Jack Smith’s Trump Election Fraud And Capitol Attack Report, Selected Reports

Jack Smith’s report for the D.C. case focusing on Trump’s election fraud/interference and his encouraging his supporters to overrun the Capitol is available. You can read it HERE. The point of this article is to provide a diverse array of quotes from that report with little further comment. Perhaps the most important quote appears in the picture above where Smith concludes that but for Trump’s becoming President the “evidence was sufficient to sustain a conviction at trial.” The remaining quotes will help explain that conclusion.

“I want it to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine. It is a decision I stand behind fully. To have done otherwise on the facts developed during our work would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant.”

“when it became clear that Mr.Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power . . . This included attempts to…direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters’ violence to further delay it.”

“In service of these efforts, Mr. Trump worked with other people to achieve a common plan…These included…a private attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud Mr. Trump privately acknowledged were ‘crazy,’ but which he embraced and publicly amplified nonetheless.”

“The throughline of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts was deceit-knowingly false claims of election fraud-and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process.”

“The Office investigated whether Mr. Trump believed the claims he made. Evidence from a variety of sources established that Mr. Trump knew that there was no outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 election, that many of the specific claims he made were untrue, and that he had lost the election.”

“Mr. Trump and co-conspirators could not have believed the specific fraud claims that they were making because the numbers they touted-for instance, of dead voters in a particular state frequently vacillated wildly from day to day or were objectively impossible.”

“One of Mr. Trump’s efforts to change the results of the election involved targeting the electoral process at the state level through politically aligned state officials . . .”

“Significantly, he made election claims only to state legislators and executives who shared his political affiliation and were his political supporters, and only in states that he had lost.”

“apart from Georgia’s Secretary of State, Mr. Trump never contacted other election officials to determine whether there was merit to any specific allegation of election fraud in their states-even though they would have been the best sources to confirm or refute such claims.”

“the co-conspirators deceived Mr. Trump’s elector nominees in the targeted states by falsely claiming that their electoral votes would be used only if ongoing litigation were resolved in Mr. Trump’s favor…”

“This deception was crucial to the conspiracy, as many who participated as fraudulent electors would not have done so had they known the true extent of the co-conspirators’ plans.”

“As his efforts to directly pressure state officials to discount legitimate votes failed and the fraudulent elector plan unfolded, Mr. Trump also tried another tack: he attempted to wield federal power to perpetuate his fraud claims and retain office.”

Note: This is what actual “weaponization” of the DOJ looks like.

“Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Pence to use his ministerial position as President of the Senate to change the election outcome, often by citing false claims of election fraud as justification; he even falsely told Mr. Pence that the ‘Justice Department [was] finding major infractions.’”

“When Mr. Pence repeatedly refused to act as Mr. Trump wanted, Mr. Trump told him that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of people would ‘hate his guts’ and think he was ‘stupid,’ and that Mr. Pence was ‘too honest.’”

Note: The “too honest” line is telling. How dishonest did Trump want Pence to be?

“During his speech at the Ellipse…Trump repeated many of the same lies he had been telling for month…and he told newer ones…that Mr. Pence had the authority, and might be persuaded, to change the election results.”

“The lie regarding Mr. Pence was particularly deceptive because Mr. Trump knew what his supporters in the crowd did not: that Mr. Pence had just told him in no uncertain terms that he would not do what Mr. Trump was demanding.”

“Although Mr. Trump at one point also told his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make [their] voices heard,” he used the word “fight” more than ten times in the speech before concluding by directing his supporters to march to the Capitol to give allied Members of Congress ‘the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country.’ He also told the angry crowd that ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’”

Just before 2:24 p.m. … the television in the dining room where Mr. Trump was sitting aired an interview with an individual marching from the Ellipse to the Capitol, who expressed his anger at Mr. Pence and stated, ‘But I still believe President Trump has something else left. One minute later, the United States Secret Service was forced to evacuate Mr. Pence to a secure location at the Capitol. When an advisor at the White House learned this, he rushed to the dining room and informed Mr. Trump, who replied ‘So what?’”

“Over the course of the afternoon, they [advisors] forcefully urged Mr. Trump to issue calming messages to his supporters. Mr. Trump resisted, repeatedly remarking that the people at the Capitol were angry because the election had been stolen.”

“At 2:38 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., Mr. Trump issued two Tweets falsely suggesting that events at the Capitol were ‘peaceful’ and asking individuals there (whom he termed ‘WE’) to remain that way.”

“He has called them ‘patriots’ and ‘hostages,’ reminisced about January 6 as a ‘beautiful day,’ and championed the ‘January 6 Choir,’ a group of January 6 defendants who, because of their dangerousness, are detained at the District of Columbia jail.”

“Mr. Trump and co-conspirators sought to deprive-that is, injure or oppress-citizens of their constitutional right to have their presidential election votes counted.”

“the Office considered Mr. Trump’s potential defenses to these charges, including a good faith defense, an advice of counsel defense, and constitutional defenses. The Office concluded that each of the defenses was legally or factually flawed and thus would not prevail.”

“an advice-of-counsel defense is not available ‘where counsel acts as an accomplice to the crime.’ … the central attorneys on whom Mr. Trump may have relied for such a defense… were ‘partner[s] in a venture,’ with the result that any advice-of-counsel defense necessarily would fail.”

“The evidence showed that Mr. Trump was not looking toCo-Conspirator 1 or Co-Conspirator 2 for legal advice; instead, Mr. Trump was the head of a conspiracy who sought legal cover from his co-conspirators.”

“Mr. Trump’s knowing deceit was pervasive throughout the charged conspiracies. This was not a case in which Mr. Trump merely misstated a fact or two in a handful of isolated instances. On a repeated basis, he and co-conspirators used specific and knowingly false claims of election fraud.”

“there were no historical analogues to Mr. Trump’s alleged criminal conduct.”

“A significant challenge the Office faced after Mr. Trump’s indictment was his ability and willingness to use his influence…to target witnesses, courts, and Department employees, which required the Office to engage in time-consuming litigation to protect witnesses from threats and harassment.”

“Mr. Trump’s resort to intimidation and harassment during the investigation was not new… A fundamental component of Mr. Trump’s conduct…was his pattern of using social media-at the time, Twitter-to publicly attack and seek to influence state and federal officials, judges, and election workers.”

“Trump repeatedly attacked those involved in the case through threatening public statements, as well as messaging daggered at likely witnesses and their testimony. Those attacks had real-time, real-world consequences, a torrent of threats and intimidation and turning their lives upside down.”

Trump abused power in an effort to stay in power. Yet he returns to the very same office now. That is but one example of how this election result demonstrates the moral failure of America.