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Special Counsel Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case

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Special Counsel Report Says Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case

Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday morning that he believed the evidence was sufficient to convict Mr. Trump in a trial if his success in the 2024 election had not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.

“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,” Mr. Smith wrote.

He continued: “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.”

The Justice Department delivered the 137-page volume — representing half of Mr. Smith’s overall final report, with the volume about the classified documents case still confidential — to Congress just after midnight Tuesday morning.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a president-elect, capping a momentous legal saga that saw the man now poised to regain the powers of the nation’s highest office charged with crimes that struck at the heart of American democracy. And although Mr. Smith resigned as special counsel late last week, his recounting of the case also served as a reminder of the vast array of evidence and detailed accounting of Mr. Trump’s actions that he had marshaled.

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The partial release came only a day after the judge in Florida who oversaw Mr. Trump’s other federal case — the one accusing him of mishandling classified documents — issued a ruling allowing a portion of the material to be made public. But the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump himself, also barred the Justice Department from immediately releasing — even to Congress — a second volume of the report concerning the documents case.

For more than a week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers — who were shown a draft copy of Mr. Smith’s report in advance of its release — denounced it as little more than an “attempted political hit job which sole purpose is to disrupt the presidential transition.” At least one Trump ally, the former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, has come forward to complain that he, too, might be implicated in the report as an unindicted co-conspirator in the election interference case.

In August 2023, Mr. Smith charged Mr. Trump in Federal District Court in Washington with three intersecting conspiracy counts accusing him of plotting to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. Mr. Smith also filed a separate indictment in Florida, charging Mr. Trump with illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office and conspiring with two co-defendants to obstruct the government’s repeated effort to retrieve them.

But after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, Mr. Smith dropped the cases because of a Justice Department policy that prohibits prosecuting sitting presidents. Under a separate department regulation, he turned in a final report about both cases — one volume on each — to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Last week, the Justice Department said Mr. Garland planned to hold off on issuing the volume about the classified documents case until all legal proceedings related to Mr. Trump’s two co-defendants were completed.

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Lawyers for the co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, fought the release by obtaining an initial injunction last week from Judge Cannon, who had dismissed the classified documents case last summer.

In her order on Monday, Judge Cannon told the defense and prosecution to appear before her on Friday in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., to argue over the department’s plan to release the classified-documents volume to Congress.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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Video: Behind the Supreme Court’s Push to Expand Presidential Power

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Video: Behind the Supreme Court’s Push to Expand Presidential Power

new video loaded: Behind the Supreme Court’s Push to Expand Presidential Power

For more than a decade, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has chipped away at Congress’s power to insulate independent agencies from politics. Now, the court has signaled its willingness to expand presidential power once again.

By Ann E. Marimow, Claire Hogan, Stephanie Swart and Pierre Kattar

December 12, 2025

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Europe’s rocky relations with Donald Trump

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Europe’s rocky relations with Donald Trump

Gideon talks to Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s former secretary-general, about Ukraine and Europe’s strategic priorities after recent scathing criticism from US president Donald Trump over its failure to end the war: ‘They talk but they don’t produce.’ Clip: Politico

Free links to read more on this topic:

The White House’s rupture with the western alliance

Trump pushes for ‘free economic zone’ in Donbas, says Zelenskyy

Friedrich Merz offers to host Ukraine talks so deal not done ‘above Europe’s head’

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Ukraine’s ‘fortress belt’ that Donald Trump wants to trade for peace

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Trump announces pardon for Tina Peters, increasing pressure to free her though he can’t erase state charges | CNN Politics

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Trump announces pardon for Tina Peters, increasing pressure to free her though he can’t erase state charges | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he is granting Tina Peters a full federal pardon, which is likely to increase the pressure campaign to free the former Colorado clerk from state prison even though he cannot erase her state charges.

“Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections. Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa, Colorado, was found guilty last year on state charges of participating in a scheme to breach voting systems that hoped to prove Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud in 2020. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and is serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Pueblo, Colorado.

Peters is currently the only Trump ally in prison for crimes related to the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She still believes that election was stolen, her lawyers recently told CNN. Her lawyers have also raised concerns about her physical safety and told a judge that her health is declining behind bars.

Trump’s pardon has no legal impact on her state conviction and incarceration. But the administration has been pressuring Colorado officials to set her free or at least transfer her into federal custody, where she could be moved into a more comfortable facility. The Justice Department even stepped in to support Peters’ unsuccessful attempt to convince a federal judge to release her from prison.

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After months of hearings and legal filings, a federal judge in Denver rejected her federal lawsuit seeking release on Monday, concluding that state courts are the proper venue for her to challenger her conviction.

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in a statement defended Peters’ conviction. “No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions. This is a matter for the courts to decide, and we will abide by court orders,” he said.

Polis has previously said he won’t pardon Peters as part of any quid-pro-quo deal.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who is fighting to uphold Peters’ conviction and keep her behind bars, also dismissed the pardon in a statement.

“The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court has no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up,” Weiser said.

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One of her lawyers sent a letter to Trump earlier this month, making the case for a pardon. Those efforts were successful at securing a symbolic clemency action from Trump, however, only Polis has the power to pardon Peters for her state crimes and set her free.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.

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