Jack Smith's final say: Takeaways from the special counsel's report

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

59% : And once Trump is inaugurated next week and assumes control of the department, it will be easy for him to forestall any formal release of Smith's final assessment of the documents case.
53% : Special counsel Jack Smith's just-released report provides fresh insights into his bid to hold Donald Trump responsible for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
51% : But Smith's report emphasized that the Justice Department was aggressively investigating leads related to Trump long before the special counsel's tenure began.
33% : The delay, critics say, made it much more difficult for Smith -- once he was appointed in November 2022 -- to bring Trump to trial before the 2024 election.
33% : Litigation tactics by Trump and his allies, Smith argued, were the key factors that slowed the process to a crawl.
27% : And Smith argued that the Supreme Court's resolution of Trump's immunity assertion essentially guaranteed another round of litigation that would have been all but certain to return to the justices if Trump had not won the election and the prosecution had continued.
22% : Former Vice President Mike Pence also resisted testifying until a court ordered him to reveal some -- but not all -- details about his interactions with Trump.
21% : Smith also explained publicly for the first time his decision not to charge Trump with one of the gravest potential crimes in DOJ's arsenal: inciting insurrection.
20% : A common sentiment on the left is that Garland was too deferential to Trump after Joe Biden took office and failed to unleash the full might of the department on the former president for nearly two years.
20% : And, in a notable concession to Trump, Smith acknowledged the evidence didn't show that Trump intended to cause "the full scope" of violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021.
17% : Still, the 137-page write-up on the election case is a final accounting of how Trump sought to derail the transfer of power four years ago, how investigators built and litigated an unprecedented conspiracy prosecution against a former president, and how that prosecution fizzled when Trump won back the White House.

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