Eric Cortellessa in Time Magazine:
Days before Donald Trump will return to the White House, Special Counsel Jack Smith relayed an unsettling message to the American people: He had unearthed enough evidence to potentially send the incoming President to prison.
The Justice Department released on Tuesday its final report on Smith’s charges alleging that Trump illegally conspired to overturn the 2020 election, saying that prosecutors secured the goods to convict Trump had his November victory not prevented the case from proceeding. “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,” the document says. The report amounts to a remarkable rebuke of someone soon to assume the powers of the presidency. While few of the findings were new—Trump’s schemes to remain in office after losing the 2020 election have been extensively chronicled through news reports, documentaries, and landmark congressional hearings—it’s yet another detailed account of how the President-elect waged an assault on American democracy and the U.S. government he will soon lead once again.
Smith’s team interviewed more than 250 people, obtained grand jury testimony from more than 55 witnesses, and said the findings of the House committee that probed the attack constituted “a small part of the office’s investigative record.” In the sprawling 137-page report, Smith unspools Trump’s efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power, from pressuring state and federal officials to nullify the election outcome to inciting a mob to ransack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith accuses Trump of trying to obstruct the certification of Biden’s election “through fraud and deceit,” including by encouraging “violence against his perceived opponents” in the days and weeks leading up to the insurrectionist riot.
More here.
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