Jack Smith testifies in House over Trump investigations – NPR

Former special counsel Jack Smith arrives to testify in a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Law – Jack Smith defends Trump investigations to House Republicans

Updated January 22, 20263:06 PM ET, Heard on Morning Edition

By Carrie Johnson, 2-Minute Listen, Transcript

Former special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday defended his decision to secure two criminal indictments against President Trump and asserted his team had gathered enough evidence to convict.

Smith gave his first public testimony about his work Thursday, appearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Republican members of the panel attacked Smith’s move to collect phone records of lawmakers who had been in contact with Trump allies around the time of the Capitol riot in 2021. And they cast the historic investigations of Trump as politically motivated.

“It was always about politics and to get President Trump. They were willing to do almost anything,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the panel’s chairman.

“I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties,” Smith responded. “My office didn’t spy on anyone.”

Neither of Smith’s cases reached a jury before Trump won the 2024 election and returned to the White House last year.

Law – Jack Smith defends his prosecutions of Trump in closed-door session in Congress

In a videotaped deposition, Smith said the president had only himself to blame, for charges he tried to overturn the will of voters in 2020.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said in the deposition, which congressional Republicans released on New Year’s Eve. “These crimes were committed for his benefit.”

Smith said the violent attack at the U.S. Capitol, which injured 140 law enforcement officers, would not have happened, except for Trump. He said he could not understand the president’s mass pardon of members of the Capitol mob on Trump’s first day in office and predicted many of them would commit new crimes in the years ahead.

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