Former special counsel Jack Smith will publicly detail the criminal investigations he led of President Donald Trump before the House Judiciary Committee for the first time Thursday.
The hearing is part of a probe led by congressional Republicans into the federal criminal cases Smith brought against Trump after he left office in 2021. One alleged that Trump interfered in the 2020 presidential election by spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud and organizing fake slates of electors to subvert the results. The other alleged that Trump improperly stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after his first term in office.
Both of the criminal cases led to federal indictments but were ultimately dismissed after Trump won his second term due to a long-standing Department of Justice policy that prevents sitting presidents from facing criminal prosecution.
The president and his allies have long accused Smith of “weaponizing” the Justice Department for political retribution against Trump by bringing the 2020 election interference case. But in a 250-page transcript released in December after Smith sat for an eight-hour closed-door deposition before the committee, the former special counsel rejected the accusations.
Smith had pushed for that deposition to be public, but the committee’s Republican leadership refused. The day after Smith completed the deposition, his lawyers wrote a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asking him to release the full video of the deposition quickly, writing, “Doing so will ensure that the American people can hear the facts directly from Mr. Smith, rather than through second-hand accounts.” The transcript of the deposition was later released on New Year’s Eve.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida, dismissed the classified documents case after Trump returned to the presidency. Last year, Cannon ordered that Smith’s final report on that case remain under seal until Feb. 24. That means Smith can’t speak publicly about the findings of the classified documents investigation that are not already in the public record.
Trump on Tuesday filed a motion before Cannon seeking an expedited order that would indefinitely prohibit the release of Volume 2 of Smith’s final report. If granted, troves of findings from the classified documents investigation will remain sealed.
Smith will not be able to speak about those details at the hearing Thursday.
Republicans at the hearing are all but guaranteed to question Smith about efforts to collect phone records from Republican senators as part of his investigation into Trump’s attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election. The FBI sought to obtain phone records from select Republican senators in the days immediately before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. The phone records have become central to the GOP investigation of Smith, as have reports that Smith sought to obtain “toll records,” which are records of cellular communication, from Senate Republicans. “Those records were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation,” Smith said during the December deposition. The extent to which Republicans will allow Smith to explain the legal basis for those subpoenas amid a contentious hearing remains unclear. Smith was appointed to his former role in 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and resigned in January 2025, less than two weeks before Trump resumed office and just after Smith had completed a report that found that the department had enough evidence to convict Trump of election interference by working to overthrow his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
