special prosecutor jack smith final report Regarding the investigation into President-elect Trump, which was made public early Tuesday morning, he said there was no political interference in his decision and that a conviction would likely have been obtained had it been allowed to proceed.
Mr. Smith made this assertion both in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and in the release of the portion of his long-awaited final report on election interference.
In his letter to Garland, Mr. Smith broke his silence on more than a year of attacks from Mr. Trump, who accused Mr. Smith of orchestrating politically motivated prosecutions.
“I made the final decision to prosecute Mr. Trump, a decision I fully support,” Smith wrote, adding that Garland and everyone else at the Justice Department told him to prosecute Mr. Trump. He added that he urged them to do so.
“For those of you who know me well, Mr. Trump's claims that my decisions as prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors are, in a word, ludicrous. ”
The release of the report comes after a swift legal battle launched by Mr. Trump and his co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case to block the public release of the second volume of Mr. Smith's report.
Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon cleared the way for the publication of a booklet on January 6th.
The public release does not include a second volume written by Smith on the prosecution of Trump for handling classified documents. Garland indicated he did not intend to make that part public, given the pending litigation involving Trump's former co-defendants.
The report provides the first glimpse inside Smith's thoughts on how to approach the case, as he only spoke publicly about the case on the day he was appointed special prosecutor.
Smith, who resigned on Friday, detailed his decision to ask the court to dismiss the charges after Trump won re-election, saying he believed the high-stakes case had resulted in a conviction against the president-elect. I'm writing.
“Certainly, however, given Mr. Trump's election and impending return to the Presidency, authorities have assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” Smith wrote. .
The bulk of the book released Tuesday (about 174 pages) deals with Smith's long-running investigation into President Trump's efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
By Smith's own admission, the report primarily contains information made public in previous court filings. President Trump's unindicted co-conspirators in the case are easily identified but not named.
“The crux of all of Mr. Trump's criminal efforts were false claims of election fraud and knowing deception, and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon and undermined the U.S. democratic process. “It shows that the fundamental functions of the federal government have been defeated,” Smith wrote.
“This democratic process operated peacefully and orderly for more than 130 years until Mr. Trump disrupted it.”
The special counsel described the prosecution of Trump during the presidential campaign as an “unprecedented challenge” and detailed the former president's efforts to elicit intense loyalty from potential witnesses and attack prosecutors. Detailed.
“The Department has no interest in influencing the presidential election and has fully followed the letter and spirit of the Department's policy regarding election year secrecy,” Smith wrote.
The report's release comes hours after the Justice Department Special Counsel David Weiss's final report released It detailed the prosecution of Hunter Biden, the president's son.
