Former special counsel Jack Smith offered a robust defense Thursday of his failed efforts to prosecute Donald Trump, telling lawmakers in his first public testimony that the president “willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.”
Smith’s remarks kicked off what is expected to be a contentious showdown between the former Justice Department official who twice indicted the then-former president and Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have aimed to paint Smith’s investigations as driven by partisan politics.
Though Smith sat for a closed-door deposition before many of those lawmakers in December, he has sought for months to make his case publicly. Thursday’s televised hearing before the House Judiciary Committee will grant him the opportunity to try to puncture what has become a central tenet of Trump’s second term: that Smith and others weaponized law enforcement against him and deserve to be punished for those efforts.
“No one should be above the law in our country,” Smith told lawmakers in his opening statement. “And the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did.”
Smith said he stood by his decision to pursue criminal cases against Trump over the president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat,” Smith said.
Neither of those case went to trial. A federal judge in Florida dismissed the classified documents case, ruling that Smith had been unlawfully appointed. The Justice Department abandoned its appeal of that decision after Trump’s 2024 election victory.
Smith dropped the election interference case before Trump’s return to the White House, citing Justice Department regulations that prohibit prosecutors from pursuing charges against sitting presidents.
Since his return to the White House, Trump has repeatedly called for Smith to face prosecution. Republicans, meanwhile, have used their control of Congress to undertake a granular reexamination of Smith’s work, eager to highlight anything that could paint his team’s efforts as driven by partisan animus.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) kicked off Thursday’s hearing with a withering critique of Smith’s conduct during his investigations of Trump.
“It was always about politics,” he said. “And to get President Trump, they were willing to do just about anything.”
During Smith’s December deposition, Jordan and other Republican committee members seized upon subpoenas Smith’s team obtained to secretly review the phone records of nine Republican senators as part of the investigations into Trump’s actions in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Lawmakers quickly revisited the issue during Thursday’s hearing.
Smith defended those requests, noting the subpoenas were essential to tracking phone calls made from the White House that day to Trump’s allies in the Senate as he sought to delay certification of the 2020 election’s results.
The records only provided a log of the times and lengths of those phone calls and text messages and did not disclose the contents of any senators’ communications. Ultimately, Smith blamed Trump for the need to obtain the records.
“I did not choose those members,” Smith told lawmakers in December. “President Trump did.”
Smith was equally frank in his attempts to beat back other criticism from Republican committee members, even as he acknowledged his testimony could be used to attempt to prosecute him.
Jordan’s committee has referred one of Smith’s deputies, Thomas Windom, to the Justice Department for potential prosecution on charges of obstructing Congress after he allegedly did not answer all their questions during a closed-door deposition last year. Windom has denied wrongdoing.
“I am eyes wide open that this president will seek retribution against me if he can,” Smith told Judiciary members in his deposition in December.
Despite his desire to defend the work of his team, Smith laid out some ground rules at the start of his testimony Thursday.
Strict secrecy rules barred him from answering any questions about grand jury interviews or materials, he said. Smith also said he was limited in what he could say about his team’s investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents because of a court battle over the portion of his final report detailing the findings of that probe.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon — who oversaw those proceedings — issued an order last year temporarily barring the report’s release.
In a court filing Tuesday, Trump’s personal defense lawyers urged her to permanently block the Justice Department from ever releasing the report publicly.
Perry Stein contributed to this report.
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