence “was foreseeable” to Trump, and “he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay,” according to the report.
