Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith defended his investigations of President Donald Trump at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, saying “No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” as he discussed the rationale for the criminal charges brought against Trump. Smith returned to the committee after testifying behind closed doors last month, describing his decisions as special counsel and insisting he had no second thoughts about the cases.
The hearing became a focal point for partisan conflict as Republicans attempted to undermine Smith’s credibility and Democrats sought testimony they described as damaging to Trump. Rep. Jim Jordan, the committee’s Republican chairman, said the proceedings “It was always about politics,” while Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin responded, “Maybe for them,” and added, “But, for us, it’s all about the rule of law.”
Trump watched the hearing while traveling back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, posting on Truth Social that “Deranged Jack Smith should be prosecuted for his actions.” The AP report said Trump asserted without any evidence that Smith committed perjury.
Smith told lawmakers that he stood behind bringing charges against Trump in separate cases. One case, Smith described, accused Trump of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Another case, Smith said, accused Trump of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House. Smith also said: “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” and added that 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.”
Republicans from the outset argued that Smith was too aggressive and suggested he needed to be restrained by higher-ups and the courts. They focused on what they described as an aggressive approach involving subpoenaed phone records from a group of Republican lawmakers. Rep. Brandon Gill, a Texas Republican, said the episode showed how Smith “walked all over the Constitution,” and the AP report said the records revealed incoming and outgoing phone numbers and call duration but not the content of communications.
Smith defended the phone-record work as a common prosecutorial method and said his office did not spy. “My office didn’t spy on anyone,” Smith said, explaining that collecting phone records was necessary to document any contact that Trump or surrogates may have had with lawmakers on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol as Trump urged them to halt certification of the election results.
Under questioning, Smith described what he said was a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the election results and said Trump refused to listen to advisers who told him the contest had not been stolen. Smith also said that after charges were filed, Trump tried to silence and intimidate potential witnesses. He further testified that he felt confident in the case because it relied in part on witnesses who were fellow Republicans who had supported Trump.
“Some of the most powerful witnesses were witnesses who, in fact, were fellow Republicans who had voted for Donald Trump, who had campaigned for him and who wanted him to win the election,” Smith said.
Smith said he was appointed in 2022 by the Biden Justice Department to oversee investigations into Trump. The AP report said both investigations produced indictments but that the cases were abandoned after Trump returned to the White House because of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.
Smith’s testimony also addressed broader concerns about the Justice Department’s independence, which the AP report said were heightened by an ongoing Trump administration retribution effort aimed at investigators who scrutinized him. Smith said, “My belief is that if we do not hold the most powerful people in our society to the same standards — the rule of law — it can be catastrophic because, if they don’t have to follow the law, it’s very easy for people to understand why they don’t have to follow the law.”
Rep. Becca Balint asked Smith whether he was concerned the Trump administration would try to prosecute him. Smith responded: “I believe they will do everything in their power to do that because they’ve been ordered to by the president.”
Republicans repeatedly challenged Smith’s posture toward the prosecution. Rep. Kevin Kiley of California accused Smith of seeking “maximum litigation advantage at every turn” and said he was “circumventing constitutional limitations to the point that you had to be reined in again and again throughout the process.” Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia challenged Smith on a requested court order intended to restrict Trump from making incendiary comments about prosecutors and potential witnesses, and the AP report said Smith said the order was necessary due to Trump’s efforts to intimidate witnesses, while Cline asserted it was meant to silence Trump during the presidential campaign.
Jordan, meanwhile, advanced what the AP report described as a recurring Trump talking point that the investigations were aimed at derailing Trump’s candidacy, saying: “We should never forget what took place, what they did to the guy we, the people, elected twice.”
Smith rejected that characterization, telling the committee that the evidence placed Trump’s conduct at the center of a criminal conspiracy to undo the 2020 election. “Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Smith said.