Former special counsel Jack Smith—who pursued President Donald Trump on two fronts between the first and second term—faced his own scrutiny from House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Smith claimed that he had “proof beyond reasonable doubt” of Trump’s guilt.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told reporters afterwards that his opinion of the Smith probe of Trump has not changed: “it’s political.”
“I think we’ve learned some interesting things,” Jordan said, according to the Associated Press.
In late 2024, the Justice Department moved to drop Smith’s case against then President-elect Trump.
Smith had secured grand jury indictments against Trump regarding his challenge to the 2020 election outcome. A federal court has already dismissed the indictment accusing Trump of mishandling classified information.
Smith told the committee in his opening statement, first obtained by the Associated Press, that his team “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump illegally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
He further said there was “powerful evidence” Trump broke the law in keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida.
“I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election,” Smith told the committee. “We took actions based on what the facts and the law required—the very lesson I learned early in my career as a prosecutor.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Republicans are lucky Smith didn’t testify in public “because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities.”
Smith did not take any questions from reporters as he walked into the committee room for a deposition.
Smith’s lawyer, Lanny Breuer, briefed reporters after his client was in the room, however.
“In today, testifying before this committee, Jack is showing tremendous courage, in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration, and this White House,” Breuer said. “Let’s be clear. Jack Smith, a career prosecutor, conducted this investigation based on the facts, and based on the law, and nothing more.”
The deposition came one day after Fox News first reported on emails from FBI officials who expressed doubt about whether there was probable cause for raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents. The 2022 FBI raid occurred before Smith was appointed as special counsel.
An FBI official wrote, “Even as we continue down the path towards a search warrant, WFO [the Washington field office] believes that a reasonable conversation with the former president’s attorney, (stating that the FBI and DOJ are readying a search warrant, and have developed information that there are more documents at Mar a Lago), ought not to be discounted.” However, senior Justice Department officials pushed the raid forward.
Recent revelations have shown that the Justice Department’s Arctic Frost operation, which Smith took over, gathered phone records of 10 Republican members of Congress.
Last month, the House Judiciary Committee referred Thomas Windom, former senior assistant special counsel under Smith, to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution after Windom declined to answer almost every question from the committee’s deposition.
In an October letter asking Smith to appear before the committee, Jordan claimed that Smith’s team “sought to silence President Trump by restricting his public statements in the case, conducted an unnecessary and abusive raid of his residence, attempted to improperly pressure defense counsel with the promise of political patronage, and manipulated key evidence in the investigation.”
