WASHINGTON — John L. “Jack” Smith is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, a high-profile appearance that will allow him and Republicans to present starkly different takeaways about the former special counsel’s criminal investigations of President Donald Trump.
For Smith, the hearing will offer a platform to outline his conclusion that Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election — and that his team’s investigation developed what he called “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
For Republicans, the hearing will provide a rare, face-to-face opportunity to confront Smith and press for answers about an investigation they have long castigated as a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at hurting Trump.
“Jack Smith is really the culmination of this weaponization of the Biden-Garland Justice Department against President Trump,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan said in an interview last week with Fox Business.
Asked what he wanted to show the public about Smith, the Ohio Republican said he wanted to illustrate that Smith was “a continuation of this decadelong attack on President Trump.”
“Thank goodness the American people saw through it,” Jordan said.
Some conservatives have claimed that Smith’s cases were driven by pressure from the White House, but no evidence has emerged that Biden directed Smith’s investigative moves.
Republican lawmakers for years have slammed Smith and the criminal cases he brought — one in Washington tied to Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and another in Florida that accused Trump of illegally retaining classified documents after his first term.
The public appearance will come weeks after Smith sat for a lengthy closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee, in which he defended the criminal cases and rejected long-standing Republican criticisms that his investigation was driven by partisan politics.
“I would never take orders from a political leader to hamper another person in an election. That’s not who I am. And I think people who know me and my experience over 30 years would find that laughable,” Smith said, according to a transcript of the interview.
Smith asserted he made his “decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.”
At the hearing, Smith could also face questions from lawmakers about the classified document case his team brought in Florida. But Smith could be limited in what he could say.
During the closed-door interview in December, an attorney for Smith said the Justice Department concluded that a district court order prevents Smith from disclosing nonpublic information in “Volume Two” of Smith’s report, which covers the classified document investigation.
Phone records
At the hearing, GOP lawmakers are all but sure to question Smith about investigative efforts to collect phone records from Republican senators, something conservatives have seized on as evidence that Smith’s investigation was improper and motivated by politics.
Republican senators have said their call records were sought as part of an investigation called “Arctic Frost,” which lawmakers say formed the basis of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
That type of information identifies the incoming and outgoing call numbers and the time of a call. It does not include the content of the call.
The FBI sought data about the GOP senators’ phone use from Jan. 4, 2021, to Jan. 7, 2021, in the days surrounding the attack on the Capitol, according to the office of Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa.
Republicans for months have expressed outrage that their phone records were sought.
One group of GOP lawmakers called on Attorney General Pamela Bondi to refer Smith to the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, saying the efforts were an invasion of privacy and “nothing more than a fishing expedition geared toward targeting President Trump.”
“Jack Smith was a rogue Special Counsel who, based on his conduct in the Arctic Frost matter, would do anything to stop President Trump — including taking concerted steps to spy on duly elected members of Congress,” the lawmakers wrote in an October letter.
But Smith has rebutted claims that his office acted improperly in seeking the records, saying there have been false and misleading narratives about his team’s work.
“Those records were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation,” Smith said during the closed-door deposition.
Attorneys for Smith have also rejected Republican arguments that Smith spied on senators’ communications. The information, known as “toll records,” are by their nature historical and collected after the phone calls have occurred — a tactic different from wiretapping, which involves intercepting communications in real time, the attorneys said.
Toll data collection was also “narrowly tailored” and only covered a limited span surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, the date of the attack on the Capitol, the attorneys wrote last fall.
That limited time frame was in line with an effort to investigate the validity of news reports that stated Trump and his allies tried to call senators during and after the riot to urge them to delay the certification of the election results, the attorneys wrote.
“It is well established that obtaining telephone toll records pursuant to a subpoena is a routine and lawful investigative step that does not violate an individual’s expectation of privacy,” attorneys for Smith wrote.
“Indeed, Special Counsel Robert Hur subpoenaed toll records in his investigation of President Biden. During the current Trump administration, the Department of Justice has routinely relied upon subpoenaed toll records in numerous criminal prosecutions,” they wrote.
