The Department of Justice’s Partial Release of the 2024 Presidential Interference Report by Jack Smith: A Blaming Judgment

The Department of Justice early Tuesday released its long-awaited election interference report against President-elect Donald Trump, after a protracted legal fight.

Prosecutors dropped the two federal criminal cases against Trump after he won the 2024 election, and the final report by Special Counsel Jack Smith is their last chance to explain their decisions.

For more than a week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers — who were shown a draft copy of Mr. Smith’s report in advance of its release — denounced it as little more than an “attempted political hit job which sole purpose is to disrupt the presidential transition.” At least one Trump ally, the former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, has come forward to complain that he, too, might be implicated in the report as an unindicted co-conspirator in the election interference case.

The report says that evidence would have led to a conviction but for Donald Trump’s victory and return to the Presidency. Longstanding Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.

The partial release came only a day after the judge in Florida who oversaw Mr. Trump’s other federal case — the one accusing him of mishandling classified documents — issued a ruling allowing a portion of the material to be made public. The Justice Department was barred from releasing a second volume of the report to Congress by the judge appointed by Mr. Trump.

“Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. The Voting Percentage has crashed for the voters. The report’s release caused Trump to post on Truth Social.

To all who know me, the claims that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration is laughable.

“I can assure you that neither l nor the prosecutors on my team would have tolerated or taken part in any action by our Office for partisan political purposes. One star in my office was to follow the facts and law wherever they went. Nothing more and nothing less.”