Donald Trump labeled Jack Smith a “deranged animal” while the former special counsel who investigated the president testified publicly for the first time about his alleged attempts to overturn 2020 election results and his failure to stop a mob of his supporters trying to do so by force.
In hours-long testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, a stoic Smith defended his federal criminal investigations while Republicans rehashed conspiracy theories and accused him of mounting a politically motivated assault. Smith told the hearing that Trump’s insults and threats to throw him in jail are designed to intimidate him.
“I will not be intimidated,” Smith said Thursday. “I think these statements are also made as a warning to others if they also stand up. … 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 follows the Trump administration’s attempts to rewrite the narrative of the January 6 assault in the halls of Congress and his mass pardons for virtually every defendant charged in connection with the attack, including rioters who assaulted law enforcement. Some of those officers sat in the audience Thursday, brawled with far-right activists seated next to them and mocked Republicans who came to the president’s defense.
The hearing also took place at a vulnerable moment for Smith, who Trump has repeatedly threatened to investigate and imprison. “I believe they will do everything in their power to do that because they’ve been ordered to by the president,” the veteran prosecutor said.
While Smith testified, Trump appeared to urge Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute him on his Truth Social.
“If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse!” Trump wrote. “Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me.”
Trump called the investigations a “Democrat SCAM” and warned that “a big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!”
After the hearing, Trump accused Smith of perjury and said “there is no question” that he should be prosecuted.
Smith feared Trump would obstruct investigations and threaten witnesses
In testimony, Smith said he had “great concerns” about the president’s attempts to obstruct investigations and his “targeting of witnesses,” including election workers whose lives were “turned upside down” by Trump and his allies in the wake of the 2020 election.
“I had a duty to protect witnesses in this investigation,” Smith said. “That threat was only confirmed when we went forward in this case and Donald Trump suggested one witness should be put to death and issued a statement to the effect of, ‘If you come after me I’ll come after you.’”
Smith said he considered that a “direct threat.”
In his opening remarks, Smith said he would prosecute the president again today if provided with the same evidence.
“I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump,” he said in his opening statement.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” he said. “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 Republican or a Democrat. No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account.”
When it came to Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss, “Donald Trump was not looking for honest answers,” Smith said.
“He was looking for ways to stay in power,” he said. “When people told him things that conflicted him staying in power, he rejected them ... When individuals would say things that allowed him to stay in power, no matter how fantastical, he would latch on to them.”
Former Jan 6 cops spar with far-right activists and GOP members
Former Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone and Capitol Police officers Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn sat behind Smith as he testified Thursday.
Fanone — wearing a T-shirt repping band the Dropkick Murphys with the slogan “fighting Nazis since 1996”— was dragged down the Capitol steps, beaten with pipes and threatened with his own gun as a mob surrounded him on January 6, 2021. Fanone suffered a heart attack after the riot.
On Thursday, Dunn had to hold Fanone back as he confronted right-wing activist Ivan Raiklin, who amplified election conspiracy theories that fueled the mob.
Later, when Republican Rep. Troy Nehls blamed Capitol leadership for the violence on January 6, Fanone coughed out “f*** you” loud enough for microphones in the room to pick it up.
When a mob stormed the Capitol as lawmakers convened to certify election results, Trump “caused what happened,” according to Smith’s testimony.
Evidence determined that Trump “exploited that violence,” he said.
Smith was the chief prosecutor for a war crimes tribunal investigating the Kosovo War at The Hague at the time of the January 6 attack.
“I was shocked. I was shocked by it,” he responded, when asked by a Democratic lawmaker for his reaction to seeing footage of the mob. “I was not frankly up to speed on the events leading up to it. I’d just never seen anything like that happening in our country.”
Smith also appeared dumbfounded that Trump pardoned virtually everyone who participated.
“The people who assaulted police officers and were convicted after trial, in my view and I think in the view of the judges who sentenced them to prison, are dangers to the community,” he said. “I do not understand why you would mass pardon people who assaulted police officers. I don’t get it, and I never will.”
Smith uncovered ‘clear’ evidence before he was forced to close investigations
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed the veteran prosecutor to handle the investigations as an independent special counsel, following two federal grand jury indictments accusing the president of more than 40 crimes connected to his efforts to remain in power and withhold classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
A federal grand jury indictment in 2023 charged Trump with conspiracy and obstruction for his efforts to reverse his election loss and his failure to stop a mob of his supporters from breaking into the Capitol.
Trump was separately charged with mishandling reams of classified documents hoarded inside his private Mar-a-Lago residence, and then obstructing attempts from federal authorities to get them back.
In closed-door testimony last month, Smith defended the investigations and determined prosecutors were likely to secure convictions against the president should the two cases reach trial. Neither did.
A Trump-appointed judge in Florida dismissed the classified documents case in 2024, arguing that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
Weeks after Trump won the 2024 election, Smith filed the motions to dismiss both cases altogether, a decision that appeared inevitable. After months of delays, appeals and Supreme Court decisions that granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution for potential crimes committed in office, the cases were ultimately upended by Trump’s victory against Kamala Harris, throwing the courts and the Justice Department into unprecedented territory in which the special counsel determined he could not prosecute a sitting president.
“There had not been a case of this nature ever where someone was elected president with charges pending,” Smith said. “We consulted with the Office of Legal Counsel and determined pursuant to policy the cases needed to be dismissed.”
Smith delivered his final reports to Garland on January 7, days before Trump’s inauguration, and then resigned from his position before Trump could fire him.
“The evidence made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said of the election interference case.
“These crimes were committed for his benefit,” he said. “The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”
Court filings traced the history of Trump’s bogus and ongoing narrative that the election was “stolen” and “rigged” against him as an attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, despite knowing that his claims were false.
Smith outlined Trump’s “increasingly desperate efforts” to cling to power with “knowingly false claims of election fraud,” spelled out in hundreds of pages of evidence.
Trump intentionally lied to voters, election officials, and his own vice president Mike Pence in what amounted to a criminal effort to stay in office, culminating in his failure to stop a mob that tried to do it with violence, according to Smith.
The Justice Department released Smith’s final report on Trump’s alleged election subversion, but a second volume that details the Mar-a-Lago investigation remains sealed.
A federal judge appointed by Trump will decide whether it can ever be released. The president has urged the court and the Justice Department against releasing the report, claiming it would “improperly endorse and give legal effect to Smith’s unlawful investigation and prosecution” and “irreparably harm” Trump and his former co-defendants.
