Donald Trump has hit out at Jack Smith in an angry 1am rant after the special counsel published his report, concluding the president-elect tried to criminally overturn the 2020 election.
Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election, the Department of Justice report found. The long-awaited document – written by Smith – also claimed Trump would have been convicted for the role he played had he not been re-elected by voters in a landslide victory last year.
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Responding, Trump slammed Smith as a “deranged lamebrain prosecutor” in a furious tirade posted to his social media platform TruthSocial.
“Deranged Jack Smith… is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,” Trump wrote.
“[He was] was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss,’ Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another ‘Report”’ based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were.”
Referring to the bipartisan House select committee led by Representative Bennie Thompson that investigated the effort to subvert the 2020 result, Trump alleged the panel had destroyed evidence because it showed how “totally innocent” he was but provided no evidence to support the claim.
Earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that there would be a formal probe into the House committee in question, which featured Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger among its members – a gesture widely seen as an act of retaliation on the incoming president’s behalf.
Smith defended his investigation, saying: “The claim from Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.”
President-elect Trump has consistently criticized Smith and allies have suggested the special counsel should now face criminal charges for pursuing the case against him.
In different sections, the report goes into Trump putting “pressure on state officials”, as well as on his own deputy Mike Pence to weaponize his ceremonial role in certifying the election results in Congress and also discusses the so-called fraudulent electors plan.
“When it became clear that Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power”, Smith wrote.
