Jack Smith, the former special counsel, has begun his first testimony about his criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results as he appears before the House judiciary committee on Thursday.
“As I testify before the committee today, I want to be clear I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said.
The hearing follows a closed-door interview last month that lasted for more than eight hours as he defended his decision to indict Trump and obtain metadata of phone calls made by Trump-allied lawmakers in Congress.
Smith was appointed in late 2022 to oversee two criminal investigations into Trump that had begun at the justice department before his arrival: Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and his alleged push to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The cases were dropped after Trump was elected to a second term, with Smith citing judicial precedents that prevented prosecutions against a sitting president. He instead completed reports into both of the cases before resigning from his position before Trump took office.
Most of the December interview focused on the election interference case, after Smith declined to answer questions about the documents case on grounds that Aileen Cannon, the US district judge in Florida appointed by Trump who dismissed the case, also blocked the release of Smith’s report.
Republicans spent most of their time grilling Smith on his decision to successfully obtain so-called toll records for phone calls made by Trump and his lawyers to at least nine Republican senators who were pressured to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.
Toll records do not pull the content of the calls, and Smith defended the move by saying they were needed to recreate a timeline in court. He added that none of the senators were targets in the criminal investigation.
Smith ultimately laid the blame for the investigation and the decision to obtain the call records of senators with Trump. “I did not choose those members, President Trump did,” Smith said then.
He also pushed back at Republicans’ assertions that the toll records were protected by the first amendment. Accusing Trump and allies of exploiting the January 6 Capitol riot to further a criminal scheme, Smith said fraud was not protected by the first amendment.
“He was free to say that he thought he won the election – he was even free to say falsely that he won the election,” Smith said. “But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function.”
Trump has repeatedly called for Smith to be prosecuted for investigating him, but there did not appear to be a clear avenue or misstatement from Smith that could form the basis of a criminal referral to the justice department.
Lanny Breuer, the lawyer representing Smith, earlier said his client welcomed the opportunity to publicly defend the investigations into Trump.
“Jack has been clear for months he is ready and willing to answer questions in a public hearing about his investigations into President Trump’s alleged unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents,” Breuer said.
