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 the 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.
The 137-page document was sent to Congress after Judge Aileen Cannon cleared the way for the first of two parts of Smith's report – on the election interference case – to be released.<\/p>\n
She ordered a hearing later in the week on whether to release the part of the report on allegations that Trump illegally kept classified government documents.
The president-elect takes office on 20 January.
The special counsel, Jack Smith, resigned from his post last week.
Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the US Justice Department investigations into Trump. Special counsels are chosen by the department in cases where there is a potential conflict of interest.
Trump was accused of illegally keeping documents and, in some cases, storing them in rooms at Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, his residence which he owns. In the interference case, he was accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election result.
Both cases 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 Justice Department regulations that forbid the prosecution of a sitting president.
Indeed, in the released report, Smith says: "The department's [of justice] 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."
Since then, there's 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 \u2013 and their lawyers argued that the release of Smith's report could prejudice a future jury and trial.
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