Trump Has Not Been Exonerated, Special Counsel Jack Smith Declares In Final Report

Donald Trump has not been exonerated for his “unprecedented criminal effort” to subvert the 2020 election and cling to power after he lost to Joe Biden.

That’s the message special counsel Jack Smith delivered in his final report, which laid out evidence Smith said would have resulted in Trump’s conviction at trial. Trump is only off the hook, the special counsel wrote, because he won back the White House in 2024, forcing the Justice Department to shut down the historic prosecution.

“The Department's view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn 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 in a 137-page volume of the report that the Justice Department sent to Congress and publicly released on Tuesday morning, shortly after midnight.

“The admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction,” added Smith, who resigned from his position last week.

The Justice Department is withholding for now, under court order, the second part of Smith’s two-volume report. That portion details his investigation into the presence of a slew of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and allegations that he obstructed the investigation into how they got there.

The volume on the election case summarizes the trove of evidence that federal investigators collected during a probe that lasted years but never came close to reaching trial. Much of that evidence has been made public in indictments and court filings over the course of Smith’s two-year tenure. The report draws from 250 interviews his staff conducted, as well as information gleaned from 55 grand jury witnesses and transcripts from congressional investigations.

Smith obtained reams of records, including Signal messages between one of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators — former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark — and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a top Trump ally in Congress.

The report describes a multifaceted scheme, orchestrated by Trump, to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election. That plan, Smith said, included spreading false claims of election fraud to drive up public distrust in the results. Trump then used that sentiment to lean on GOP allies in statehouses and Congress — as well as his own vice president — to help him corrupt the results, the report says.

As part of that effort, Trump and several alleged co-conspirators urged GOP activists in various states that Trump lost to sign false documents claiming to be legitimate presidential electors. Smith argued that many of those false electors were deceived by Trump and his allies, believing they were acting as a fail-safe in case Trump prevailed in any of his legal challenges to the election. Instead, Trump and his alleged co-conspirators used the false electors’ signed certificates as the linchpin of their efforts to disrupt Congress’ certification of the election results on Jan. 6, 2021.

The unusual overnight release followed last-ditch legal maneuvering by Trump on Monday night seeking to persuade U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to block the release of the entire report.

As the Florida-based Trump appointee denied Trump’s last bid urging relief, she said she only had authority to act in connection with the classified-documents prosecution that was once before her. She lacked the power, she said, to dictate what the Justice Department made public about the 2020 election-focused case brought in Washington.

“The Court is therefore constrained to deny the present request for emergency relief,” Cannon wrote in an order issued after 11 p.m. Monday.

An earlier order from Cannon that had temporarily blocked the public release of all of the report expired at midnight, and the Justice Department quickly released the first volume.

Trump has railed against the planned release of the report in recent days, pillorying Smith for unleashing a written attack on him after failing to get either criminal case he filed against him to trial.

“Why would Deranged Jack Smith be allowed to issue a ‘report’ on a complete and total Witch Hunt against me, strictly for political purposes, when he was thrown off the case and ultimately dismissed by the DOJ,” Trump wrote Sunday in a social media post, citing no evidence that Smith was forced out. “He has already filled thousands of rejected statements and documents against me, which were a ‘joke,’ and the public just voted for me, in a landslide, to be their President!”

In a letter accompanying the report, Smith directly challenged Trump’s repeated claims that the election case ended in his “complete exoneration.”

“That is false,” the special counsel wrote.

The report also serves as a rebuttal to sharp criticism Garland and Smith have faced in recent months from Trump’s political opponents that the Justice Department’s efforts to bring the former president to justice over his involvement in Jan. 6 were too plodding and allowed Trump to effectively run out the clock on the legal process.

Smith provides great detail about efforts prosecutors made for months to obtain evidence useful to the investigation, despite resistance from Trump and his allies, underscoring claims by Garland’s defenders that the investigation was active earlier than many people realize. Smith also said his own team worked at an extraordinary pace to make sure charges were ready before Trump’s re-election campaign began in earnest.

“The Office's exceptional working pace ensured that its investigative work could be completed, charging decisions could be made, and any necessary indictments could be returned by the summer of 2023, long before the election,” Smith wrote.