Trump engaged in criminal effort to retain power after 2020 polls: Probe report

US Special Counsel Jack Smith said that President-elect Donald Trump engaged in an "unprecedented criminal effort" to retain power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. In an over 130-page report published on Tuesday, Smith details how Trump tried to overturn the election results and also accused him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes.

“As set forth in the original and superseding indictments, 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,” CNN quoted the report as saying.

The report, that came less than a week before the President-elect's inauguration on January 20, also said the "throughline of all of Trump’s criminal efforts was deceit, knowingly false claims of election fraud, and the evidence shows that he used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process".

Smith's report concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his return to the White House made that impossible.

In August 2023, Trump was charged of working to overturn the election, but the case was delayed by appeals and ultimately significantly narrowed by a conservative-majority Supreme Court that held for the first time that former Presidents enjoy sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.