Trump engaged in 'unprecedented criminal effort,' special counsel says in final report on 2020 election case

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

51% : The conviction will still assure that Trump will become the first president to take office with a felony conviction on his record.
50% : Decision to forego Insurrection Act charge explained Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.
43% : " This combination of photos shows former vice-president Mike Pence, left, in Arlington, Va., on July 17, 2023, and Donald Trump in Bedminster, N.J., on June 13, 2023.
41% : Smith was appointed by Garland to investigate both matters in November 2022 -- the same month Trump announced his plans to contest the 2024 election.
35% : The indictment charged Trump with conspiring to obstruct the election certification, defraud the United States of accurate election results and deprive U.S. voters of their voting rights. Smith's office determined that charges may have been justified against some co-conspirators accused of helping Trump carry out the plan, but the report said prosecutors reached no final conclusions.
34% : Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings.
32% : Smith, who resigned last week and has faced relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.
29% : But it includes some new details, such as that prosecutors considered charging Trump with inciting that attack on the U.S. Capitol under a U.S. law known as the Insurrection Act.
28% : Previous Justice Department guidance has advised against indicting a sitting president, and Trump would have undoubtedly moved to shutter the probes after his Jan. 20 return to office.
28% : After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a "lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election.
28% : Trump was convicted in a New York state case on 34 felony counts involving a scheme to falsify business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn actress, but a judge last week spared him fines or a prison term.
27% : The charges against Trump himself were dropped in a ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which Smith's team planned to appeal prior to Trump's election win on Nov. 5.
26% : This image from police body-worn camera video shows some of the violence that resulted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Prosecutors in the special counsel's office considered, but rejected, a charge of Trump under the Insurrection Act.
26% : It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.
25% : Prosecutors ultimately concluded that such a charge posed legal risks and there was insufficient evidence that Trump intended for the "full scope" of violence during the riot.
24% : The effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.
19% : Report into documents on hold A second section of the report details Smith's case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021, which also led to a criminal indictment.
13% : Pence was among a number of officials to tell Trump his claims of a stolen election were false, according to Smith's report.
11% : Donald Trump engaged in an "unprecedented criminal effort" to "unlawfully retain power" after losing the 2020 election, Jack Smith said in a report published early Tuesday by the U.S. Justice Department, with the special counsel expressing confidence in the prospects for a conviction at a trial that will not happen now that Trump is returning to the White House.
10% : The report details the special counsel's decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.
9% : Smith's report asserted that Trump's claims of voter fraud -- whether it was unfounded allegations of non-citizen voting or voting machine manipulation -- were "demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false." "Trump used these lies," Smith writes, "as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States' democratic process.
2% : Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump in states actually won by Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden's win.

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