Justice Dept. releases Trump special counsel report on Jan. 6 case

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : Smith wrote that his team had an "exceptional working pace" to ensure that Trump was charged by summer 2023 - more than a year before the November election.
52% : In early January 2021, days before Congress was to certify the election results, the report said, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and implored him to "find 11,780 votes" - Biden's margin of victory in the state.
48% : The Justice Department is appealing that ruling but has dropped Trump as a party in the appeal because of his election, keeping his two co-defendants and longtime employees, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.
47% : "Soon after narrowly losing Arizona, for example, Trump and lawyer Rudy Giuliani sought to convince then-Arizona House Speaker Russell "Rusty" Bowers to aid them.
45% : Trump continued to press state and GOP officials, the report said, in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere.
43% : The document was released after a week-long legal battle, with Trump repeatedly trying to prevent the material from reaching the public before he is sworn in for a second term as president next week.
40% : It details the breadth of the government's investigation into Trump, describing voluntary interviews with more than 250 individuals and grand jury testimony from more than 55 witnesses.
38% : By Perry Stein,Spencer S. Hsu,Jeremy Roebuck and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez Washington PostIf Donald Trump hadn't won the presidential election in November, the Justice Department would have had ample evidence to convict him at trial of trying to obstruct the 2020 election results, special counsel Jack Smith said in a report released early Tuesday.
38% : In August 2023, the special counsel secured a grand jury indictment of Trump on four federal charges, alleging that he conspired to defraud the country by depriving citizens of having their votes counted and obstructed an official proceeding.
36% : Trump pleaded not guilty.
36% : Once Trump was indicted, his lawyers filed appeal after appeal, delaying a potential trial.
34% : In an explosive ruling, the justices largely sided with Trump, dramatically expanding the scope of presidential immunity.
33% : "In his separate letter to Garland, Smith balked at repeated assertions by Trump and his allies that politics had tainted the special counsel team's prosecutorial decisions.
31% : "Much of the evidence against Trump that Smith described Tuesday had been previously detailed, most recently in a lengthy legal brief the special counsel filed last fall in an attempt to salvage the case.
29% : In describing the pressure campaign Trump allegedly waged, Smith wrote: "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.
27% : The parties were in the process of litigating what allegations could be included in the indictment when Trump won the November election.
25% : For 137 pages, Smith detailed the incriminating evidence he says he collected against Trump over his two-year investigation, portraying the former and now incoming president as a man who wielded his power to deceive state lawmakers, Republican Party activists and presidential electors to claim victory in an election he knew he lost.
24% : Justice Department regulations prohibit the prosecution of a sitting president, but Smith emphasized in his report that dropping the case does not lessen the severity of the crimes that prosecutors allege Trump committed.
22% : The report reveals that prosecutors also considered charging Trump with violating the Civil War-era Insurrection Act - one of the nation's few laws that carries a penalty that prevents people from holding elected office.
22% : Nauta and De Oliveira joined Trump in fighting the release of the special counsel report, saying they could be unfairly prejudiced if that classified documents portion is made public and the case against them is later resurrected by an appeals court.
13% : Smith said prosecutors felt they had enough evidence to prove Trump had provoked the Jan. 6 attack but opted not to charge him with insurrection because they had no modern precedent to guide them and believed the other charges Trump faced were sufficient.
10% : The election-interference investigation examined how Trump allegedly pressed officials in key swing states to ignore the popular vote and flip electoral votes from Joe Biden to Trump; tried to submit fraudulent slates of electors from such states; threatened Justice Department leaders to open sham investigations and falsely claim election fraud to get states to join the plan; and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing Congress's election certification on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the results.

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