President-elect Donald Trump would have been convicted of illegally trying to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election – which he lost – if he had not successfully been re-elected in 2024, according to a Department of Justice report released to Congress. "The admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial," the report by Special Counsel Jack Smith said. Smith is "deranged" and his findings are "fake", Trump said after the report was released. Trump was accused of pressurizing officials to reverse the 2020 result, knowingly spreading lies about election fraud and seeking to exploit the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. He denied any wrongdoing. Trump, who was president at the time of the alleged crimes, subsequently spent four years out of office – but was successfully re-elected to the White House in November. He will return to the presidency next week. After his success in the 2024 vote, the various legal issues that he had been battling have largely evaporated. Although Jack Smith – the special counsel who investigated him in this and one other case – has resigned from his post ahead of Trump's return, the path was cleared by a judge for the first part of his report to be released. The 137-page document was sent to Congress after midnight on Tuesday. The judge, Aileen Cannon, ordered a hearing later in the week on whether to release the second part of the report – which focuses on separate allegations that Trump illegally kept classified government documents at his home in Florida. Posting on his Truth Social website, Trump maintained his innocence, taunting Smith by writing that the prosecutor "was unable to get his case tried before the election, which I won in a landslide". Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the US government investigations into Trump. Special counsels are chosen by the Department of Justice (DoJ) in cases where there is a potential conflict of interest. In the interference case, Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the result of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden. These are detailed by Smith in his report, which accuses Trump of "unprecedented efforts to unlawfully retain power" through a variety of methods, including "threats and encouragement of violence against his perceived opponents". Both this case and the separate classified documents case resulted in criminal charges against Trump, who pleaded not guilty and sought to cast the prosecutions as politically motivated. But Smith closed the cases after Trump's election in November, in accordance with DoJ regulations that forbid the prosecution of a sitting president. The report explains: "It has long been the department's interpretation that the [US] Constitution forbids the federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting president, but the election results raised for the first time the question of the lawful course when a private citizen who has already been indicted is then elected president." But the document goes on to say: "But for Trump's election [in 2024] and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial." There has been a legal back-and-forth over the material related to the cases. Last week, Judge Cannon put a temporary stop on releasing the whole Smith report, over concerns that it could affect the cases of two Trump associates charged with him in the classified documents case. Walt Nauta, Trump's personal aide, and Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, are accused of helping Trump hide the documents. Unlike Trump's, their cases are still pending – and their lawyers argued that the release of Smith's report could prejudice a future jury and trial. — BBC
