Donald Trump has hit out at Jack Smith in an angry 1am rant after the special counsel published his report, concluding the president-elect tried to criminally overturn the 2020 election.
Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election, the Department of Justice report found.
The document — written by Smith — also claimed Trump would have been convicted for the role he played had he not been re-elected by voters in a landslide victory last year.
Responding, Trump slammed Smith as a “deranged lamebrain prosecutor” in a furious tirade posted to his social media platform TruthSocial.
“Deranged Jack Smith… is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,” Trump wrote.
“[He] was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report”’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were.”
Referring to the bipartisan House select committee led by Representative Bennie Thompson that investigated the effort to subvert the 2020 result, Trump alleged the panel had destroyed evidence because it showed how “totally innocent” he was but provided no evidence to support the claim.
Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that there would be a formal probe into the House committee in question, which featured Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger among its members — a gesture widely seen as an act of retaliation on the incoming president’s behalf.
Smith defended his investigation, saying: “The claim from Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.”
President-elect Trump has consistently criticized Smith and allies have suggested the special counsel should now face criminal charges for pursuing the case against him.
In different sections, the report goes into Trump putting “pressure on state officials”, as well as on his own deputy Mike Pence to weaponise his ceremonial role in certifying the election results in Congress and also discusses the so-called fraudulent electors plan.
Smith curtailed his probe into the 45th president’s alleged election interference plot in November after Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 vote to secure a return to the White House. Justice Department protocol forbids it from investigating a sitting president, ending Smith’s hope of securing a conviction against Trump and prompting his resignation last Friday.
But the special counsel leaves office with a report that makes clear his feelings about the future president’s efforts to mislead the American public about his defeat to Joe Biden four years ago.
Those efforts included, he argues, “attempts to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force Justice Department officials and his own vice president, Michael R Pence, to act in contravention of their oaths and to instead advance Mr Trump’s personal interests”.
“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 writes.
Smith says it was his “duty” to investigate the former president’s conduct, adding he stands by his decision “fully” and that prosecutors “cannot control outcomes” and must simply commit to doing their jobs.
The special counsel cites Mike Pence’s own words from his memoir So Help Me God as he outlines the intensity of Trump’s pressure campaign against his own vice president. Trump sought to persuade him to weaponize his ceremonial role in certifying the election results in Congress, the event underway on Capitol Hill on January 6 2021 when the attempted insurrection broke out.
Smith alleges that Trump told his erstwhile running mate Mike Pence that “hundreds of thousands” of people would “hate his guts” and think him “stupid” if he did not comply with the plot to reject legitimate results from the states, also angrily rebuking Pence for being “too honest”.
© The Independent