Trump Melts Down Over Jack Smith’s Damning Report

Donald Trump posted a furious rant Tuesday over the release of Jack Smith’s damning report detailing the president-elect’s alleged efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

In the sweeping 170-page report, which summarized Smith’s investigation and interviews with more than 250 individuals, the former special prosecutor dismissed allegations that he was politically influenced as “laughable.” He asserted that if not for Trump’s election in November, “the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial” on the charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Trump melted down in a rant on Truth Social posted in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

“Deranged Jack Smith 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,” Trump wrote, referring to the now-defunct bipartisan House committee that investigated the January 6 riot.

“Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,” Trump added. “THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!”

Of course, the voters don’t determine guilt; a jury does.

House Republicans have previously claimed that the committee hid evidence undercutting Cassidy Hutchinson’s claim that Trump lunged for the steering wheel of his SUV to try and steer himself toward the Capitol on January 6—a claim that no one else backed up, including the driver of the SUV. The driver did say that Trump was “insistent on going to the Capitol.” House Republicans have also alleged that essential testimony about Trump’s activities that day were deleted. Despite the fact that those responsible for the investigation have insisted this claim is false, Trump has repeatedly claimed the deleted files would have exonerated him.

Trump wasn’t quite done: He also seemed pissed about the timing of the report.

“To show you how desperate Deranged Jack Smith is, he released his Fake findings at 1:00 A.M. in the morning,” Trump wrote in a separate post. “Did he say that the Unselect Committee illegally destroyed and deleted all of the evidence.”

Special counsel Jack Smith did not hold back in his final report on the investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

While much of it contains information already made public, such as the fake electors schemes from Trump’s cronies and the pressure placed on then–Vice President Mike Pence, Smith made some powerful statements regarding the criminal charges against the president-elect. For example, Smith flat-out said the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump, had he not been reelected.

The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President 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, 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.

Smith spelled out Trump’s culpability, calling out his efforts to subvert the election, nullify the result for Joe Biden, and put himself back in the White House.

“As alleged in the original and superseding indictments, substantial evidence demonstrates that Mr. Trump then engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power,” the report states.

Smith defended himself from attacks from the right, who claim that his investigation was politicized or influenced by the Biden administration.

“While we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters,” Smith wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter included with the report. “I believe the example our team set for others to fight for justice without regard for the personal costs matters.”

Smith also called out Trump’s attempts to attack and undermine the investigation, noting that a “significant challenge” for the counsel’s team was Trump’s “ability and willingness to use his influence and following on social media to target witnesses, courts, prosecutors.” Ultimately, Smith’s office sought a gag order for the case.

“Mr. Trump’s resort to intimidation and harassment during the investigation was not new, as demonstrated by his actions during the charged conspiracies,” Smith said.

The report arrives less than a week before Trump is sworn into office, and came after a last-ditch appeal from the president-elect to his favorite judge, Aileen Cannon, to prevent its release. She declined late Monday night, and the report was subsequently released.

Read the full report here.

The world’s richest man will literally be moving in next door to President-elect Donald Trump.

The New York Times is reporting that Elon Musk is preparing to set up the Department of Government Efficiency in the Eisenhower Building, which is less than a five-minute walk from the White House. It’s still unclear if the billionaire will have complete unfettered access to the West Wing (that requires a “special pass”), but at this point it’s obvious that the CEO—who has billions of dollars in federal and international contracts—will be a full-time cast member in Trump’s second term.

It’s still unclear what exactly DOGE will look like in D.C., as it is not an official government department and Musk is not a government employee. This would mean Musk and DOGE should be kept out of certain meetings and relationships, especially given the federal contracts Musk’s companies hold. Some Trump transition officials who spoke with the Times suggested that Musk could get an all-access West Wing pass by becoming a “special government employee.” But Trump is also very comfortable blurring those lines, or just erasing them altogether.

Musk has been glued to the president-elect since campaign season. He donated millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign and spoke at multiple rallies. Since Trump’s victory, Musk has sat in on multiple calls with Trump and foreign leaders, cyberbullied Speaker Mike Johnson to kill the spending bill, and has even been “renting” a cottage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where has been constantly parked, aside from Christmas.

The close relationship underscores the technocrat’s shift rightward that is just in its early stages.

Republicans seem to be trying their hardest to make placing conditions on relief to victims of devastating natural disasters seem like a normal or reasonable thing to do—by the end of the week, probably everyone will be on board.

As large swaths of Los Angeles County burned over the past week, and 24 people lost their lives, Republicans have been quick to play the blame game and use the disaster relief as an opportunity to play politics. One by one, they’ve fallen in line with their eerily identical, half-baked pitches to reform California’s liberal politics, without ever making clear exactly what politics had to do with the wildfires in the first place.

During an interview Monday on Newsmax’s Chris Salcedo Show, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville was asked why people who’d lost their homes, belongings, and businesses deserved help from Congress.

“Senator, why should other states be bailing out California for choosing the wrong people to run their state?” asked Salcedo.

“We shouldn’t be,” Tuberville replied. “They got 40 million people in that state, and they voted these imbeciles into office, and they continue to do it.”

As Tuberville explained, he didn’t blame all Californians. Just the liberal ones living in cities.

“And it’s just a very small part of ’em in that state that’s doing it. If you go to California, you run into a lotta Republicans. A lotta good people. And I hate it for them,” Tuberville explained. “But they are just overwhelmed by these inner city, uh, woke policies, with the people that vote for ’em.”

“And it—you know, I don’t mind sending ’em some money, but unless they show that they’re gonna change their ways, and they’re gonna get back to building dams and storing water, and doing the maintenance with the brush, and the trees—everything that everybody else does with the country, and they refuse to do it—they don’t deserve anything,” Tuberville said.

The Alabama Republican could barely explain what kind of policies he was criticizing—and that’s because he doesn’t even know. He’s just playing a game of telephone with every other Republican lawmaker and conservative pundit: There’s just no way for the actual ideas to make their way to the end. The important part is that the message sounds the same. House Speaker Mike Johnson took his turn on the horn just hours before Tuberville.

And, for what it’s worth, Republicans’ criticism about “woke” policies didn’t hold very much water to begin with. Nearly every reservoir in California is holding an amount of water that is at its historical average, or higher, despite the fact that it has been a particularly dry winter, Rolling Stone reported.

Donald Trump has claimed that California Governor Gavin Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration” (there is obviously no such thing), and blamed the state’s efforts to preserve rivers and wetlands. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Water District, which feeds into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, has “the most water stored in its system in the history of the agency,” according to Mark Gold, the water scarcity director for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a board member of the MWD.

Those on the ground, namely the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, have said that it was the immense size, speed, and geographical location of the fires that caused the Pacific Palisades to run out of water, not some gross liberal mismanagement. But that won’t stop Republicans from singing their tune.

One can scarcely imagine if Democrats had tried to pull this schtick when Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, home to a density of Republican voters—but this is the future of the Republican Party under Trump.

Vice President-elect J.D. Vance is trying to rewrite the narrative on the term “family separation.”

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, the relatively mum MAGA official candidly brushed off criticisms that Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies are needlessly cruel, claiming instead that the language used by opponents to the highly controversial program is “dishonest.”

“This term is something you’re gonna hear a lot in the next couple of months, the next couple of years, Shannon: ‘family separation,’” Vance told host Shannon Bream. “I think it’s important—that’s a euphemism, that is a dishonest term to hide behind the fact that Joe Biden has not done border enforcement.”

Vance then went on to disingenuously liken family separation to a program that only jails violent offenders, thereby separating convicted criminals from their families ipso facto. But that’s not what family separation does. Instead, the immigration deterrence program (launched by Trump during his first administration) instituted a “zero tolerance” policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, targeting immigrants attempting to enter the country. At the time, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed the Justice Department to prosecute every adult who entered the United States irregularly.

It was made possible by the vicious combination of two federal laws. First, the government prosecuted immigrants with minor federal charges for improper entry. Officials then transferred them from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to the U.S. Marshals Service during their court hearings, labeling their children as unaccompanied throughout the process. U.S. Customs and Border Protection then used a different law to send the children to a subsidiary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that was responsible for handling unaccompanied children.

The program separated more than 4,600 children from their parents before it was ended in 2021. As of December, 1,360 children remain unaccounted for, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which said the practice met the definition for “enforced disappearance,” amounted to “torture,” and was a “crime under international law.”

“If you come into this country illegally, you need to go back home,” Vance told Fox. “And what the Democrats are going to do is they’re going to hide behind this. They’re going to say this is all about compassion for families.”

But experts who have sized up the scope and devastation of Trump’s family separation policies don’t agree.

“It’s chilling to see, in document after document, the calculated cruelty that went into the forcible family separation policy,” Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children’s rights counsel at Human Rights Watch and an author of the December report, told the international organization. “A government should never target children to send a message to parents.”