Jack Smith fires back at GOP attempts to tarnish Trump investigation at hearing

Former special counsel Jack Smith strongly defended his handling of the investigations he led of President Donald Trump, saying he “would not be intimidated” by the president’s threats as he testified before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Appearing unrattled and composed during the five-hour hearing, Smith faced cutting questions from Republicans as they tried to paint him as a partisan prosecutor. Lawmakers grilled him about the methods he used to prosecute Trump’s alleged attempt to invalidate the results of the 2020 election and allegations that Trump unlawfully stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office in 2021.

Smith fired back, refuting Republican accusations that he had brought the cases against Trump for political retribution.

“We did our work pursuant to department policy. We followed the facts and we followed the law, and that process resulted in proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he committed serious crimes,” Smith said of Trump. “I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen because he’s threatening me.”

During the hearing, Trump condemned Smith on his social media platform and called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate him.

“Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me.”

Shortly after Trump’s statement, Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., asked Smith if he believes Trump’s Justice Department “will find some way to indict you?” 

“I believe they will do everything in their power to do that because they’ve been ordered to by the President,” Smith answered. Trump has previously called on the Justice Department to investigate his political opponents, which has obliged, bringing indictments against several of them. 

“I will not be intimidated,” Smith said. “I think these statements are also made as a warning to others, what will happen if they stand up.” 

Democrats were set on highlighting the findings and evidence from Smith’s investigations into Trump. Smith spoke of high-profile witnesses who had been willing to testify against Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, naming Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and a “fake elector,” who was willing to be a witness had the case moved to trial. 

Smith pushed back on conservative criticism of the subpoenas he issued to collect phone logs from GOP senators and the gag orders requested against Trump after he “suggested that a witness could be put to death.” 

The partisan committee members sparred during the hearing, speaking over one another and interrupting Smith frequently. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member on the committee, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., exchanged grievances over Issa’s line of questioning. 

Former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone, who helped defend the Capitol from a violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021, and conservative activist Ivan Raiklin, a vocal 2020 election denier, clashed in the audience during a short recess. 

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., asked Smith how he would “describe the toll on our democracy” if the Justice Department had neglected to hold Trump accountable for attempting to “steal an election.” Smith said it threatened the “structure of our democracy.”

“Our proof showed that he caused what happened on Jan. 6,” Smith said, speaking of Trump. “That it was foreseeable, and that he exploited that violence.” 

On Jan. 6, 2021, swaths of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop then-Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the 2020 election results. Five police officers and a protester died as a result of the riot.

The hearing was part of a probe led by congressional Republicans into the criminal cases Smith brought against Trump after he left office in 2021. In one, Smith alleged that Trump interfered in the 2020 presidential election by spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud and organizing fake slates of electors to subvert the results. In the other, Smith’s team contended Trump improperly stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after his first term in office.

Both of the criminal cases led to federal indictments but were ultimately dismissed after Trump won his second term, due to a long-standing Department of Justice policy that prevents sitting presidents from facing criminal prosecution.

Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, raised the phone record subpoenas within the first 15 seconds of his opening statement. He accused Smith of obtaining the phone records of top congressional Republicans, including former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, for political gain.

The FBI sought to obtain phone logs from select Republicans in the days immediately before and after the attack on the Capitol. The phone records have become a central point of contention in the GOP’s investigation of Smith.

The metadata from those phone logs comes from cellular carrier services. It details the time, duration and recipient of calls and texts from a phone, but does not include audio recordings or other conversation content. Smith has previously said many of those toll-record subpoena decisions were made before he was appointed as special counsel. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member on the committee, used his opening remarks to praise the Capitol police officers and other law enforcement officers who were on duty on Jan. 6, several of whom were in the audience.

Raskin thanked them for staying at their posts “when Trump incited mass violence on Jan. 6, while more than 140 officers were being brutally assaulted by Trump’s mob, while rioters beat them with flagpoles and sprayed them with chemical agents and crushed them in doorways and while they chanted, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’ and chased the vice president out of the Capitol.”

The president and his allies have long accused Smith of “weaponizing” the Justice Department for political retribution against Trump by bringing the 2020 election interference case. But in a 250-page transcript released in December after Smith sat for an eight-hour closed-door deposition before the committee, the former special counsel rejected the accusations. 

Jordan grilled Smith over Cassidy Hutchinson, a former senior adviser to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, who offered key testimony to the House select committee tasked with investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Hutchinson provided detailed accounts of what Trump and Meadows knew in the days leading up to the attack and their response to the violence.

Hutchinson has since become a pariah to congressional conservatives for the explosive testimony she provided. She received myriad death threats from Trump supporters and allies over her testimony, which she said pushed her into hiding out of fear for her safety in her 2023 memoir, “Enough.” 

Smith had pushed for the December deposition to be public, but the committee’s Republican leadership refused. The day after Smith completed the deposition, his lawyers wrote a letter to Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, asking him to release the full video of the deposition quickly, writing, “Doing so will ensure that the American people can hear the facts directly from Mr. Smith, rather than through second-hand accounts.” The transcript of the deposition was later released on New Year’s Eve. 

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee based in Florida, dismissed the classified documents case and ruled Smith had been unlawfully appointed special counsel  after Trump returned to the presidency. Last year, Cannon ordered that Smith’s final report on that case remain under seal until Feb. 24. That means Smith can’t speak publicly about findings of the classified documents investigation that are not already in the public record.

Trump on Tuesday filed a motion before Cannon seeking an expedited order that would indefinitely prohibit the release of Volume 2 of Smith’s final report. If granted, troves of findings from the classified documents investigation will remain sealed. 

Committee Democrats questioned why Cannon’s secrecy order remained in place despite the litigation involving Trump’s co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, that she cited as the reason for her decision having concluded. 

“There is no reason from where I sit for this important information to be not made public,” Balint said. 

Smith was not able to speak about those details at the hearing Thursday. His testimony offered few details that were not already contained in the transcripts from his December deposition. 

After the hearing concluded, Trump doubled down on his call for Smith’s prosecution, saying there is “no question” the former special counsel deserves to face legal consequences. 

Smith was appointed to his former role in 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. He resigned in January 2025, less than two weeks before Trump resumed office and just after Smith had completed a report that found that the department had enough evidence to convict Trump of election interference by working to overthrow his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.