Report: Donald Trump’s re-election probably prevented his conviction

According to a report by special counsel Jack Smith, only the re-election of Donald Trump as US president prevented the Republican from being convicted of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Without Trump’s imminent return to the presidency, “the Office of Special Counsel would have determined that the admissible evidence would be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” according to the document released Tuesday.

The US Department of Justice’s ban on indicting and prosecuting a president is “categorical” and has nothing to do with the seriousness of the crimes or the strength of the evidence, it said. The government remains “fully” convinced that prosecution is justified.

After Trump’s re-election in November, special investigator Smith, appointed by the Justice Department, asked the federal judge in charge to dismiss the election manipulation case in which the Republican was accused of, among other things, conspiring to defraud his own country. This federal trial focused on his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat through unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and his role in the storming of the Capitol by his radical supporters on January 6, 2021.

Even then, Smith emphasized that the government had not changed its position on the grounds for the criminal proceedings. However, “circumstances” had changed, which is why the charges were dropped before the inauguration. Trump returns to the White House on January 20th.

Immediately after the report was published, the US President-elect railed against Smith on his online platform Truth Social. He called him “mentally deranged” and explained that the special investigator was unable to “successfully prosecute his boss’s political opponent.” “To show you how desperate the deranged Jack Smith is, he released his fake results at 1 a.m.,” Trump added in another post.

Trump’s lawyers had previously urged U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland not to release the report, calling the publication “unlawful.”

Smith himself left the Justice Department last week after submitting his confidential final report. Trump had announced during the election campaign that he would immediately fire Smith if he won the election.