DONALD TRUMP would have been convicted of election interference if he had not been re-elected as United States president, the country’s Justice Department said today in a new report released to the US Congress.

The 137-page report, arriving just days before Mr Trump returns to office on January 20, brings fresh attention to the incoming president’s frantic but failed efforts to cling to power in 2020. 

Mr Trump was accused in the report of pressuring officials to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential election by knowingly spreading lies about election fraud and trying to exploit what some have described as a coup attempt at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.