US President-elect Donald Trump avoided conviction for trying to change the results of the 2020 election only by winning the 2024 election. This is stated in the report of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, released on Tuesday by the US Department of Justice, Sky News reports.
According to the document, “if Donald Trump had not won the election and returned to the White House, the available evidence would have been sufficient to successfully convict him in court”. The report also notes that Trump has undertaken “unprecedented criminal efforts” to stay in power after his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.
Jack Smith rejected accusations of political bias in the investigation. “Mr Trump’s claims that my decisions were influenced by the Biden administration or other political actors are laughable, to say the least,” he wrote in a cover letter to the report.
Trump reacted to the report’s publication on his Truth Social platform by calling Smith “sick in the head” and accusing him of falsifying evidence. “They published their lying report at 1am to hide the truth!” Trump wrote.
The report comes less than a week before Donald Trump returns to the White House, which casts doubt on the further progress of the cases against him, including the attacks on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Judge Eileen Cannon, appointed by Trump, dismissed a separate case last year over the handling of classified documents, but the trial against the two co-defendants continues.
