Jack Smith Report Proves Media Were Lying About J6 ‘Insurrection’

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who resigned in disgrace last week after his lawfare prosecutions of President-elect Donald Trump were dismissed, released his findings in his Jan. 6 case.

While Smith attempted to use the report as an outgoing smear of an incoming president, he also finally admits what many have known all along: The Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, was not an “insurrection,” and Smith did not believe he could convince even a far-left D.C. jury that it was an one. On top of that, he also could not prove that Trump incited the riot.

Despite the fact that Smith’s lawfare was clearly politically motivated and essentially meritless, as The Federalist has covered on numerous occasions, the prosecutor attempted to save face by insisting that “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.”

But what’s truly laughable is that Smith dismantled the left’s own arguments that Jan. 6 was an insurrection — an allegation he did not pursue, but certainly helped launder through the corporate media with his lawfare.

Several pages of the 174-page long report, released Tuesday, deal directly with 18 U.S.C. § 2383, or, the Insurrection Act, and how nothing on Jan. 6 could have been construed to be an insurrection.

The thrust of Smith’s argument that Trump could not have been successfully prosecuted for insurrection under the act is the actual definition of insurrection, and the fact that his office would have had to provided evidence that such a thing occurred. “Generally speaking, an ‘[i]nsurrection is a rising against civil or political authority[] — the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution of law in a city or state,’” the report stated.

“The Office would first have had to prove that the violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an ‘insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof,’ and then prove that Mr. Trump ‘incite[d]’ or ‘assist[ed]’ the insurrection, or ‘g[ave] aid or comfort thereto,’” Smith wrote. “As to the first element under Section 2383 — proving an ‘insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof’ — the cases the Office reviewed provided no guidance on what proof would be required to establish an insurrection, or to distinguish an insurrection from a riot.”

Smith then went through multiple instances where courts had used the word “insurrection” in Jan. 6 prosecutions, but each time did not use the Insurrection Act to define it or have it based in anything other than, seemingly, rhetoric.

See, e.g., United States v. Chwiesiuk, No. 21-cr-536, 2023 WL 3002493, at *3 (D.D.C. Apr. 19, 2023) (“As this Court and other courts in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia have stated previously, what occurred on January 6, 2021 was in fact an insurrection and involved insurrectionists and, therefore, the terms to which Defendants object are accurate descriptors.”); United States v. Carpenter, No. 21-cr-305, 2023 WL 1860978, at *4 (D.D.C. Feb. 9, 2023) (“What occurred on January 6 was in fact a riot and an insurrection, and it did in fact involve a mob.”); see also United States v. Afunchel, 991 F.3d 1273, 1279, 1281 (D.C. Cir. 2021) (using the term “insurrection” in a case that did not involve Section 2383).

“These cases, however, did not require the courts to resolve the issue of how to define insurrection for purposes of Section 2383, or apply that definition to the conduct of a criminal defendant in the context of January 6,” Smith wrote.

In each example, it appears “insurrection” was used as a political buzzword enabling the corporate media to advance the “insurrection” narrative without doing anything to meet the legal requirements for one.

Smith also could not prove that Trump incited the riots at the Capitol. Even while attempting to talk out of both sides of his mouth, saying there were “reasonable arguments … particularly when the speech is viewed in the context of Mr. Trump’s lengthy and deceitful voter-fraud narrative that came before it,” Smith admitted that his office could not “develop direct evidence” with admissions or communications with anyone involved that Trump intended to cause the riot.

Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.