House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan referred former special counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department on Wednesday for a potential criminal investigation, accusing Smith of intentionally making false statements to Congress last year.
In his letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Jordan claimed there is “strong evidence” that Smith “made willfully and intentionally false statements” in a closed-door deposition Dec. 17. Specifically, the Ohio Republican pointed to Smith’s answers to questions about whether prosecutors obtained phone records of members of Congress during his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
During the deposition, Smith testified that he did not seek search warrants for the contents of any text messages from members of Congress during his investigation, and only sought toll records. However, in his letter to Blanche, Jordan noted that documents the Justice Department produced this month show Smith’s team obtained text messages from 44 lawmakers.
“The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages,” Jordan wrote in the referral. “We now know this to be false.”
In their response letter to the department, Smith’s attorneys called the referral “meritless” and based on a “spurious claim” that the former special counsel gave false testimony not because of anything he said, but because he didn’t volunteer that his team had, in fact, obtained text messages from some members of Congress simply by pulling them from the National Archives.
A congressional criminal referral is a nonbinding request asking the Justice Department to investigate whether someone has violated federal law and to determine whether further action is needed. The DOJ is not required to pursue charges or even open an investigation.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the committee, denounced the referral, saying in a statement that Republicans “have embarrassed themselves again in this investigation.”
“It seems Republican Members of Congress are lashing out because they just realized their communications with the White House became presidential records preserved at the National Archives as required by the Presidential Records Act,” the Maryland Democrat said.
“This referral deliberately distorts and misstates the facts, including what questions the Republicans actually asked at Mr. Smith’s interview.”
As special counsel under the Biden administration, Smith brought two federal criminal cases against President Donald Trump, including one accusing him of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Smith dropped both cases after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, citing longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
Read the criminal referral below:
Read the response from Smith’s attorney team below:
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