Justice Dept. Releases First Volume of Special Counsel Smith’s Final Report
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
On Jan. 14, shortly after midnight, the Justice Department released the first half of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report of his more than two-year investigation, a 137-page volume entitled “Report on Efforts to Interfere with the Lawful Transfer of Power Following the 2020 Presidential Election or the Certification of the Electoral College Vote Held on January 6, 2021.”
The report concludes:
The Department's 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. 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.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland accompanying the report, the special counsel made clear that “the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine,” a decision he “stand[s] behind fully.” Smith also addressed claims that his prosecutorial decisions “were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors,” calling them, “in a word, laughable.”
In the final weeks before the inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump’s attorneys filed a flurry of petitions in multiple courts in an effort to block Garland from making public any portion of Smith’s final report concerning his prosecutions of Trump on four felony counts alleging election-interference in Washington, D.C., and on 32 counts of willful retention of classified documents and eight counts of obstruction of justice in the Southern District of Florida.
The effort to block the volume of the report on the election case in D.C. ended on Jan. 13, when Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida issued a five-page ruling denying a motion by Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, to halt its release. Consequently, Judge Cannon’s stay order expired at midnight, clearing the way for the Justice Department to release the volume directly after.
Read Smith’s letter to Garland and volume one of the report here or below:
