Special Counsel Jack Smith makes a statement to reporters about the 37 federal charges returned by a grand jury in an indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump on charges of unauthorized retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice as Smith speaks at his offices in Washington, U.S. June 9, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday released Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the last act of a prosecutor whose historic criminal cases were thwarted by Trump’s November election victory.
The report is expected to detail Smith’s decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump accusing the Republican president-elect of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.
A second section of the report details 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.
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.
It’s unclear how much new information the public portion of the report will contain.
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, pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote and ultimately sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Biden, in an attempt 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.
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 U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.