Special counsel says Trump would have been convicted for bid to overturn 2020 poll if not for his 2024 election win.
Donald Trump would have been convicted for “criminal efforts to retain power” following the 2020 United States presidential election had he not won the 2024 race, prosecutors have said.
A report, published by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday, includes accusations made by US Special Counsel Jack Smith that the president-elect plotted to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.
The published document concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, were it not for his re-election in November.
“As set forth in the original and superseding indictments, when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power,” the report said.
The incoming president was indicted in August 2023 on charges of working to overturn the election.
However, the case was delayed by appeals and ultimately significantly narrowed by the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which decided that former presidents enjoy sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.
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In response to the report, Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20, called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election”.
The incoming president, who lambasted the special counsel regularly during the investigation, called Smith “a disgrace to himself, his family and his country”.
Classified documents case
A second section of the report details another case in which Smith accuses Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
The Department of Justice has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.
Smith dropped both cases after Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither case reached trial.
Trump repeatedly called Smith “deranged”, asserting the cases were politically motivated and an effort to damage his campaign and political movement.
Trump had sought to block the release of the report, but the courts rebuffed his demand.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the Justice Department to halt plans for now to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the relevant section of the report.
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