Trump “incited his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” on Jan. 6 with false claims he knew to be false, according to a recently released report on his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
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Donald Trump would have been convicted of illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election result, were it not for his presidential victory last year, special counsel Jack Smith has concluded.
The 45th president “inspired his followers to commit acts of physical violence” on Jan. 6, 2021, when they stormed the U. S. Capitol by knowingly spreading a false narrative about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Smith decided in the final report on his investigation. published in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
In response, Trump hit out at Smith in a 1am Truth Social rant, branding him “deranged” and a “lamebrain” prosecutor.
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“But by the election of Mr. Trump and his imminent return to the presidency, they discovered sufficient admissible evidence to discharge and sustain a conviction at trial,” the 130-page report concludes. “When it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that legal avenues to challenge the electoral effects had failed, he resorted to a series of dishonest efforts to retain power. »
These included, according to the special counsel, “attempts to induce state officials to forget about the actual vote count; fabricating fraudulent lists of presidential electors in seven states that he lost; forcing Justice Department officials and his own vice president, Michael R. Pence, to act in violation of their oaths and advance Mr. Trump’s interests. ”
Smith reveals the intensity of Trump’s pressure campaign against then-vice president Pence, alleging that he told his running mate that “hundreds of thousands” of people would “hate his guts” and think him “stupid” if he did not comply with his plans. He angrily rebuked Pence for being “too honest”, the report adds.
Trump, who takes office as America’s 47th president on January 20, has not been exonerated for his “unprecedented criminal effort” to subvert the 2020 vote, the report flatly states.
In response, the president-elect used his Truth Social platform to “upset” Smith in two separate posts.
Trump accused the former special representative of releasing the report because he failed to prosecute it.
He said the document in question was “based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED”.
Referring to the bipartisan House election committee led by Rep. Bennie Thompson that investigated efforts to overturn the 2020 results, Trump alleges that the panel destroyed the evidence because it proved he was “totally innocent,” but did not provide data for this claim.
“Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,” he added.
In a subsequent message, Trump insisted that “the Deselection Committee illegally destroyed and erased all evidence,” and on one occasion offered no basis for his claim.
Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that there would be a formal probe into the House committee in question, which prominently featured Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger among its members – a gesture widely seen as an act of retaliation on the incoming president’s behalf.
Smith, who resigned from the Justice Department on Friday, took action to drop his case against Trump in the aftermath of the latter’s November election win over Kamala Harris because of the long-standing protocol by the department not to bring charges against a sitting president.
But the special counsel will resign with a report that makes clear his confidence that Trump spread allegations that were “patently and, in many cases, demonstrably false” in hopes of retaking the presidency four years ago.
“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,” his report adds.
In a letter accompanying his release, Smith also asks to protect his own 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 corruption allegations against him and his team “laughable. “
One volume of Smith’s report addresses separate allegations against Trump over his handling of classified documents after he left the White House following the curtailment of his first term.
That volume was not released because charges against two of Trump’s co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, are still pending, even though charges were dropped against the president-elect himself.
Trump’s team of lawyers scrambled shortly before Smith’s election interference report was released to attempt again to block it, but failed.
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