Transcript, video of ex-special counsel Jack Smith's testimony on Trump cases released by House Judiciary Committee
Washington — The House Judiciary Committee made public Wednesday a transcript and video from former special counsel Jack Smith's closed-door deposition before lawmakers earlier this month.
Smith testified for more than eight hours before lawmakers and answered questions about his two investigations and subsequent prosecutions of President Trump, which ended after he won a second term in the White House in November 2024.
The first probe involved Mr. Trump's alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of power after the 2020 election, and the second stemmed from his alleged mishandling of sensitive government documents after the end of his first term in 2021. Mr. Trump denied any wrongdoing and has claimed Smith's investigations were motivated by politics.
Smith had offered to testify publicly before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, as prior special counsels have done, but Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who leads the House panel, issued a subpoena for Smith's testimony in a closed-door deposition earlier this month.
Lawyers for the former special counsel, who left the role before Mr. Trump's inauguration, reiterated their request for Smith to answer questions from lawmakers in a public forum following his deposition.
During his private interview, Smith defended his investigations and said he was confident that he had sufficient evidence to prove the charges against Mr. Trump beyond a reasonable doubt. Smith also repeatedly rejected any suggestion that he sought indictments against the president in an effort to harm his 2024 presidential campaign and said he never spoke to then-President Joe Biden or the White House about the investigations into Mr. Trump.
Smith told lawmakers that then-Attorney General Merrick Garland or other Justice Department officials never suggested he was expected to bring charges against Mr. Trump.
"The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy," he said of the prosecution related to alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. "These crimes were committed for his benefit. 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."
Smith also lambasted the firings of Justice Department and FBI employees who worked on the cases against Mr. Trump, calling it "awful" and "contrary to who I think we are as a country."
"I am both saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for doing their jobs and for having worked on those cases," he said. "These dedicated public servants are the best of us, and they have been wrongly vilified and improperly dismissed from their jobs."
Smith revealed during his hours of testimony that his team determined they had evidence to charge some of Mr. Trump's co-conspirators in the election-related cases, but said he had not yet made final decisions on whether to do so when Mr. Trump won re-election.
Six unnamed co-conspirators were described in the four-count indictment against Mr. Trump over his alleged attempt to hold onto power. While they weren't identified, details and Smith's testimony indicated they appeared to be Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn and Jeffrey Clark, who was a high-ranking Justice Department official.
Giuliani and Epshteyn spoke with Smith's investigators, he said. Giuliani "disavowed a number of the claims" he made publicly about the integrity of the 2020 election in an interview with the special counsel's team, according to Smith.
Smith also told the Judiciary Committee that his team had evidence that Mr. Trump directed his alleged co-conspirators to call senators on Jan. 6, 2021, to persuade them to delay the vote to certify the results of the 2020 election.
"That was consistent with our investigation throughout, that the people that President Trump and his co-conspirators reached out to were people who they thought would go along or help them because of party allegiance," he said. "And Giuliani, in particular, would reference that he expected their cooperation because they were Republicans."
Smith told lawmakers that his team had lined up witnesses for the election-related case who were political allies of Mr. Trump but had pushed back on his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the election, including by submitting fake slates of presidential electors claiming the Republican had won their respective states.
"Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party," he said.
The former special counsel cited a former congressman from Pennsylvania, Thomas Marino, who agreed to be a Republican presidential elector and who Smith said characterized Mr. Trump's alleged scheme as an "attempt to overthrow the government."
Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, he has continued to attack Smith, calling him a "criminal." Republicans in Congress have launched their own probes into Smith's handling of the cases involving Mr. Trump, and he is also under investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, an agency that is unrelated to Smith's former position as special counsel.