Special counsel Jack Smith in a final report on his investigation into President-elect Trump released publicly early Tuesday morning said his determinations were free from political interference and that, if permitted to proceed, his cases would have likely secured a conviction.
Smith made the claims both in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and in the much awaited release of the election interference volume of his final report.
In his letter to Garland, Smith broke his silence on over a year of attacks from Trump, who accused Smith of being at the helm of a politically motivated prosecution.
“The ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine. It is a decision I stand behind fully,” Smith wrote, adding that Garland nor anyone else at DOJ pushed him to prosecute Trump.
“To all who know me well, the claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.”
The release of the report comes after a swift court battle launched by Trump as he and his co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case sought to block both volumes of Smith’s report from being shared with the public.
Ultimately, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon cleared the way for the volume dealing with Jan. 6 to be published.
