Special counsel's report on the January 6 case is now public

“[B]ut for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the Presidency," the report concludes that a conviction in the Jan. 6 case against Trump was still possible.

Attorney General Merrick Garland released the volume of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report addressing the January 6 case (DOJ link here) to members of Congress and then to the public early Tuesday morning, shortly after an injunction purporting to block its release expired.

The first federal prosecutions of a former president had already reached their end for now, soon after Donald Trump was elected to a second term as president in November 2024. The Justice Department, through the Special Counsel’s Office, had dismissed the case brought against Trump related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and dismissed an appeal, as to Trump, of the case involving Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021.

Smith — who left a job as a prosecutor in The Hague to take on Garland’s appointment as special counsel in November 2022 — had one final task: transmitting a final report to Garland, in accordance with Justice Department regulations. He did so on January 7.

“While I relied greatly on the counsel, judgment, and advice of our team, I want it to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine,” Smith told Garland in a letter transmitting the report. “It is a decision I stand behind fully. To have done otherwise on the facts developed during our work would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant. After nearly 30 years of public service, that is a choice I could not abide.”

Three days after sending the final report, Smith resigned from the Justice Department.

Four days after that — days full of legal efforts to block the release of the report that echoed the efforts to block the prosecutions themselves — the January 6 case volume was released. Smith’s volume relating to the classified documents case remains out of the public’s eye for now, pursuant to an order issued as part of those efforts.

Smith’s report followed rulings throughout the two historic cases brought against Trump that prevented either from going to trial before Trump’s election in November. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee in Florida, regularly issued extreme rulings that benefited Trump in the classified documents case, including a decision dismissing the case altogether because she ruled that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to the job — the decision that had been on appeal when Trump won election in November 2024. Ultimately, though, it was the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity ruling in the January 6 case that had the most debilitating effect on the prosecutions — and, potentially, the nation going forward.

Smith was blunt in his assessment, though, telling Garland in the 146-page report that the Special Counsel’s Office believed — even in the wake of the immunity ruling — that the election-interference case against Trump would have succeeded had it been able to proceed.

“[B]ut 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 wrote.

That will not happen now. Instead, Trump is set to return to the presidency in six days.

In a letter responding to a draft of the report that Trump’s lawyers were shown, they wrote a missive to Garland in response — asserting that the Justice Department’s dismissal of the January 6 case and its dismissal of the appeal of Cannon’s dismissal of the classified documents case amounted to a “complete exoneration” of Trump.

The lawyers — who include Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, two of the men Trump wants in top roles at the Justice Department — continued over nine pages, concluding, “No report should be prepared or released, and Smith should be removed ….“

In a two-page response, Smith ended by calling the exoneration claim “false” — reiterating the fact that dismissal of the January 6 case and classified documents case appeal was required under the Justice Department’s view of the Constitution and had nothing to do with “the merits of the prosecution.”

Notably, Trump’s lawyers sent their letter calling for Smith to be fired on January 6, 2025 — four years to the day after the presidential certification had to be stopped because the Capitol was being invaded by Trump’s supporters.

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The last-minute legal fight

Donald Trump fought unsuccessfully up until the final hours to keep Garland from releasing January 6 case volume of Smith’s report, filing a request with Cannon around 10 p.m., which the Justice Department quickly opposed and Cannon rejected as to the January 6 case volume.

It was the second order from Cannon on Monday rejecting efforts to extend her temporary injunction blocking release of the January 6 case volume of the report. (This all is happening, meanwhile, in an effort over which I wrote over the weekend she lacked authority to act at all.)

While insisting that she maintains jurisdiction over the requests of Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — two Trump employees who were charged in the special counsel’s classified documents case and remain a part of the appeal of Cannon’s order dismissing the case — to block Smith’s report, Cannon nonetheless concluded on Monday that she “sees an insufficient basis to grant emergency injunctive relief as to Volume I” — the January 6 case volume.

Cannon did, however, extend her injunction blocking release of Volume 2 of Smith’s report — relating to the classified documents case — outside of the Justice Department while the request is pending. That injunction, if valid, blocks Garland from sharing Volume Two even with the four members of Congress (the chair and ranking member of each chamber’s Judiciary Committee) to whom the Justice Department has said Garland intends to share it, in accordance with DOJ regulations. Cannon also set additional briefing and, on January 17, a hearing on this

Despite the ongoing questions about — and the ongoing injunction regarding — Volume 2, at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, Cannon’s injunction against sharing Volume 1 outside the Justice Department was no more.

Shortly thereafter, Garland made the report public.

This is a breaking news report. It has been updated and expanded after initial publication, with the final update at 2:30 a.m. Check back at Law Dork for the latest.