WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Jack Smith, the former U.S. Justice Department special counsel who brought two now-dropped criminal cases against President Donald Trump, defended his investigation before a House of Representatives panel on Wednesday, telling lawmakers that the basis for the prosecutions “rests entirely with President Trump and his actions.”
Smith gave private testimony to the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee following months of disclosures from Trump appointees at the Justice Department and Republican lawmakers intended to discredit Smith’s probe and bolster Trump’s claims that the cases were an abuse of the legal system.
Smith and his team secured indictments in 2023, accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents following his first term in office and plotting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Smith dropped both cases after Trump won the 2024 election, citing a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat,” Smith told the committee, according to excerpts from his opening statement seen by Reuters.
His appearance at the Capitol came after the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, subpoenaed Smith for a closed-door deposition. Smith had requested a public hearing.
“This was political. This was about going after the Republican Party and most importantly it was about going after our candidate for president, President Trump,” Jordan told Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters outside the interview room, Democratic lawmakers said Smith’s testimony should have been conducted in public. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the panel’s top Democrat, said a public hearing would have been “absolutely devastating to the president.”
“He’s answered every single question to the satisfaction of any reasonable-minded person in that room,” Raskin said.
Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington said Smith told lawmakers that Trump’s conduct in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, could have been “catastrophic” for American democracy.
Republican lawmakers have expressed outrage at disclosures from the Justice Department that investigators sought information from a wide range of conservative organizations as part of the probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and also obtained limited cell phone data from eight Republican senators during the period around the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
Trump allies have pointed to those disclosures as evidence that Smith’s probe was overzealous and targeted the political opposition.
Smith has said his prosecutors followed Justice Department policy and were not influenced by politics. He told lawmakers in his opening statement that the records were “relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation.”
“President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election,” Smith said. “I didn’t choose those Members; President Trump did.”
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; editing by Scott Malone and Nick Zieminski)
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