Ex-special counsel Jack Smith tells lawmakers ‘I stand by’ decisions to charge Trump

Former special counsel Jack Smith mounted a vigorous defense of his two criminal investigations into President Donald Trump Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as several Republicans suggested Smith himself should face prosecution.

“I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump. I made these decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith said in his opening statement to the committee. 

“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,” he said. 

Republicans repeatedly questioned Smith over his efforts to subpoena their records and other information surrounding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, while Democrats sought to use the hearing to revisit the gravity of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the evidence Smith’s investigation uncovered detailing Trump’s alleged efforts to take advantage of the violence to further delay certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. 

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, pressed Smith over whether his office unfairly sought to obtain financial information from GOP groups in his Jan. 6 probe.

“Yes, we acquired financial information,” Smith responded. “As I sit here right now, I cannot recite to you every subpoena we issued. I can tell you why we issued subpoenas and it was to conduct a criminal investigation of one of the most serious crimes that has ever happened in our nation’s history.”

“Mr. Smith’s operation was a partisan weapon that broke the rules, lied to the court and engaged in bad faith throughout his operation and he has no credibility, only to the partisan media and Democrats that cheered him on as they will do today,” Grassley said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Smith, “You have done an enormous damage, and I believe your conduct represents the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice,” while Sen. Cory Booker countered that Republicans’ efforts are “gas lighting the American people” by “continuing to perpetuate the big lie in America that Donald Trump was somehow cheated out of a 2020 election.”

After Grassley named several of Smith’s colleagues in his opening statement, Smith said he fully stood by their work and called it an “outrage” that many of them have been fired or otherwise politically targeted for their work. 

“I believe public servants should be protected. The members of my team you just mentioned, I’m extremely proud to have worked with them,” Smith said. “The fact that they have been targeted illegally, lost their jobs illegally, and had their lives turned upside down by this Department of Justice is an outrage.”

Ranking Member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., argued in his opening remarks that Republican attacks were an effort to whitewash the events of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Let me be clear: There was nothing untoward about special counsel Smith and his fellow prosecutors conducting this investigation,” Durbin said. “The aspersion cast on Mr. Smith, nonstop, are petty, personal and political. They are nothing but a smokescreen to distract from the president’s own clear and unlawful conduct. After years of whitewashing, President Trump’s crimes, my Republican colleagues can finally raise their concerns with the one person who can address them.”

Durbin said that Smith had originally offered to testify publicly nearly a year ago, and was only being afforded the opportunity after repeated calls from Democrats that he be given a chance to answer to allegations of wrongdoing by Republicans.

In a notable exchange, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., appeared confident he had set a successful perjury trap for Smith when he cited text messages from Smith’s team regarded what Schmitt said was Smith’s Feb. 3, 2024, attendance at an Atlanta Hawks basketball game.

After Smith replied, “I have no recollection of that,” Schmitt displayed a poster board that he claimed showed Smith had likely just perjured himself, implying that his visit was tied to the Georgia probe run by District Attorney Fani Willis, and calling Smith a “villain” and “total dirt bag.”

Pressed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., to explain, Smith said his team was indeed referencing a basketball game he had attended that day — but that it was not in Atlanta, because the game involved the Iowa Hawkeyes, and not the Atlanta Hawks.

“The confusion over the names of the team — perhaps they should’ve looked at it more carefully,” Klobuchar said of Schmitt and his staff.

Smith, who secured indictments against Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his alleged unlawful retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, has repeatedly said he believes he could prove Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and has defended the actions of his investigative team. 

Trump has long denied wrongdoing and neither case ultimately made it before a jury following his 2024 election victory, after which Smith moved to dismiss both indictments based on DOJ policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president. 

Trump has repeatedly said Smith should face prosecution and he has become a central target of House and Senate Republicans, who have argued his investigations were fueled by political animus and represented a “weaponization” of the Justice Department.

Senate Democrats have cast Republicans’ attacks on Smith as misleading and hypocritical in light of what they argue is Trump’s blatant weaponization of the department to pursue his political enemies. 

Attorney General Todd Blanche said in July testimony that the department was investigating a criminal referral from Republicans who accused Smith of lying in prior public testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

In a lengthy rebuttal to Blanche, Smith’s attorneys argued the referral was based on “spurious” claims that took his testimony out of context in order to create a pretext for the Justice Department to investigate him. 

“During his testimony, Mr. Smith provided truthful, responsive answers and candidly discussed his work,” Smith’s attorneys said. “This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law.”

In the nearly two years since Smith’s office was shuttered following Trump’s 2024 election win, nearly every prosecutor and line agent associated with Smith’s investigation have either resigned or been fired. 

The Justice Department and FBI have also handed over scores of records from Smith’s probes to Republican lawmakers who have released them in piecemeal disclosures alleging, without evidence, that they expose corruption or otherwise unethical behavior by Smith’s investigative team. 

In Tuesday’s hearing, specifically, Republicans were expected to accuse Smith of unlawfully targeting their phone records during the course of his investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. 

Smith has repeatedly defended his office’s actions with respect to the subpoenaed records, and has said the records were only targeted because they were made in the period where Trump and other White House officials were seeking to disrupt certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win — which ultimately led to the violent Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. 

“I didn’t choose those members, President Trump did,” Smith said in prior testimony regarding lawmakers whose records his office obtained.

Another factor looming over Smith’s Tuesday testimony is that he is technically barred from discussing details from his other criminal investigation of Trump’s alleged unlawful retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. 

The Trump-appointed federal judge who previously dismissed the classified documents case, Aileen Cannon, has a standing order that prohibits Smith or any other government official from revealing information that could be part of his final report detailing the probe. An appeals court is currently weighing a lawsuit filed by First Amendment advocacy groups seeking to lift Cannon’s order and make the report public.