Donald Trump would have been convicted if not elected president, Jack Smith report says
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Trump ‘inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence’ January 6 using false claims he knew to be untrue, says just released report on Trump’s attempts to upend the 2020 democratic election. “But for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” stated the 170-page report.
Trump has not been exonerated for his “unprecedented criminal effort” to subvert the 2020 election, the report flatly stated. Smith dropped his case against Trump last month because of the longstanding protocol by the Department of Justice not to bring charges against a sitting president.
Trump spread claims that were “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false,” the report stated. “Trump knew that there was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election, that many of the specific claims that he made were untrue, and that he had lost the election,” it added.
In a letter accompanying the released report, Smith defends his integrity and that of his team. “I can assure you that neither l nor the prosecutors on my team would have tolerated or taken part in any action by our Office for partisan political purposes,” he wrote. “My Office had one north star: to follow the facts and law wherever they led. Nothing more and nothing less.”.
He called Trump’s accusations about him and his team “laughable.”. A second volulme of Smith’s report addresses separate charges against Trump over his handling of classified documents after he left the White House during his first term. That volume was not released because charges against two of Trump’s co-defendants are still pending, even thought charges were dropped against the president elect.
