House Judiciary Committee Republicans on Tuesday summoned Jack Smith, the former special counsel who had twice indicted Donald J. Trump, to testify about what they called his “partisan and politically motivated prosecutions,” in their latest bid to further the president’s campaign of retribution.
In his role as special counsel, Mr. Smith last year brought two failed federal prosecutions against Mr. Trump. The two cases — one in Florida, accusing him of mishandling classified documents, and the other in Washington, on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election — were dropped after Mr. Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
Mr. Smith, in his first extended public remarks since resigning in January, defended his efforts as a legitimate, by-the-book investigation predicated on evidence of wrongdoing collected by his team.
“There are rules in the department about how to bring a case — follow those rules, you can’t say, ‘I want this outcome, let me throw the rules out,’” Mr. Smith said during an Oct. 8 interview in London with Andrew Weissman, the F.B.I.’s former general counsel, that was made public on Tuesday.
He said the idea that he brought charges based on political considerations “ludicrous.”
Republicans have refrained from exercising oversight of the Trump administration’s legally questionable actions, but have pressed forward with inquiries into the president’s adversaries, including investigators who have scrutinized his conduct.
For years, Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who chairs the judiciary panel, has been scrutinizing the special counsel’s office, accusing it of attempting to silence Mr. Trump and raiding his residence in an unnecessary and “abusive” fashion. He has accused Mr. Smith and his team, without evidence, of manipulating evidence in the case.
On Tuesday, Mr. Jordan wrote in a letter summoning Mr. Smith to Capitol Hill that his testimony was needed “to understand the full extent to which the Biden-Harris Justice Department weaponized federal law enforcement” and accused him of “abusive surveillance” of lawmakers and of “prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional abuses.”
He claimed Mr. Smith’s prosecutorial tactics were “so flagrant that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility confirmed to the committee in November 2024 that it had opened an inquiry.”
Mr. Jordan appeared to be referencing a so-called self-filed complaint from a member of Mr. Trump’s defense team, Stanley Woodward Jr., against a career national security official who was working on the Florida documents investigation. Such complaints are not proof of guilt, and there are no indications that the inquiry uncovered any wrongdoing. Mr. Woodward is himself now a senior Justice Department official.
Democrats immediately pointed out the paradox of House Republicans accusing Mr. Smith of “politically motivated prosecutions” just days after the acting U.S. attorney secured the indictment of Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, after Mr. Trump called for her prosecution on social media.
The request for all documents and communications and a transcribed interview, Mr. Jordan wrote on Tuesday, was part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into what he described as the former special counsel’s “partisan and politically motivated” prosecutions of Mr. Trump and his co-defendants. He demanded that Mr. Smith appear by Oct. 28.
It was not the first time Mr. Jordan had wielded his gavel to help Mr. Trump carry out political vendettas.
Acting as one of the president’s top allies in Congress, Mr. Jordan in 2023 issued a letter demanding documents and testimony from Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, whom he accused of “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” after his indictment of Mr. Trump that year.
A spokesman for Mr. Smith had no comment.
But Democrats on Capitol Hill cheekily celebrated the document request as an unexpected victory for transparency.
“Chairman Jordan’s letter today to Jack Smith clearly demands the release of Smith’s full report, and all accompanying records, from his investigation into Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “An extraordinary yearslong MAGA cover-up has deprived the American public of the opportunity to read this special counsel report that the taxpayers paid for.”
Mr. Raskin said that in requesting all the documents that Mr. Smith had sent during his time serving as special counsel, Mr. Jordan had “finally taken a comprehensive stand for complete transparency and accountability.”
He added: “We look forward to finally receiving the Jack Smith report on Trump and the classified documents!”
Mr. Jordan is not the only committee chairman turning his powerful seat into an organ of Mr. Trump’s retribution machine.
On the House Oversight Committee, Representative James E. Comer of Kentucky has been conducting an investigation into former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s use of an autopen to sign official documents, implying that it was part of a cover-up of his cognitive decline.
Federal law enforcement officials, working closely with congressional Republicans, have targeted career F.B.I. agents and prosecutors who worked for Mr. Smith for termination without providing verified evidence of wrongdoing, citing Mr. Trump’s broad powers under Article II of the Constitution.
Earlier this month, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, fired two agents who were identified as having worked with Mr. Smith. Both were bureau veterans with excellent performance records, and had been identified as associates of Mr. Smith in documents obtained by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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