Former special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and defended his decision to get two criminal indictments against Trump.
This was his first public testimony about the indictments. Republican members of the committee were staunchly against his move to collect phone records of lawmakers who made contact with Trump loyalists during the time of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 and called it a political attack.
“It was always about politics and to get President Trump, they were willing to do almost anything,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio said.
To this claim, Smith was resolute about the fact that there was no political bias nor surveillance of Republicans in his work.
“I am not a politician and I have no partisan loyalties,” Smith responded. “My office didn’t spy on anyone.”
Although Smith says his team had enough evidence to secure a conviction, the cases never made it to trial because Trump won his second term in office.
“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 a videotaped deposition. “These crimes were committed for his benefit.”
The Jan. 6 attack, which resulted in 140 injured law enforcement officers, wouldn’t have happened, but for Trump, according to Smith.
He also said that he didn’t comprehend Trump’s mass pardon of defendants associated with the Capitol riot and even predicted that they would re-offend in the coming years.
“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So, that’s what I did,” Smith said.
Most of the people who assisted in the investigations with Smith were fired after Trump returned to the White House and Smith said that the only regrets he had was that he would have expressed more appreciation for the work that prosecutors and FBI agents working with him did.
Trump has railed against Smith and his work, and has intimated that a DOJ investigation may be headed Smith’s way.
“Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me.”
