Trump Would Have Been Convicted for Election Interference, Says Jack Smith
In the time between his two presidential administrations, Donald Trump was famously the subject of four separate criminal indictments, two of which were spearheaded by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Given that Trump will soon be in charge of the Department of Justice, Smith ended both cases in November. This week, Smith’s report pertaining to Trump’s conduct after losing the 2020 election was released. Much of the information was already in the public domain, but even so, the evidence laid out is particularly damning and paints a portrait of an unhinged executive using any possible maneuver to stay in power.
Within hours of the polls closing in 2020, Trump cried foul, insisting he had won the election outright and that any further vote counting was evidence of fraud. In the weeks thereafter, he filed dozens of lawsuits and cozied up to whomever espoused the looniest theories to explain his loss. He leaned on officials in states he lost to interfere in the process of counting and ratifying vote totals. These efforts came to a head on January 6, 2021, when hundreds of supporters—fired up by Trump at a rally near the White House—stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election for Joe Biden.
In 2023, Smith empaneled a grand jury and secured an indictment against Trump on four federal charges related to obstructing an official proceeding. In his final report, Smith does not mince words on Trump’s criminal culpability, finding that Trump “willfully caused others to attempt to obstruct the certification proceeding on January 6.”
“But for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency,” Smith concluded, “the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
Trump’s best defense in the case has always been ignorance—that against evidence to the contrary, he truly believed he had legitimately won the 2020 election before nefarious actors stole it away. In that scenario, Trump was not attempting to steal an election, he was merely “restoring faith and confidence in American elections,” as he said in a lengthy Facebook video after the election.
Smith’s report is unsparing i
Article from Reason.com
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