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Washington — Former special counsel Jack Smith defended his prosecutions of President Trump in a closed-door deposition with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, saying “the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions.”
Smith was subpoenaed to testify earlier this month by the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which is probing Smith’s actions during his time as special counsel during the Biden administration. The committee is investigating what it claims were the “politically motivated” prosecutions of Mr. Trump led by Smith.
“Any objective person who listened today to the deposition would know without any doubt that Jack Smith’s investigation is based purely on the facts and the law and the evidence, nothing more and nothing less, and that’s what you would expect of Jack, a career public servant who has served this nation for over 30 years as a public servant committed to the rule of law,” Lanny Breuer, a lawyer for Smith, told reporters after the deposition.
Following the question-and-answer session, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Panel, said Smith answered every question to “the satisfaction of any reasonable minded person in that room.”
Smith “spent several hours schooling the Judiciary Committee on the professional responsibilities of a prosecutor and the ethical duties of a prosecutor,” Raskin said. “And he’s a sensational and honorable public servant, and we are lucky to have him in the bar in the United States.”
Rep. Daniel Goldman, a Democrat from New York, criticized Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan for having Smith testify behind closed doors first. Previous special counsels, including Robert Mueller and Robert Hur, have appeared before lawmakers for public hearings. Mueller investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, and Hur probed former President Joe Biden’s handling of sensitive government documents.
“The accusations against him are complete bogus, and the American people should hear that for themselves,” he said.
The president was indicted on more than 40 federal charges in two separate cases. The first alleged he unlawfully held onto government documents marked classified after leaving the White House in 2021, and the second stemmed from his alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of power after the 2020 election.
The president has denied wrongdoing and claimed Smith’s investigations were politically motivated “witch hunts” that intended to harm his candidacy for the White House.
Both cases were brought to an end after Mr. Trump won a second term in November 2024.
In portions of Smith’s opening statement to the committee obtained by CBS News, the former special counsel defended his prosecutorial record and told lawmakers that he made decisions in the investigations “without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.”
“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts,” Smith told lawmakers.
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He continued: “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”
Smith said the documents investigation “developed powerful evidence that showed President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.”
Mr. Trump, Smith said, “then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”
In other portions of his opening statement, Smith defended investigative steps taken by his team, including obtaining phone records of sitting Republican lawmakers as part of the 2020 election probe. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, published a document in October alleging that the FBI obtained phone data from eight GOP senators and one Republican House member as part of the probe.
The records, Smith said, “were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation.”
“January 6 was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 100 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police officers that day,” Smith said. “Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I didn’t choose those Members; President Trump did.”
Breuer, one of the attorneys who represents the former special counsel, told reporters before the deposition that Smith “is showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration and this White House.”
Smith is also under investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, an agency that is unrelated to Smith’s former position as special counsel. His lawyers called the ethics probe by the Office of the Special Counsel “imaginary and unfounded.”
