U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the President-elect’s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday (January 14, 2025).

The report details Mr. Smith’s decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.

Click here to read the Report of Special Counsel

It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan. 20, made that impossible.

Mr. Smith, who has come under relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.

Editorial | Strike three: On the indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump

“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,” Mr. Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.

After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Mr. Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election.”

Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.

A second section of the report details Mr. Smith’s case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The Justice Department has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.

Mr. Smith, who left the Justice Department last week, dropped both cases against Trump after he won last year’s election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither reached a trial.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Smith as “deranged,” Trump depicted the cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.

Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case sought to block the release of the report, days before Trump is set to return to office on Jan. 20. Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the Justice Department for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.

Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.

Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in States actually won by Mr. Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.

The effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.

Mr. Smith’s case faced legal hurdles even before Trump’s election win. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump.
| Photo Credit: AP

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case made public Friday a heavily redacted trove of documents that provide a small glimpse into the evidence prosecutors will present if the case ever goes to trial.

The nearly 1,900 pages of documents collected by special counsel Jack Smith’s team were initially filed under seal to help U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan decide what allegations can proceed to trial following the Supreme Court opinion in July that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office.

The information that could be seen in the redacted version released Friday appeared to be material that for the most part had already been made public, including screenshots of Trump social media posts about the 2020 election and a transcript of the video statement he made on January 6, 2021 in, which he told the rioters attacking the Capitol to go home, but added: “we love you” and “you’re very special.”

The overwhelming majority of the pages released Friday were whited-out. The redacted files are believed to include things like transcripts of grand jury testimony, which remain under wraps because of grand jury secrecy rules.

Other information visible to the public includes passages from former Vice President Mike Pence’s book, excerpts of testimony provided by several witnesses to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot and a transcript of Trump’s phone call pressuring Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to reverse his election loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.

Other documents include fundraising emails from Trump’s 2020 campaign and Pence’s letter telling Congress on January 6 that he could not claim “unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”

The filing was submitted as a series of appendices to a 165-page brief unsealed this month in which prosecutors disclosed new evidence against Trump to support their argument that the former president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.

Trump’s lawyers objected to the unsealing of the filing so close to next month’s presidential election, but Chutkan on Thursday rejected their bid to postpone the material from becoming public until after the election. She said it would be inappropriate to take the political calendar into account.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: AP

A U.S. judge on Wednesday made public a court filing in which federal prosecutors laid out their evidence accusing former President Donald Trump of illegally trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The 165-page filing is likely the last opportunity for prosecutors to detail their case against Trump before the Nov. 5 election given there will not be a trial before Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Prosecutors laid out details including an allegation that a White House staffer heard Trump tell family members that it did not matter if he won or lost the election “You still have to fight like hell.”

Trump has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges accusing him of a conspiracy to obstruct the congressional certification of the election, defraud the U.S. out of accurate results and interfere with Americans’ voting rights.

Prosecutors working with Special Counsel Jack Smith divulged their evidence to make the case that the remaining allegations against Trump survive the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.

Prosecutors have said the filing will discuss new evidence, including transcripts of witness interviews and grand jury testimony, but much of that material will not be made public until a trial.

Senior officials in Trump’s administration including former Vice President Mike Pence and White House chief-of-staff Mark Meadows appeared before the grand jury during the investigation.

Prosecutors submitted the court filing on Thursday, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had to approve proposed redactions before it was made public.

Trump’s lawyers opposed allowing Smith to issue a sweeping court filing laying out their evidence, arguing it would be inappropriate to do so weeks before the election. They have argued the entire case should be tossed out based on the Supreme Court’s ruling.

If Trump wins the election, he is likely to direct the Justice Department to drop the charges.