Former special counsel Jack Smith told members of Congress that his team had evidence that President Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
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Smith’s case against the president began when former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him to lead two Justice Department investigations into Trump: the mishandling of classified documents and his post-2020 election conduct.
From The Associated Press:
Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door interview on Wednesday that his team of investigators “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump had criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to portions of his opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.
He also said investigators had accrued “powerful evidence” that Trump broke the law by hoarding classified documents from his first term as president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and by obstructing government efforts to recover the records.
“I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election,” Smith said. “We took actions based on what the facts and the law required — the very lesson I learned early in my career as a prosecutor.”
He said that if asked whether he would “prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat.”
The private deposition before the House Judiciary Committee gives Smith his first chance to face questions, albeit behind closed doors, about a pair of investigations into Trump that resulted in since-abandoned criminal charges between the Republican president’s first and second terms in office. Smith was subpoenaed earlier this month to provide both testimony and documents as part of a Republican investigation into the Trump probes during the Biden administration.
The former special counsel cooperated with the congressional demand despite having volunteered more than a month earlier to answer questions publicly before the committee, an overture his lawyers say was rebuffed by Republicans.
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Smith is participating in closed-door hearings. Trump told reporters that he would have preferred the hearings to be public.
Smith abandoned both cases after Trump won the 2024 election, citing Justice Department legal opinions stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
The former special counsel’s claim is dubious at best, and even anti-Trumpers could see it back when the investigations were in full swing.
In fact, Smith’s own final report acknowledged that his team “did not obtain direct evidence” that Trump intended the “full scope of the violence that occurred on January 6.”
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Others have criticized Smith’s investigation as “heavy on bravado and aggression” with “lackluster results.”
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