The Jack Smith Report

Here’s the report.

Here’s the section on Insurrection — the only crime that would have disqualified Trump as President.

The Office considered, but ultimately opted against, bringing other charges. One potential charge was 18 U.S.C. § 2383, sometimes referred to as the Insurrection Act, which provides that “[w]hoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” 18 U.S.C. § 2383. Section 2383 originated during the Civil War, as part of the Second Confiscation Act of 1862. See Act of July 17, 1862, ch. 195, § 2, Pub. L. No. 37-160, 12 Stat. 589,590.

[snip]

To establish a violation of Section 2383, the Office would first have had to prove that the violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof,” and then prove that Mr. Trump “incite[d]” or “assist[ed]” the insurrection, or “g[ave] aid or comfort thereto.” 18 U.S.C. § 2383

[snip]

The Office determined that there were reasonable arguments to be made that Mr. Trump’s Ellipse Speech incited the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and could satisfy the Supreme Court’s standard for “incitement” under Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444,447 (1969) (holding that the First Amendment does not protect advocacy “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and … likely to incite or produce such action”), particularly when the speech is viewed in the context of Mr. Trump’s lengthy and deceitful voter-fraud narrative that came before it. For example, the evidence established that the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay. But the Office did not develop direct evidence-such as an explicit admission or communication with co-conspirators-of Mr. Trump’s subjective intent to cause the full scope of the violence that occurred on January 6. Therefore, in light of the other powerful charges available, and because the Office recognized that the Brandenburg standard is a rigorous one, see, e.g., NA.A.CF v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 902, 927-929 (1982) (speech delivered in “passionate atmosphere” that referenced “possibility that necks would be broken” and violators of boycott would be “disciplined” did not satisfy Brandenburg standard); Brandenburg, 395 U.S. at 446-447 (reversing conviction where Ku Klux Klan leader threatened “revengeance” for “suppression” of the white race), it concluded that pursuing an incitement to insurrection charge was unnecessary.

By comparison, the statutes that the Office did charge had been interpreted and analyzed in various contexts over many years. The Office had a solid basis for using Sections 3 71, 1512, and 241 to address the conduct presented in this case, and it concluded that introducing relatively untested legal theories surrounding Section 2383 would create unwarranted litigation risk.  Importantly, the charges the Office brought fully addressed Mr. Trump’s criminal conduct, and pursuing a charge under Section 23 83 would not have added to or otherwise strengthened the Office’s evidentiary presentation at trial. For all of these reasons, the Office elected not to pursue charges under Section 2383. 193

DOJ also released the Hunter Biden report, which attempts to prove the prosecution was not political but proves the opposite.

I’ll return to both later.

26 replies
  1. john paul jones says:

    Looking forward. Smith doesn’t mince his words. I only hope that the MSM doesn’t focus on the supposed “failure” of Smith’s office to move faster, most of which was directly attributable to Trump himself, and instead focuses on “Mr. Trump’s criminal conduct.” Most likely, they will “both-sides” things by playing the one report off against the other, as if the conduct of a private citizen in the throes of addiction were comparable to an attempt to overthrow the government.

  2. DaveInTheUK says:

    Short version: Trump is an insurrectionist but not in a way we could conclusively prove in a court of law.

    So the report is out, as hoped. But realistically what will change? MAGA couldn’t care less about Trump’s crimes, the election results proved that. Everyone knows he’s a criminal, and utterly unfit for office, and yet here we are.

    Let’s allow ourselves a moment of hand-wringing about what might have been, then concentrate on planning what to actually DO for the next four years to minimise the harm this moron can cause.

    • xyxyxyxy says:

      How do the people “minimize the harm this moron can cause” when SCOTUS has ruled that he can have his enemies killed, no questions asked, when he will tell courts “I don’t care what you say, I’m doing it my way. Try coming after me.”
      Biden admin needs to take some action now.

    • scroogemcduck says:

      “Trump is an insurrectionist but not in a way we could conclusively prove in a court of law.”

      Smith was no doubt correct about that. There is no way on Earth this Supreme Court would have gone along with an insurrection charge or verdict against Trump. It might even have been rejected 9-0.

      • Hoping4better_times says:

        BUT a Colorado court judge ruled that trump was guilty of Insurrection and that decision was upheld by Colorado’s supreme court such that trump’s name would be removed from the primary ballot in Colorado. SCOTUS overruled the Colorado court decisions allowing trump to run.
        Also 57 Senators (including some Republicans) voted to convict trump of Insurrection in his 2nd impeachment trial.

        So there was some movement (even if insufficient) to declare that trump was guilty of insurrection.

        • SteveBev says:

          But But But

          1 re Colorado case SCOTUS ruled 9-0 that the State courts had jurisdiction over candidates for State offices but NOT Federal offices

          So the Decisions in Colorado are void.

          2 re impeachment
          A it is impeachment !
          B there was no conviction on impeachment
          C nor disqualification pursuant to Impeachment Judgement Clause
          D nor any attempt to disqualify by 14As3

          3 Neither 1 or 2 would be a sound basis for prosecution of offence under 28 USC 2383 (which has yet a further disqualification consequence)
          Not least because both the proceeding used hearsay inadmissible in criminal proceedings,

          This is just a variation on the recent Kaktivists bs to object to counting electoral college votes.

    • SteveBev says:

      Re MAGA whinging -there is also the MGAnonners whinging to wonder about too

      I think the report does a pretty good job of setting out the complexity of the investigations, and some indication (though perhaps not sufficiently) of the work done prior to Smith’s appointment.

      It is also pretty good on laying out Trump and his teams persistent interference and the role of Twitter in aiding and abetting Trump’s interests as a fog horn for intimidation and a shield from investigation.

      All of which, those who paid attention already knew
      I suspect those who didn’t won’t be moved from their visceral urge to scapegoat Garland.

      It seems to me that the decision not to indict on 18 U.S.C. § 2383 was based on reasoning frequently discussed in these threads and the report kind of confirms what we had thought. Though insurrection, or seditious conspiracy ( which wasn’t considered for Trump) have the big feels of really serious charges meeting the moment, there are wrinkles to the elements which would have created more problems than it solved

      Where the report was good was tying in Trumps propensity to stir up violence from his supporters as a routine element of his manipulative rhetoric, amped up for the occasion of J6, with the evidence of intimidation of poll workers, the evidence convicting the rioters and seditionists, and his attempts to cow witnesses and interfere with the investigation and administration of justice.

      Again, nothing we didn’t know, but many including some SCOTUS Justices want/need to compel themselves to ignore.

    • harpie says:

      That is NOT the case. This is the last sentence in the report:

      CONCLUSION […] [pdf145/147 p.137] The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not tum on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind. Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.

      • AllTheGoodIDsWereTaken says:

        Aren’t some folks conflating two different things here:

        1) Smith thought Trump to be an insurrectionist, but with the lack of useful precedent, he was not convinced that he could conclusively prove it in court

        AND

        2) Smith said that evidence of Trump committing ***the charged crimes*** was enough to convict him (which is, of course, the only reason that he charged those counts!).

        What I have not seen was that Smith held off on an insurrection charge DESPITE having sufficient evidence to prove it in a court of law. If I am wrong, I’d really appreciate a pointer to where this is in the report.

        • harpie says:

          Oh! I see what you’re saying.
          I think you’re right…I’m very sorry about that! :-(

          They might not be able to prove he was an insurrectionist, so they didn’t charge it,
          but they could prove the crimes he was charged with.

    • N.E. Brigand says:

      As I’m sure has been noted here before, during Donald Trump’s second impeachment, a majority of both houses of Congress did vote to find that he had engaged in insurrection. That’s a different standard, of course, but it’s weird that the Supreme Court didn’t mention the impeachment at all in their determination in March of last year that only Congress could determine that a president had engaged in insurrection, not even to say: “No, that doesn’t count.”

      • SteveBev says:

        It’s not strange at all that they didn’t mention the 2nd impeachment, because it is irrelevant.

        Impeachment is a Constitutional and political process for abuses of office –
        For Treason, Bribery and high Crimes and misdemeanours- the Impeachment Judgement Clause specifies 2 remedies, removal and disqualification from office There wasn’t a conviction on Impeachment. The end.

        It has no legal effect one way or the other.

        The majority of SCOTUS reasoned that 14As5 affected the interpretation of 14As3, so that for Federal offices, it is required that Congress by legislation bring it into effect by creating procedures to enforce it.

        • N.E. Brigand says:

          Thanks. I admit my understanding of the subject is very limited. On Nov. 21, Marcy reposted Akiva Cohen saying he agreed with this argument:

          https://bsky.app/profile/gothamgirlblue.com/post/3lbhs4hd4x22k

          Which is that Congress has already found (by majority vote) that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection and is thus already disqualified from holding office unless 75% of both houses vote to remove it. Laurence Tribe offered his support to that position a few days later. They absolutely could all be wrong. I don’t really know. I wish the Senate while still in Democratic hands had held a vote to remove the disqualification (which presumably would fail). Better still would have been for both the House and Senate to have done so before the 2022 midterms.

          Suppose Democrats manage to retake control of Congress in the 2026 midterms and decide in 2027 to say again with legislation what a bipartisan majority of Congress already determined by votes in Jan.-Feb. 2021: that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection and thus is ineligible to be the president.

          And then President Trump vetoes that legislation. And they don’t have the votes to override.

          At that point, will Congress have found that Trump engaged in insurrection?

  3. scroogemcduck says:

    I am not a lawyer – why does Smith not name the co-conspirators in his report? Is there a (theoretical given Trump will be president) prospect of them being charged? And given that in the real world they will not be charged, why not name them in the report?

    • SteveBev says:

      They are unindicted Co-conspirators, so as uncharged people naming them would undermine their entitlement to the presumption of innocence, which is not merely a pre indictment right, but is also a civic right not to be unnecessarily stigmatised in public

    • harpie says:

      Some info here:

      [pdf76/174 p.67] F. Co-Conspirator Liability
      […] Before the Department concluded that this case must be dismissed, the Office had made a preliminary determination that the admissible evidence could justify seeking charges against certain co-conspirators. The Office had also begun to evaluate how to proceed, including whether any potential charged case should be joined with Mr. Trump’s or brought separately.

      Because the Office reached no final conclusions and did not seek indictments against anyone other than Mr. Trump – the head of the criminal conspiracies and their intended beneficiary – this Report does not elaborate further on the investigation and preliminary assessment of uncharged individuals. This Report should not be read to allege that any particular person other than Mr. Trump committed a crime, nor should it be read to exonerate any particular person.

      • scroogemcduck says:

        Thank you. I find it strange that Smith says that he reached a preliminary decision that they could be charged, but then doesn’t elaborate or identify them. If they were definitively not charged, this would have been explained and they would have been named and possibly shamed (as Robert Hur did with Biden). If they were indicted, the evidence against them would have been disclosed. This middle ground gifts them anonymity and looks like a bit of a cop out to me.

        • SteveBev says:

          I am afraid you have reasoned that wrongly.

          Biden was always going to be named, as was Trump because they were themselves the reason for there being Special Counsel.

          However, I don’t believe Biden’s ghostwriter was named in Hur’s report.

          Smith is being cute with respect to the Co-conspirators.

          ‘Preliminary decision’ is a fig leaf. If there wasn’t evidence to sufficient to prosecute and convict them they wouldn’t be named as Co-conspirators. The case against Trump is that he together with those named individuals (and others unnamed) committed conspiracies.

          The named in the indictment Co-conspirators are not YET charged for purely strategic reasons. So it’s preliminary only in that sense, though it is also true that they are probably safe from prosecution by the incoming DOJ. However some or all face the prospect of State prosecution AzAG has ongoing case, and has formally requested that the DOJ hand over all their evidence.

          The redactions of the names on the public docket of the Trump indictments, and in the SC report, and the coyness about ‘preliminary decision’ is all to preserve the APPEARANCE of the presumption of innocence as much as reasonably possible, and any prejudice which might otherwise accrue from being named in public by prosecutors before they are formally indicted by a grand jury

  4. harpie says:

    1/7/25 SMITH to GARLAND:

    [pdf3/174] […] As set forth in my Report, after conducting thorough investigations, I found that, with respect to both Mr. Trump’s unprecedented efforts to unlawfully retain power after losing the 2020 election and his unlawful retention of classified documents after leaving office, the Principles [of Federal Prosecution] compelled prosecution. Indeed, Mr. Trump’s cases represented ones “in which the offense [was] the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.” [Robert H.] Jackson, “The Federal Prosecutor.” […]

    • SteveBev says:

      The final 2 paragraphs of the 2nd letter of
      Jan 7 2025, responding to Trump’s whining screed about the Report are excellent too. [pdf/174, a couple of line breaks added for readability]

      After dealing with the complaints about seeing the report etc etc, Smith deals with the substantive complaints such as they are:

      “Other complaints by Mr. Trump are addressed and rebutted by the Report and court decisions.

      For instance, Mr. Trump recycles his baseless allegation that the Office’s work constituted a partisan attack, a claim flatly rejected by the only court to have ruled on it. See United States v Trump, No. 23-cr-257, ECF No 198 (D.D.C. Aug. 3, 2024) (denying Mr. Trump’s motion to dismiss indictment based on selective and vindictive prosecution, “finding no evidence of discriminatory purpose,” “no evidence demonstrating a likelihood of vindictiveness,” and “no evidence that would lead the court to infer that [prosecutorial] discretion has been abused”) (internal quotation omitted).

      The Report explains in detail the Office’s steadfast adherence to neutral and evenhanded application of the law and to the Department’s Election Year Sensitivities policy.

      Mr. Trump also persists in his challenge to the Attorney General’s authority to appoint a Special Counsel, which is the subject of a pending appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. See United States v Nauta et al., No. 24-12311 (11th Cir.). As explained in my Report, the Office is confident that the Department has strong arguments to prevail on that issue.

      Finally, Mr. Trump’s letter claims that dismissal of his criminal cases signifies Mr. Trump’s “complete exoneration.” That is false. As the Office explained in its dismissal motions and in the Report, the Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits Mr. Trump’s indictment and prosecution while he is in office is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution-all of which the Office stands fully behind.”

  5. zscoreUSA says:

    Hunter Biden report?

    Based on the plans for the tax trial, Wise will probably try to include anything that can be construed as influence peddling or tangentially FARA.

    And they really loved quoting Hunter “not knowing which the fuck way was up” from Beautiful Things, so I wouldnt be surprised to see here.

    Fingers crossed, but not holding my breath, that there is anything useful to use towards the origins of the investigation or the chain of custody of the laptop. Or anything towards Smirnov and his payments received, or the Brady timeline beyond the Exhibit 6 Pittsburgh vetting excerpts.

    • zscoreUSA says:

      Yeah, nothing remotely useful in there. Maybe something about prosecutorial decisions, yada yada. And the Smirnov tax charges PDF is super blurry, barely legible.

      Only 27 pages! Lol I about spit my coffee when I saw that

  6. Thaihome says:

    Left unsaid in the report on why insurrection wasn’t charged is because the people who incite white lynch mobs have never been charged, even when an elected municipal government was overthrown as in Wilmington, NC in 1898.

    The fact so many participants in a white lynch mob have been prosecuted in the J6 case is unprecedented itself.

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