The American people heard from Jack Smith in his own words for the first time on Thursday, when the former special counsel who was prosecuting Donald Trump testified publicly in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
Hours after the testimony, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on that committee, joined MS NOW to discuss the contentious hearing and his call for Smith to return to Capitol Hill.
Raskin blasted his Republican colleagues, who he said had tried to “blockade” a public hearing for years. Once Smith was finally called to testify publicly, Raskin said Republicans’ concern was not to get answers about his investigation but to protect the president.
“Nothing is more important to the Republicans than the absolute untouchability, immunity and impunity of Donald Trump,” he said.
While Smith was able to discuss his team’s investigation of the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, he was unable to speak about the classified documents probe because of an order issued by Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who oversaw the case.
At the end of Thursday’s hearing, Raskin urged Chairman Jim Jordan to commit to bringing Smith back to testify again should that order be lifted, but the Republican refused. Raskin then presented Jordan with a letter signed by every Democrat on the committee, which would allow the minority party to summon the former special counsel back to the Capitol.
“Basically, what I said to Chairman Jordan was, ‘Look, we just had 50% of the hearing,’” Raskin said, “so once that gag order is lifted, I said we need to have a second part of the hearing.
“At that point, I invoked a rule that the Judiciary Committee has, which is called the minority rule, which is that if there’s only one witness called by the majority and the minority doesn’t get a witness, we get to have a hearing of our own. And so we’d like to have another hearing,” he explained. “It happens to be with the same witness.”
The Maryland Democrat said it was important that the American people hear directly from Smith about the evidence he collected against the president.
“We need to get him to come back to testify on Volume 2 of his report, because that will also demonstrate an extraordinary sequence of obstructive events where Donald Trump did everything in his power to literally, physically hide evidence, to steal classified documents and then to use them in utterly improper ways in the well-trafficked Mar-a-Lago hotel with all of these international visitors and Russians running around and everything,” Raskin said.
“We’ve got to get to the bottom of that, and we’re not waiting until the 2026 or 2028 elections,” he said. “We want to do that one now.”
You can watch Raskin’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”