Special Counsel Report Says Trump Convicted in Election Case

Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump for seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday morning that he believes the evidence were sufficient to convict Mr. Trump. in a lawsuit if his success in the 2024 elections had not made it impossible to continue the prosecution.

“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not depend on the seriousness of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s case, or the merits of the prosecution, which the office fully supports,” Mr. Smith wrote.

He continued: “Indeed, without the election of Mr. Trump and his imminent return to the presidency, the office believed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and maintain a conviction at trial. »

The Justice Department delivered the 137-page volume — representing half of Mr. Smith’s overall final report, with the volume on the classified documents affair still confidential — to Congress just after midnight Tuesday morning.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, amounts to an extraordinary rebuke of a president-elect, capping a momentous legal saga that has seen the man now poised to regain the powers of the nation’s highest office, accused of crimes that struck the heart of the nation. American democracy. And although Mr. Smith resigned as special adviser late last week, his account of the affair also recalled the vast array of evidence and detailed accounting of Mr. Trump’s actions that he had gathered.