Jack Smith's Jan. 6 Trump Report Illuminates One Final Thing

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : But Trump won.
58% : Through all the highs and lows, it was refreshing to see someone so unafraid of Trump and so single-mindedly focused on holding him accountable, even if that meant working against someone who could perhaps become the most powerful man on Earth and was also known for his vindictiveness.
57% : Bringing his experience prosecuting war criminals at the Hague to the Department of Justice, Smith was a special counsel who meant serious business at a moment when no one was able to bring Trump to justice.
47% : It was clear from his legal briefs that the special counsel was working methodically to build ironclad cases so that the American people could judge Trump for themselves, armed with a full array of evidence.
46% : While thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent insurrection, I sat at my desk in my apartment, located exactly one mile from Capitol Hill, monitoring social media for my new job at CNN.
39% : We all watched Trump incite his followers on social media ahead of Congress' vote to certify the 2020 election and how that subsequently inspired thousands of rioters to commit insurrection.
38% : For two years, Jack Smith held on to hope that he would be the one to finally hold Donald Trump to account for his assaults on the rule of law and American democracy.
38% : For years, we've watched leaders of this country let Trump get away with one abhorrent thing after the other.
36% : They demanded judges delay pretrial schedules, argued prosecutors were targeting Trump out of vengeance and to influence the presidential race, and insisted each case should be dropped.
36% : The Republican Party stood by Trump in 2016 even after his lewd comments about women were revealed in the Access Hollywood tape and even after he called Mexican immigrants "rapists."
30% : And despite being fully aware of the gravity of this case and the fact that Trump was actively trying to regain control of the very office he was accused of abusing, the justices took their sweet time.
28% : (When Cannon made dubious decisions that seemed to intentionally slow down his prosecution of Trump, Smith made it clear he was unafraid to push back.)
28% : Some weeks it felt as though everything was going in Smith's favor and there was little doubt he would not be able to take Trump to trial before the November election; other weeks his prosecution was hit with blow after blow after blow.
27% : By the summer of 2023, Smith had secured not one but two criminal indictments against Trump.
24% : Smith's evidence seemed so damning that a group of political scientists were convinced that case was the likeliest of the four Trump prosecutions to result in a conviction.
21% : First the justices rejected the special counsel's petition he proactively filed in December 2023 to consider whether Trump qualifies for presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, shrinking the special counsel's chances of taking Trump to trial before the November election.
20% : In the midst of Smith's efforts to finally do something about this man and his criminal behavior came the biggest blow of all: the Supreme Court's presidential immunity decision that drastically undermined Smith's election interference case and essentially treated Trump, and future U.S. presidents, like a king.
18% : Smith was appointed special counsel in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead open investigations into Trump, with Garland saying an independent investigation was necessary with Trump having announced his bid for the presidency against Garland's boss, Joe Biden.
18% : On that day, Trump repeatedly refused to issue any public statement to tame the masses, even as law enforcement officers were being viciously attacked.
18% : Former special counsel Robert Mueller spent nearly two years investigating Trump's efforts to coordinate with Russia to influence the 2016 election and obstruct that investigation, only to decline charging Trump with any crimes.
14% : It laid out in excruciating detail how Trump blatantly lied about the 2020 election results and deliberately tried to undo his loss through fraud and deceit.
13% : Then there are the Senate Republicans who have consistently proved their cowardice to hold Trump to account, acquitting him of all charges in two separate impeachment trials, even after GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell publicly acknowledged Trump's responsibility for Jan. 6.
6% : Two months later, Smith announced a second criminal indictment that charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. over his fake electors scheme, in which local election officials were told to deny their state's election results for Joe Biden.

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