Jack Smith: Trump would have been convicted in election case
Special counsel Jack Smith said that President-elect Donald Trump would have been convicted in his election interference case if he had not won the 2024 presidential election.
Smith’s final report on the election interference case runs 137 pages, detailing the case against Trump and how Smith approached the task of prosecuting him.
“Indeed, 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,” Smith wrote in the report.
Trump criticized both Smith and his report in posts Tuesday on Truth Social.
“Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were,” Trump wrote.
The president-elect called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide.”
Smith took full responsibility for his charging decisions, which he said he stands behind. He also said no one in the U.S. Department of Justice influenced his decisions.
“Nobody within the Department of Justice ever sought to interfere with, or improperly influence, my prosecutorial decision making,” he wrote.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022. Smith secured two grand jury indictments against Trump for alleged election interference. One indictment was filed before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, and another was filed after.
Trump pleaded not guilty in 2023 to federal charges that he engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In September, Trump again pleaded not guilty to a superseding indictment that was changed to address the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity.
Prosecutors dropped the election interference case after Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Smith noted that in the report.
“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not tum on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind,” Smith wrote.
Smith’s two prosecutions of Trump cost at least $35 million, according to federal reports Smith previously filed. Those reports run from November 2022 to March 2024, but don’t cover the entire period Smith’s team worked on the Trump cases.
