The former Department of Justice special counsel who prosecuted Donald Trump defended his sprawling investigations and said he would prosecute the president again today if provided with the same evidence.
In his first public testimony, Jack Smith delivered remarks to the House Judiciary Committee defending his investigations into the president’s alleged attempts to overturn election results and withhold classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
“I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump,” he said in his opening statement.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” he said. “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. No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account.”
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed the former war crimes prosecutor from The Hague to handle the investigations as an independent special counsel, landing two federal grand jury indictments accusing the president of more than 40 crimes connected to his efforts to remain in power and then withhold classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the committee’s top Democrat, appeared to brace Smith for attacks from Republican members who accused Smith of mounting a politically motivated conspiracy against the president.
“If any of our colleagues foolishly choose to attack you and vilify you today … they will only be revealing their own ignorance,” Raskin said. “They will only be stroking the wounded ego of a lawless, twice-impeached, convicted felon president.”
Raskin noted that the president has since “pardoned and released into our communities hundreds of extremists and cop-beating felons” who participated in an assault in the halls of Congress at the center of Smith’s election interference investigation.
Committee chair Jim Jordan, meanwhile, said “it was always about politics” as he placed Smith into what he believes is a long-running Democratic conspiracy — from probes into his 2016 campaign and alleged connections to Russian actors to the criminal probes against him in New York and Georgia — to undermine the president.
In closed-door testimony last month, Smith defended the investigations and determined prosecutors were likely to secure convictions against the president should the two cases reach trial. Neither did.
A Trump-appointed judge in Florida dismissed the classified documents case in 2024, arguing that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
And weeks after Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Smith filed the motions to dismiss both cases altogether, a decision that appeared inevitable. After months of delays, appeals and Supreme Court decisions that granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution for potential crimes committed in office, the cases were ultimately upended by Trump’s victory against Kamala Harris, throwing the courts and the Justice Department into unprecedented territory in which the special counsel determined he could not prosecute a sitting president.
He delivered his final reports to Garland on January 7, days before Trump’s inauguration, and then resigned from his position before Trump could fire him.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to retaliate against the former special counsel, whom the president has placed at the center of what he believes is a politically motivated conspiracy against him. Trump has labeled him “deranged” and a “criminal” who should be “sitting in prison” for his work.
A federal grand jury indictment in 2023 charged Trump with conspiracy and obstruction for his efforts to reverse his election loss and his failure to stop a mob of his supporters from breaking into the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as lawmakers convened to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
Court filings traced the history of Trump’s bogus and ongoing narrative that the election was “stolen” and “rigged” against him as an attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, despite knowing that his claims were false.
Smith outlined Trump’s “increasingly desperate efforts” to cling to power with “knowingly false claims of election fraud,” spelled out in hundreds of pages of evidence.
Trump intentionally lied to voters, election officials, and his own vice president Mike Pence in what amounted to a criminal effort to stay in office, culminating in his failure to stop a mob that tried to do it with violence, according to Smith.
A final report from Smith’s team also documented state-by-state efforts by Trump, his unindicted co-conspirators and allies to pressure state officials, election workers and others to validate an alleged scheme to reverse election outcomes and organize allies to submit fraudulent certificates to Congress that falsely declared his victory.
Trump was separately charged in 2023 with mishandling reams of classified documents hoarded inside his private Mar-a-Lago residence, and then obstructing attempts from federal authorities to get them back.
The Justice Department released Smith’s final report on Trump’s alleged election subversion, but a second volume that details the Mar-a-Lago investigation remains sealed.
A federal judge appointed by Trump will decide whether it can ever be released. The president has urged the court and the Justice Department against releasing the report, claiming it would “improperly endorse and give legal effect to Smith’s unlawful investigation and prosecution” and “irreparably harm” Trump and his former co-defendants.
This is a developing story
