Jack Smith Tells Senators He Won't Be 'Silenced' and Stands by Trump Cases
The former special counsel spent roughly four hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee defending his prosecutions of President Trump against Republican attacks.
Former special counsel Jack Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he "will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution" from the Trump administration, using a hearing of about four hours to defend the two federal criminal cases he brought against President Donald Trump.
Smith said he stands behind the decisions to charge Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. He told senators the investigation produced evidence of serious crimes "beyond a reasonable doubt," and he said he believes the rule of law is under threat as never before.
Republicans, led by Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, framed the hearing as a reckoning for a prosecutor they accuse of partisanship. Grassley said Smith's operation was "a partisan weapon that broke the rules" and accused him of taking partisanship "to a new level." Republican senators pressed Smith on his team's collection of toll records for Republican lawmakers and on subpoenas that reached donor financial information and communications tied to major news organizations, including CBS, CNN and Fox News.
Smith pushed back on the partisan label directly. "I personally find it very hard to understand how our investigation can be viewed as partisan when the strongest witnesses" were Republicans, he told the panel. He said his team consulted Justice Department officials on whether its subpoenas were appropriate, and he called the targeting of members of his team an outrage. "I'm extremely proud to have worked with them," he said of the prosecutors who served under him.
The hearing produced at least one awkward moment for the majority. Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri displayed what he described as evidence that Smith attended an Atlanta Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, and suggested it was tied to the Georgia investigation. He called Smith a "villain" and a "total dirt bag." Smith said his team had been referring to a basketball game he attended that day, but it was not in Atlanta. Reports from the hearing said Schmitt had confused the University of Iowa's basketball team with the NBA's Hawks. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said Schmitt owed Smith an apology, and Schmitt did not offer one. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana also pressed Smith on his wife's political views, and Smith declined to discuss his family.
Democrats defended him. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee's top Democrat, accused Republicans of spending months spreading "baseless conspiracy theories" about Smith's investigations.
The threat Smith referred to is real. In July, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio referred Smith to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, alleging that he lied at an earlier hearing about how his team collected phone records. Smith's attorneys have strongly disputed that claim.
The hearing landed with 35 days left before the midterm elections, when Democrats hold their largest lead yet in NBC News polling averages on the race for Congress. Smith's cases against Trump ended without trial after Trump won the 2024 election and the Justice Department's policy against prosecuting a sitting president took hold. Tuesday was his most extended public defense of that work in front of the senators who oversee the Justice Department.
