WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday defended his findings that President Trump “willfully broke the law” in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, telling lawmakers that Republican efforts to discredit the probe are “false and misleading.”
“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that [Trump] be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith said during a frequently heated five-hour hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.
Smith appeared at the request of Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who accused him of pursuing a politically driven investigation and “muzzling a candidate for a high office.”
“It was always about politics and to get President Trump, they were willing to do just about anything,” Jordan said.
Jordan called investigations into the Jan. 6 insurrection “staged and choreographed,” and said Smith would have “blown a hole in the 1st Amendment” if his charges against Trump had been allowed to proceed.
Trump has repeatedly called for Smith to face prosecution over the probe, demanding he be disbarred and suggesting that Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi look into his conduct.
“I believe they will do everything in their power to [indict me] because they have been ordered to do so by the president,” Smith said at the hearing.
Smith’s 2023 investigation found that following Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Trump led a months-long disinformation campaign to discredit the results, evidenced by audio from a call in which he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
Trump’s attempt to sow election discord culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, Smith said. The president directed rioters to halt the certification of the election results, he added.
In closed-door testimony to the committee last month, Smith said the Department of Justice had built a strong base of evidence of Trump’s criminal schemes to overturn the election.
A separate case alleged that the president unlawfully kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club after the loss.
Trump was indicted in the documents case in June 2023, and later for the alleged election conspiracy and fraud claims. Both cases were abandoned after his victory in the 2024 election on the basis of presidential immunity.
In his opening remarks, Smith reiterated his findings.
“President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold,” he said. “Rather than accept his defeat, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.”
Republicans asserted that Justice Department subpoenas of phone records were an abuse of prosecutorial power and constituted surveillance of top government officials.
Smith replied that obtaining such data was “common” in conspiracy investigations and that the records showed call dates and times — not content — encompassing the days around Jan. 6, 2021.
Jordan questioned the special counsel’s judgment in personnel selections, which included Department of Justice investigators who probed the Trump campaign over alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
“Democrats have been going after President Trump for 10 years — a decade — and we should never forget what they’ve done,” he said.
Smith, who has since left the Justice Department to open a private firm with his former deputies, was quick to defend the integrity of his team, adding that Trump has since sought to seek revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents and support staff for their involvement in the cases.
“Those dedicated public servants are the best of us,” he said. “My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted.”
The hearing routinely devolved into disputes between party adversaries, with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) lodging scathing accusations against Smith, butting heads with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) over procedure and yielding his time “in disgust” of the witness.
GOP committee members attempted to poke holes in Smith’s findings about the events of Jan. 6. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) accused Republicans on the committee of trying to “rewrite the history” of Jan. 6.
Midway through the hearing, Trump called Smith a “deranged animal” in a Truth Social post where he once again suggested his Department of Justice investigate the former special counsel.
“I will not be intimidated,” Smith said. “We followed the facts and we followed the law. That process resulted in proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed serious crimes. I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen because he threatened me.”
The hearing came as Trump continues to repeat false claims that he had won in 2020.
“It was a rigged election. Everybody knows that now. And by the way, numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly,” Trump said Tuesday at a White House news briefing.
In an address to a global audience in Davos, Switzerland, the following day, he said that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”
