WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” on Jan. 6 and knowingly spread an objectively false narrative about election fraud in the 2020 election, special counsel Jack Smith said in a report defending his investigation made public early Tuesday.
The 170-page report summarized Smith’s investigation into President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to maintain power after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, which culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Smith — who has been the subject of unending criticisms by Trump, whose allies have suggested the special counsel should now face criminal charges — used the report to deliver a full-throated defense of his decision to charge Trump and opined that — if it wasn’t for Trump’s election in November that prevented the prosecution from moving forward — the case would have ended in the president-elect’s conviction.
“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’s report stated.
The report says that Trump spread claims that were “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false” and that Smith’s office determined that “Trump knew that there was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election, that many of the specific claims that he made were untrue, and that he had lost the election.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
