Jack Smith Testifies About Trump Investigations

“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat,” Smith insisted in a statement.

“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.”

He went on to double down on allegations against Trump and his former co-defendants, characterizing their efforts on Jan. 6, 2020 as illegal.

“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,” Smith told the committee. “I didn’t choose those members; President Trump did.”

“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,” the former prosecutor said.

Democrats on the committee expressed support for the ex-special counsel as his testimony continued into the afternoon, with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) telling reporters that Smith is “a class act in every way.”

Asked why Republicans chose to hold the deposition behind closed doors, Raskin alleged that it was done to “avoid public view.”

After it ended, the House Judiciary Committee ranking member snarked that the GOP “made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of Jan. 6.”

But Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) shared some of what Smith said in the deposition, claiming he “made very clear that volume two of the special counsel’s report is only not being released because the judge in Florida refuses to authorize its release.”

“That is absolutely unacceptable for her to sit on such a basic request for almost a year now,” he opined.

Smith also told lawmakers that the cases of Trump’s two codefendants in the Florida case — his valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira — “had no reason to be dismissed,” Goldman said.

“Even though Donald Trump’s justice department dismissed those as soon as he came into office, there was no basis [for this] on the evidence,” the lawmaker said.