(WASHINGTON) — Former special counsel Jack Smith, testifying Thursday before the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, said that partisan politics did not play a role in his decision to charge President Donald Trump in his two investigations.
Smith, who led investigations into Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election and alleged mishandling of classified documents, is testifying publicly for first time about his probes.
“Some of the most powerful witnesses were witnesses who, in fact, were fellow Republicans who had voted for Donald Trump, who had campaigned for him and, who wanted him to win the election. These included state officials, people who worked on his campaign and advisors,” Smith said of his election interference probe.
In seeking to challenge the results of the 2020 election, Trump was “looking for ways to stay in power,” Smith testified.
Trump was not “was not looking for honest answers about whether there was fraud in the election. He was looking for ways to stay in power. And when people told him, things that conflicted with him staying power, he rejected them or he chose not even to contact people like that,” Smith told committee members.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in both cases, before both cases were dropped following Trump’s reelection due to the Justice Department’s long-standing policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
Under questioning from Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Smith discussed the witnesses his team had interviewed in his election interference probe.
“There were witnesses who I felt would be very strong witnesses, including, for example, the secretary of state in Georgia who told Donald Trump the truth, told him things that he did not want to hear and put him on notice that what he was saying was false,” Smith said. “And I believe that witnesses of that nature, witnesses who are willing to tell the truth, even if it’s going to impose a cost on them in their lives — my experience as a prosecutor over 30 years is that witnesses like that are very credible, and that jurors tend to believe witnesses like that, because they pay a cost for telling the truth.”
Smith said that he got the phone toll records for some members of Congress because his office was investigating the conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
“We wanted to conduct a thorough investigation of the matters, that were assigned to me, including attempts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power. The conspiracy that we were investigating, it was relevant to get toll records, to understand the scope of that conspiracy, who they were seeking to coerce, who they were seeking to influence, who was seeking to help them,” Smith said, arguing that it was a normal piece of an investigation.
In a back-and-forth with Republican Rep. Darryl Issa, Smith said he didn’t target then-President Joe Biden’s political enemies.
“Maybe they’re not your political enemies, but they sure as hell were Joe Biden’s political enemies, weren’t they? They were Harris’ political enemies. They were the enemies of the president and you were their arm, weren’t you?” Issa asked.
“No,” Smith said. “My office didn’t spy on anyone.”
He said that the decision to bring charges against Trump was solely his decision and that he was not pressured by any Biden official.
“President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold,” Smith said. “Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned.”
In his introductory remarks, Smith also said the president illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“After leaving office in January of ’21, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Social Club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. Highly sensitive national security information withheld in a ballroom and a bathroom,” Smith said.
Smith said that the facts and the law supported a prosecution, and that he made decisions not based on politics, but the facts and the law.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. 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 Democrat or a Republican,” he said.
“No one, no one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith said. “To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases, would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and as a public servant, of which I had no intention of doing.”
He also criticized what he said was the retribution carried out by the president and his allies against agents and prosecutors who investigated the cases.
“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,” he said. “The rule of law is not self-executing. It depends on our collective commitment to apply it. It requires dedicated service on behalf of others, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs. Our willingness to pay those costs is what test and defines our commitment to the rule of law and to this wonderful country.”
In his opening statement, Committee Chairman Jim Jordan blasted Smith for what he called a partisan investigation into President Trump and other Republicans.
“Democrats have been going after President Trump for 10 years, for a decade, and the country should never, ever forget what they did,” Jordan said.
Jamie Raskin, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said that Smith proved that Trump “engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”
“Special counsel Smith, you pursued the facts. You followed every applicable law, ethics rule and DOJ regulation. Your decisions were reviewed by the public Integrity section. You acted based solely on the facts. The opposite of Donald Trump, who now is purporting to take over,” Raskin said.
Trump’s Thursday appearance marks Smith’s second time before the committee, after he appeared behind closed doors last month. It is customary for former special counsels to appear before Congress publicly to discuss their findings.
In his closed-door testimony, Smith defended his decision to twice bring charges against Trump — telling lawmakers his team “had proof beyond reasonable doubt in both cases” that Trump was guilty of the charges in the 2020 election interference and classified documents cases, according to a transcript of the hearing.
And Smith fervently denied that there was any political influence behind his decision — contrary to allegations of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, who requested the testimony — such as pressure from then-President Joe Biden or then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, the transcripts shows.
“No,” Smith responded continuously to those allegations, according to the transcript.
Just over an hour before his testimony on Dec. 17, the Department of Justice sent an email to Smith’s lawyers preventing him from discussing the classified documents case, according to the 255-page transcript of the deposition, released last year by the Judiciary Committee along with a video of the hearing.
This meant Smith was unable to answer most questions on that case and the deposition — intended to ask questions about the alleged weaponization of the DOJ against Trump and his allies — mainly focused on the 2020 election case instead.
His team also said Smith will comply with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order that blocked the release of the second volume of his report dealing with the classified documents case.
Smith’s counsel said the DOJ also refused to send a lawyer to advise Smith on whether his statements were in line with their determination of what he could or could not say regarding the cases, according to the deposition. Smith did say, however, that Trump “tried to obstruct justice” in the classified documents investigation “to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”
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