Jack Smith's final report says Trump would have been convicted if he hadn't won

Special Counsel Jack Smith released Volume 1 of his final report on January 14, 2025 — just six days before Trump was inaugurated — detailing the evidence the government assembled against Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. The report states plainly that "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 charged Trump with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

The 165-page document lays out three parallel criminal schemes Trump orchestrated after losing the 2020 election: pressuring state election officials to reverse certified results in Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan; coordinating a fake elector scheme across seven battleground states to manufacture fraudulent electoral votes; and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify Biden's victory during the January 6 joint session of Congress. Smith's team documented that Trump privately acknowledged he lost, including telling Pence he was "too honest" for refusing to go along, yet continued publicly claiming election fraud to fuel the pressure campaign.

Smith dismissed the case after Trump won the 2024 election, citing the longstanding DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted or tried. The report concludes that violence on January 6 "was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay." At least 140 law enforcement officers were assaulted during the Capitol attack.