Special Counsel Report: Enough To Convict Trump Of "Criminal Efforts To Retain Power"

 

The Department of Justice has released the 130- page report from Special Counsel Jack Smith outlining the case against the January 6 coup leader and soon- to- be- President again Malignant Fascist.  We're clearly not surprised by the findings and the Special Counsel's conclusion that there was enough evidence to convict the MF on all charges (key phrase: "... but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.") You can access the report at the link in the second paragraph, and we encourage you to read and save it (our emphasis):

Attorney General Merrick Garland has publicly released special counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into Donald Trump and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, detailing the president-elect’s “criminal efforts to retain power” and projecting confidence in the investigation.

The more than 130-page report, which was submitted to Congress and released early Tuesday after a court hold blocking its release expired at midnight, spells out in extensive — if largely already known — detail how Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. Smith’s team states in no uncertain terms that they believed Trump criminally attempted to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election results.

“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 states. 

The transmission of Smith’s January 6 findings came after the president-elect and his allies were unable to stop the department from releasing it.  [snip]

Volume one of Smith’s report marks the special counsel’s final official word on his investigation into January 6, 2021, and the actions by Trump and his associates before then to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.

It contains a factual recitation of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including his “pressure on state officials,” the “fraudulent electors plan,” his “pressure on the Vice President” Mike Pence, and a section on how Trump’s supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6. In effect, it mirrors the landmark federal election subversion indictment that Smith brought against Trump in 2023, retooled in 2024 after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, and ultimately withdrew after Trump’s victory in the November election.

“Until Mr. Trump obstructed it, this democratic process had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years,” Smith wrote, referring to Congress’ certification of the Electoral College results, under the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

When it came to his duty as special counsel and the work of investigating and prosecuting Trump, Smith wrote that his “office had one north star, to follow the facts and law wherever they led. Nothing more and nothing less.”

Of the failed prosecution of Trump, Smith said that prosecutors “cannot control outcomes” and can only do their jobs “the right way for the right reasons.”

The final decision to prosecute the former president, he said, was his alone. “It is a decision I stand behind fully,” Smith wrote. “To have done otherwise on the facts developed during our work would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant.”

Smith concluded that while the Justice Department interprets the Constitution as not allowing the prosecution of a sitting president, his office “assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”...

Sadly, the arcane laws governing "insurrection" also saved the MF:

The special counsel’s office weighed bringing an insurrection charge against Trump but decided against doing so, with the scant case law for such a prosecution a major factor in that decision.

While courts have been describing the US Capitol assault as an “insurrection,” the special counsel’s office was “aware of the litigation risk that would be presented by employing this long-dormant statute.”

Of particular concern was that the special counsel couldn’t find a past case of prosecuting someone “inciting, assisting, or giving aid or comfort to rebellion or insurrection.” Instead, the rare, previous prosecutions dealt with someone who directly engaged in an insurrection, according to the report.

Smith said of the evidence against Trump: “However strong the proof that he incited or gave aid and comfort to those who attacked the Capitol, application of those theories of liability would also have been a first.”

Smith’s office also looked at other possible charges, according to the report. The prosecutors opted against a charge alleging conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the United States because of insufficient proof that the co-conspirators “specifically agreed to threaten force or intimidation against federal officers.”

A charge under the Anti-Riot Act was considered but not brought, Smith said, pointing to how that statute has been winnowed down by courts.

Trump was ultimately charged with four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding. [snip]

The special counsel said his office would not have prosecuted Trump if he was merely exercising his free speech rights by engaging in “exaggeration or rough-and-tumble politics.”

The prosecutor also described Trump’s alleged conduct as going beyond challenging the election results in court.

“The conduct of Mr. Trump and co-conspirators, however, went well beyond speaking their minds or contesting the election results though our legal system,” Smith said in his report. “Instead, Mr. Trump targeted a key federal government function – the process by which the United States collects, counts, and certifies the results of the presidential election – and sought to obstruct or defeat it through fraud and deceit.”

Over the course of more than 20 pages, Smith laid out why he believed the unprecedented prosecution was justified, while arguing there was no alternative to a federal criminal prosecution for holding Trump accountable.

Not only was there “considerable federal interest in protecting the integrity of the United States’ electoral process” that “weighed in favor of proceeding,” Smith said in explaining his decision to bring charges, there was “federal interest defending from future harm the United States’ exceptional tradition of peaceful transitions of presidential power.”...

What's left for us now is to reflect on what might have been had there been more like Jack Smith at the top of the Justice Department, had the obsession with precedents and "norms" not hobbled so many, had the justice system not been hampered by rules that rewarded delaying procedural tactics, had the Republican Supreme Court not outrageously given the MF a post facto grant of immunity, had our political system not been corrupted by people whose interest was serving themselves and their party and not the Constitution or the public, and had a bare plurality of voters not allowed this Malignant Fascist -- the worst, sickest, most criminal and un- American President in our history -- to escape justice and be in a position to wreak more havoc on our country.