US Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an \u201cunprecedented criminal effort\u201d to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the president-elect\u2019s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The report details Smith\u2019s decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan 20, made that impossible.<\/p>\n
Smith, who has faced relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claim from Mr Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,\u201d Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.<\/p>\n
After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a \u201clamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s lawyers, in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland made public by the Justice Department, called the report a \u201cpolitically-motivated attack\u201d and said releasing it ahead of Trump\u2019s return to the White House would harm the presidential transition.<\/p>\n
Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.<\/p>\n
But it includes some new details, such as that prosecutors considered charging Trump with inciting the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol under a US law known as the Insurrection Act.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors ultimately concluded that such a charge posed legal risks and there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended for the \u201cfull scope\u201d of violence during the riot, a failed attempt by a mob of his supporters to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
The indictment charged Trump with conspiring to obstruct the election certification, defraud the United States of accurate election results and deprive US voters of their voting rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an \u201cunprecedented criminal effort\u201d to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the president-elect\u2019s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday. The report details Smith\u2019s decision to bring a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4674,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4672\/revisions\/4674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}