Former Special Counsel Jack Smith was in front of the Republican- led House Judiciary Committee yesterday in closed session to testify on his investigations of the Malignant Fascist's attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results and his unlawful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lardo:
Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found "proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by NBC News.
Trump also “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice” to keep secret his retention of classified documents found during an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Smith told members of the House Judiciary Committee at a closed-door hearing.
Smith said his team turned up “powerful evidence that showed Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in Jan. 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Smith to testify as part of Republican efforts to investigate the special counsel's office. Smith's investigations led to two indictments of Trump: in the classified documents case and in the 2020 election interference case. Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in July 2024, and a separate judge agreed to drop the 2020 case in November 2024 after Trump won re-election.
Trump has repeatedly called for Smith to be prosecuted.
Facing a renewed wave of Republican attacks on his investigations into Trump, Smith was expected to try to use the hearing to correct what his team has described as mischaracterizations about the special counsel investigation.
Smith had wanted to testify in a public setting, but House Republicans refused to accommodate his request.
After the hearing Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., joked that Jordan “made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of Jan. 6.” [snip]
Pushing back against criticism of his team's decision to obtain and analyze the phone call records of nine congressional Republicans, Smith told members of the committee that those records “were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive” investigation.
“January 6 was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 100 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police officers that day,” Smith said. “Exploiting that violence, 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.”
“I didn’t choose those Members," Smith added, “President Trump did.”
Smith’s report on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election found that Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” on Jan. 6, 2021, and that Trump knowingly spread “demonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false” claims about the election as part of the effort.
Smith is not expected to testify about Volume II of his report, which focused on Trump’s handling of classified documents... (our emphasis)
The lawless schemes and treasonous behavior the Malignant Fascist engaged in has been laid out in courts for the last three or four years, and needs no further exposition. We look forward to a release of Smith's statement (but probably won't see a transcript of his testimony as long as MAGAt loon Rep. Jim "Gym" Jordan (R-OH) is heading the committee). The Malignant Fascist has talked about Smith as a potential target for one of his vengeful prosecutions. Perhaps he's been deterred at least until now by the certainty that, in reviving the January 6 and classified documents cases, he would be opening them up to a whole new cycle of reminding the American public what a treasonous, lawless, corrupt person they've elected. What little we've seen of Smith's closed door testimony provided a glimpse of the danger to the MF of re-opening those prosecutions to public scrutiny, especially in an election year.
(Photo: Smith arriving at yesterday's hearing / J. Scott Applewhite, AP)
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