President-elect Donald Trump would have been convicted of illegally trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election — which he lost — had he not been successfully re-elected in 2024, according to a Justice Department report released to Congress.
“The evidence admitted was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” said the report by special counsel Jack Smith.
Smith is “confused” and his findings are “bogus,” Trump said after the report was released.
Trump was accused of pressuring officials to overturn the 2020 results by deliberately spreading lies about election fraud and trying to capitalize on the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He denied any wrongdoing.
Trump, who was president at the time of the alleged crimes, subsequently spent four years out of office – but was successfully re-elected to the White House in November. He returns to the presidency next week.
Following his success in the 2024 vote, the various legal issues he had been struggling with have largely disappeared.
Although Jack Smith — the special counsel who investigated him in this and another case — has resigned ahead of Trump’s return, a judge cleared the way for the first part of his report to be released.
The 137-page document was sent to Congress after midnight on Tuesday.
The judge, Aileen Cannon, ordered a hearing later this week on whether to release the second part of the report — which focuses on separate allegations that Trump illegally stored classified government documents at his Florida home.
On his Truth Social website, Trump maintained his innocence and mocked Smith, writing that the prosecutor “wasn’t able to get his case tried before the election, which I won in a landslide.”
Trump added: “THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKE!!!”
In 2022, Smith was appointed to oversee the US government’s investigations into Trump. Special advisers are chosen by the Ministry of Justice (DoJ) in cases where there is a potential conflict of interest.
In the meddling case, Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
These are detailed by Smith in his report, which accuses Trump of “unprecedented efforts to illegally maintain power” through a variety of methods, including “threats and incitement of violence against his perceived opponents”.
Both that case and the separate case involving classified documents resulted in criminal charges against Trump, who pleaded not guilty and sought to have the charges dismissed as politically motivated.
But Smith closed the cases after Trump’s election in November, in accordance with DoJ rules that prohibit prosecution of a sitting president.
The report explains: “It has long been the Department’s interpretation that the [US] The Constitution prohibits federal impeachment and prosecution of a sitting president, but the election result raised for the first time the question of the legal course when a private citizen who has already been indicted is then elected president.”
But the document goes on to say, “But for Mr. Trump’s election [in 2024] and an imminent return to the presidency, the office judged that the evidence admitted was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
There has been legal back and forth over the material in connection with the cases.
Last week, Judge Cannon put a temporary halt to releasing the full Smith report over concerns it could affect the cases of two Trump staffers who are accused with him in the classified documents case.
Walt Nauta, Trump’s personal aide, and Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, are accused of helping Trump hide the documents.
Unlike Trump’s, their cases are still pending — and their lawyers argued that releasing Smith’s report could prejudice a future jury and trial.