Shortly after 1 a.m. on Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump took to social media to attack one of his long-standing foes, someone whose power had long frustrated the former president. Then, having excoriated NBC's Seth Meyers for some jokes, Trump turned his attention to former special counsel Jack Smith.
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Smith’s report documenting the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election had been publicly released shortly before. The president-elect — without having read the report, we can safely assume — disparaged Smith’s probe as simultaneously political and tired. Smith’s report was “based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs” — that is, the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot — “ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED,” Trump wrote. He added that this material had been destroyed (it wasn’t) because it “showed how totally innocent I was,” which would suggest that Smith’s report also shows how totally innocent he was (it doesn’t).
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This scattershot approach to spin is by now familiar. Everything that is good for Trump is exceptionally good, the best, while everything that’s bad is fake and dishonest and illegal in its own right. Trump didn’t need to read the report to craft his social media post any more than we needed to read his post to know what it said. It said what it always says: He did nothing wrong but Smith et al did.
Americans, though, should read Smith’s report. What it lays out entirely undercuts the idea that Smith’s actions were political, detailing instead precisely how and why charges against Trump were warranted. Not because he was a threat to Biden’s reelection (as Trump insists) but because he engaged in an exceptional effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
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It’s striking to consider the extent to which even the most obvious elements of that effort have been successfully bogged down in partisan debate. For example, Donald Trump (as the report notes) called on people to come to a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. That morning, he stoked the anger of a large crowd and told them to head to the Capitol. They did, attacking police and pushing into the building, delaying the final step of confirming Trump’s loss. Trump watched on TV, waiting hours before he called on the protesters to leave.
All of that is obviously true. The scattershot response — it was the feds; it wasn’t that bad; Trump told them to be peaceful; it wasn’t his fault — has nonetheless effectively convinced millions of Americans that Trump bears no culpability for what unfolded.
Smith’s report doesn’t focus specifically on that event. Instead, it delineates Trump’s broader effort to retain power, an effort that culminated in the riot. That effort …
Smith insists that his team was prepared to prove Trump’s culpability in these efforts and that he would have obtained a conviction. But the Justice Department has prohibitions against prosecuting sitting presidents and, in one week, that’s what Trump will once again be. So he ended his probe and released his report.
There are mandated elements to the report, according to the statute that dictates how special counsels conduct their work. One element is that the counsel must explain any charges they brought or any that they declined to bring. So Smith’s report walks through the charges Trump faced in the election-subversion case, explaining that they met the requirements of prosecution: serving a “substantial federal interest” that couldn’t be prosecuted in another jurisdiction and which couldn’t be addressed with non-prosecutorial action.
The most striking — and, with Trump’s re-inauguration looming, most disconcerting — articulation in Smith’s report of the “federal interest” served in bringing charges against Trump is the threat that his power posed to his critics and opponents.
“Consistently, when elected officials refused to take improper actions that Mr. Trump urged, like discarding legitimate votes or appointing fraudulent electors, Mr. Trump attacked them publicly on Twitter, a social media application on which he had more than 80 million followers,” the report states. “Inevitably, threats and intimidation to these officials followed.”
The end of the prosecution means the end of accountability for that deployment of power — and therefore, no disincentive not to engage in similar deployment in the future.
As he did in a filing last year, Smith also establishes that Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results were not consistent with past efforts to challenge the election results. None of the examples of past challenges offered by Trump’s attorneys, though, involved attempts “to use fraud and deceit to obstruct or defeat the governmental function that would result in the certification of the lawful winner of a presidential election.” Trump’s push was exceptional.
That’s a central part of Smith’s case: This wasn’t normal. The special counsel “would not have brought a prosecution if the evidence indicated he had engaged in mere political exaggeration or rough-and-tumble politics,” the report states. Trump’s effort went far beyond that, from repeated lies about the election results — one 1,000-word footnote lists more than 30 examples of Trump’s lies being refuted in real time — to pressuring allies to acquiesce to his attempts to retain his position.
There was one charge that Smith’s team contemplated but didn’t charge: a violation of the Insurrection Act. As explained in the report, the stumbling block was less that Trump hadn’t attempted to subvert the transfer of power but, instead, that it wasn’t clear what legal standard for “insurrection” needed to be fulfilled to obtain an indictment.
There isn’t much that’s surprising in Smith’s final documentation of Trump’s actions, mostly because those actions have been explored and explained in the media and by the House select committee for years now. What the report adds instead is a forceful rebuttal to the idea that Trump’s indictments weren’t deserved, given his actions.
Trump best bet to beat the prosecution for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election was always to win the 2024 one. He did. “THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!” he wrote to conclude his social media post, suggesting that this was the only verdict required.
Now, Smith has also spoken. It’s safe to assume that history will reflect that his presentation of Trump’s actions is more accurate and fair than Trump’s presentation.
Get the latest election news and resultsSmith’s report documenting the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election had been publicly released shortly before. The president-elect — without having read the report, we can safely assume — disparaged Smith’s probe as simultaneously political and tired. Smith’s report was “based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs” — that is, the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot — “ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED,” Trump wrote. He added that this material had been destroyed (it wasn’t) because it “showed how totally innocent I was,” which would suggest that Smith’s report also shows how totally innocent he was (it doesn’t).
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This scattershot approach to spin is by now familiar. Everything that is good for Trump is exceptionally good, the best, while everything that’s bad is fake and dishonest and illegal in its own right. Trump didn’t need to read the report to craft his social media post any more than we needed to read his post to know what it said. It said what it always says: He did nothing wrong but Smith et al did.
Americans, though, should read Smith’s report. What it lays out entirely undercuts the idea that Smith’s actions were political, detailing instead precisely how and why charges against Trump were warranted. Not because he was a threat to Biden’s reelection (as Trump insists) but because he engaged in an exceptional effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
🏛️
Follow Politics
It’s striking to consider the extent to which even the most obvious elements of that effort have been successfully bogged down in partisan debate. For example, Donald Trump (as the report notes) called on people to come to a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. That morning, he stoked the anger of a large crowd and told them to head to the Capitol. They did, attacking police and pushing into the building, delaying the final step of confirming Trump’s loss. Trump watched on TV, waiting hours before he called on the protesters to leave.
All of that is obviously true. The scattershot response — it was the feds; it wasn’t that bad; Trump told them to be peaceful; it wasn’t his fault — has nonetheless effectively convinced millions of Americans that Trump bears no culpability for what unfolded.
Smith’s report doesn’t focus specifically on that event. Instead, it delineates Trump’s broader effort to retain power, an effort that culminated in the riot. That effort …
… as the report explains.
Smith insists that his team was prepared to prove Trump’s culpability in these efforts and that he would have obtained a conviction. But the Justice Department has prohibitions against prosecuting sitting presidents and, in one week, that’s what Trump will once again be. So he ended his probe and released his report.
There are mandated elements to the report, according to the statute that dictates how special counsels conduct their work. One element is that the counsel must explain any charges they brought or any that they declined to bring. So Smith’s report walks through the charges Trump faced in the election-subversion case, explaining that they met the requirements of prosecution: serving a “substantial federal interest” that couldn’t be prosecuted in another jurisdiction and which couldn’t be addressed with non-prosecutorial action.
The most striking — and, with Trump’s re-inauguration looming, most disconcerting — articulation in Smith’s report of the “federal interest” served in bringing charges against Trump is the threat that his power posed to his critics and opponents.
“Consistently, when elected officials refused to take improper actions that Mr. Trump urged, like discarding legitimate votes or appointing fraudulent electors, Mr. Trump attacked them publicly on Twitter, a social media application on which he had more than 80 million followers,” the report states. “Inevitably, threats and intimidation to these officials followed.”
The end of the prosecution means the end of accountability for that deployment of power — and therefore, no disincentive not to engage in similar deployment in the future.
As he did in a filing last year, Smith also establishes that Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results were not consistent with past efforts to challenge the election results. None of the examples of past challenges offered by Trump’s attorneys, though, involved attempts “to use fraud and deceit to obstruct or defeat the governmental function that would result in the certification of the lawful winner of a presidential election.” Trump’s push was exceptional.
That’s a central part of Smith’s case: This wasn’t normal. The special counsel “would not have brought a prosecution if the evidence indicated he had engaged in mere political exaggeration or rough-and-tumble politics,” the report states. Trump’s effort went far beyond that, from repeated lies about the election results — one 1,000-word footnote lists more than 30 examples of Trump’s lies being refuted in real time — to pressuring allies to acquiesce to his attempts to retain his position.
There was one charge that Smith’s team contemplated but didn’t charge: a violation of the Insurrection Act. As explained in the report, the stumbling block was less that Trump hadn’t attempted to subvert the transfer of power but, instead, that it wasn’t clear what legal standard for “insurrection” needed to be fulfilled to obtain an indictment.
There isn’t much that’s surprising in Smith’s final documentation of Trump’s actions, mostly because those actions have been explored and explained in the media and by the House select committee for years now. What the report adds instead is a forceful rebuttal to the idea that Trump’s indictments weren’t deserved, given his actions.
Trump best bet to beat the prosecution for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election was always to win the 2024 one. He did. “THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!” he wrote to conclude his social media post, suggesting that this was the only verdict required.
Now, Smith has also spoken. It’s safe to assume that history will reflect that his presentation of Trump’s actions is more accurate and fair than Trump’s presentation.
