Jack Smith gets last word with Trump report

Former special counsel Jack Smith used his final report to counter years of claims from President-elect Trump while peeling back the curtain on how he approached the unprecedented case.

The early Tuesday morning release of the volume of Smith’s report dealing with Trump’s efforts to thwart the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election gave the special counsel a chance to get the last word on a prosecution cut short by Trump’s reelection.

The document lays bare much of Smith’s inner thoughts on how to approach the case, how to go about charging Trump, how to respond to threats and how to handle charges against his co-conspirators.

Smith says prosecution was not politically motivated

With the end of the case allowing Smith to speak more candidly about his investigation, the special counsel called many of Trump’s insults throughout the years “laughable.”

“While I relied greatly on the counsel, judgment, and advice of our team, I want it to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine,” Smith wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland accompanying the volume of the report.

“Nobody within the Department of Justice ever sought to interfere with, or improperly influence, my prosecutorial decision making. … And to all who know me well, the claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.”

Trump has routinely blasted Smith, calling him “deranged” or a “thug” and also complained about his filmmaker wife who produced a documentary about the Obamas. 

Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump claimed Smith’s investigations, as well as his other legal cases in New York and Georgia, amounted to political interference stemming from the Biden White House meant to derail his campaign.

“The Office had no interest in affecting the presidential election, and it complied fully with the letter and spirit of the Department’s policy regarding election year sensitivities,” the report states.

Smith also challenged these claims in court, and Judge Tanya Chutkan denied motions from Trump seeking to dismiss the case on the grounds that it was a selective and vindictive prosecution.

He believes he would have scored a Trump conviction 

Trump has routinely said Smith brought a meritless prosecution against him. 

But Smith begged to differ, saying he believed he would have scored a conviction against Trump if the case had continued.

“Indeed, 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,” Smith wrote.

It was Smith who pushed to drop all charges against Trump, citing internal DOJ policy that bars prosecution of a sitting president.

Smith also said he believed a Supreme Court decision finding Trump retained broad immunity as a former executive did not undercut the case.

“None of the allegations in the superseding indictment implicated core presidential powers,” Smith wrote, believing the bulk of his case against Trump would have still been permitted to proceed.

Insurrection Act charges considered for Trump

Smith also revealed charges he considered bringing charges against Trump that would have barred him from seeking office again — a provision under the Insurrection Act.

“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 wrote of the Civil War-era law.

Pursuing that route would have been sure to ignite further criticism of Smith’s case, as it would have run the risk of toppling a political figure.

Possible action against 6 co-conspirators

Smith also said he contemplated charges against the six co-conspirators who went unnamed and unindicted when the case was brought against Trump.

“Before the department concluded that this case must be dismissed, the Office had made a preliminary determination that the admissible evidence could justify seeking charges against certain co-conspirators. The Office had also begun to evaluate how to proceed, including whether any potential charged case should be joined with Mr. Trump's or brought separately,” Smith wrote.

Smith even made a referral to one U.S. Attorney’s Office, saying he found evidence that one subject they investigated committed “unrelated crimes.”

The special counsel also said that charges brought against other co-conspirators also could have been a vehicle to release messages it obtained from Rep. Scott Perry’s (R-Pa.) phone showing him coordinating about Trump’s plot with Jeffrey Clark, the man Trump planned to install as attorney general to forward his baseless claims of election fraud.

Challenged Trump’s claims about the election 

At the crux of Smith’s case against Trump was his repeated claims of election fraud, the same claims Trump has continued to push even after his indictment in summer 2023.

“The Office was cognizant of Mr. Trump's free speech rights during the investigation and would not have brought a prosecution if the evidence indicated he had engaged in mere political exaggeration or rough-and-tumble politics,” Smith wrote.

The special counsel laid out in detail how Trump went to Republican officials specifically in battleground states he lost to urge them to recount or reconsider the election loss. Smith noted that “trusted state and party officials” insisted to Trump there was no evidence of fraud in the election.

The report points to former Arizona state Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), who pushed Trump and his team for concrete evidence of their fraud claims and received none. It also cites a call Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the then-president urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to flip the outcome in the state.

Trump’s conduct “went well beyond speaking their minds or contesting the election results though our legal system,” Smith wrote, calling Trump’s claims of fraud “knowingly false.”

“Instead, Mr. Trump targeted a key federal government function-the process by which the United States collects, counts, and certifies the results of the presidential election-and sought to obstruct or defeat it through fraud and deceit.”

To this day, Trump has refused to concede defeat in the 2020 election and spent the early hours of election night last November raising baseless allegations of fraud in Philadelphia.