DOJ releases special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on Trump election case: NPR

The Justice Department early Tuesday has released its highly anticipated report on election interference against President-elect Donald Trump, after a lengthy legal battle.

Prosecutors dropped both federal criminal charges against Trump after his 2024 election victory, and special counsel Jack Smith’s final report is their last chance to explain their decisions.

Smith, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland prefacing the report, defended his work and his team, as well as his impartiality in pursuing the federal prosecution of Trump, whom prosecutors eventually charged with election interference in Washington , DC and hoarding. classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and refusing to return them to the FBI.

The report said the evidence would have led to Trump’s conviction at trial, “but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency.” Longstanding Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.

Smith said he fully supported the decision to file charges: “To act otherwise based on the facts developed during our work would have been to absolve myself of my duties as a prosecutor and public servant. After nearly 30 years of public service, that is to say, a choice that I could not bear.

The 137-page report lays out prosecutors’ evidence of Trump’s efforts to influence the election and spread election claims he knew to be false.

Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon cleared the way Monday for the DOJ to release the first part of Smith’s investigation into Trump, covering the probe and four criminal charges against him related to the presidential election of 2020. Cannon denied a motion by Trump’s former co-defendants who sought to block the release.

The DOJ agreed not to release the second volume of its report, on the classified documents affair, to avoid interfering with an ongoing case against two other defendants. But he wanted to release the first volume, covering the investigation and charges against Trump related to the 2020 presidential election.

Smith submitted his report to the DOJ on January 7 and resigned on January 10, as scheduled.

Trump argued that the special counsel was appointed illegally and that any public reporting would be legally invalid and harm his transition to the White House. He sought to intervene in the Florida case to block the report’s release and threatened to fire Smith once he takes office on January 20.

“Jack is a lame prosecutor who couldn’t get his case tried before the election, which I won hands down. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKE!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social after the report was released.

Smith strongly defended the report’s work and stressed that the DOJ never sought to interfere.

“For anyone who knows me well, Mr. Trump’s assertion that my decisions as prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” he said. -he writes.

“I can assure you that neither I nor the prosecutors on my team would have tolerated or participated in any action by our Office for partisan political purposes. My Office had only one North Star: to follow the facts and the law wherever they led. Nothing more. and nothing less.”