Supporters of Donald Trump participate in a rally in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.

What happened at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to many of the nation’s courts and judges, was an insurrection by the very definition of the word. So why, at the end of a yearslong probe, did special counsel Jack Smith ultimately forgo charging Donald Trump with inciting one?

The answer was spelled out in Smith’s charging report to Attorney General Merrick Garland that went public on Tuesday. The report was an unambiguous presentation of why Trump’s alleged criminal effort to unlawfully retain power left prosecutors no choice but to charge him with four felonies. A federal judge (and Smith) only agreed to dismiss the case because Trump won the election in November and prosecutions against sitting presidents are against long-standing Justice Department policy.

Smith’s report could be the final word any prosecutor ever has on Trump and Jan. 6. However, if prosecutors or congressional lawmakers can convince courts (and each other) in the coming years that an existing five-year statute of limitations for federal cases isn’t on pause while Trump is president, then Smith’s report may not be the end of one story, but the beginning of another.

First, to understand where Smith ended up, a bit of history is necessary.

The Mile-High Road To Nowhere

In November 2023, Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace ruled that Trump engaged in an insurrection against the Constitution in violation of Section III of the 14th Amendment.

The judge’s ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by six Republicans in Colorado and one unaffiliated voter who wished to remove Trump from the ballot ahead of the 2024 election. They argued that Trump’s remarks from the Washington Ellipse on Jan. 6, his alleged intimidation of voters and election and state officials, his failure to immediately call down the mob, and his alleged pressure campaign on then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 election amounted to insurrectionary acts, and therefore his ouster from the ballot in Colorado was warranted.

The voters argued that while Trump may not have engaged in violence personally on Jan. 6, that element did not need to be proven in order for him to be disqualified from the ballot.

They claimed it was simpler than that, because Trump violated his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and spent “three hours watching [the events] unfold on television without doing a single thing even though he was the most powerful person in the world,” a lawyer for the voters argued in........

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