Trump live updates: President-elect slams ‘deranged’ special counsel after damning 2020 election report

US special counsel Jack Smith, who has faced relentless criticism from Trump, has defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.

“The claim from Mr Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.

After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election.”

The report said Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.

It also claimed Trump would have been convicted for the role he played had he not been re-elected by voters in a landslide victory last year.

President-elect Donald Trump engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat, according to a report by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Mr Smith said Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.

He also claimed Trump would have been convicted for the role he played had he not been re-elected by voters in a landslide victory last year.

Pamela Hemphill, a grandmother in her seventies who was jailed for taking part in the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol four years ago, has said she will “refuse” a pardon from President-elect Donald Trump once he takes office.

The incoming commander-in-chief has vowed to issue widespread presidential pardons to his supporters convicted for nonviolent offences over the infamous attack on January 6 2021.

Joe Sommerlad has the story.

Donald Trump has hit out at US special counsel Jack Smith after a landmark report found the US president-elect tried to criminally overturn the 2020 US election.

Mr Smith said Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.

He also claimed Trump would have been convicted for the role he played had he not been re-elected by voters in a landslide victory last year.

“Deranged Jack Smith… is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,” Trump said.

US president-elect Donald Trump, who will take office on 20 January, has hit out at Nancy Pelosi in a bizarre rant following a damning report which found he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump insisted Pelosi was “completely guilty” as he slammed US attorney and author of the report Jack Smith as “deranged”.

Mr Smith said Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 riots and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.

It also concluded he would have been convicted for allegedly trying to overturn the US election if he had not been re-elected in 2024.

Special counsel Jack Smith said his team “stood up for the rule of law” as it investigated President-elect Donald Trump‘s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, writing in a much-anticipated report released Tuesday that he stands fully behind his decision to bring criminal charges he believes would have resulted in a conviction had voters not returned Trump to the White House.

“The throughline of all of Mr Trump‘s criminal efforts was deceit — knowingly false claims of election fraud — and the evidence shows that Mr. Trump used these lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process,” the report states.

The report, arriving just days before Trump is to return to office on January 20, focuses fresh attention on his frantic but failed effort to cling to power in 2020.

With the prosecution foreclosed thanks to Trump‘s election victory, the document is expected to be the final Justice Department chronicle of a dark chapter in American history that threatened to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, a bedrock of democracy for centuries, and complements already released indictments and reports.

Trump responded early Tuesday with a post on his Truth Social platform, claiming he was “totally innocent” and calling Smith “a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election.” He added, “THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!”

Trump had been indicted in August 2023 on charges 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.

Though Smith sought to salvage the indictment, the team dismissed it entirely in November because of longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot face federal prosecution.

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Hegseth for one of the most senior jobs in the administration: secretary of defense.

But since the day Trump announced his unorthodox choice to head up the Pentagon, there have been serious questions hanging over the 44-year-old Fox News host.