WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.
“Testifying before this committee, Jack is showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration and this White House,” one of Smith’s lawyers, Lanny Breuer, told reporters Wednesday. “Let’s be clear: Jack Smith is a career prosecutor, who conducted this investigation based on the facts and based on the law and nothing more.”
Trump told reporters at the White House that he supported the idea of an open hearing, saying: “I’d rather see him testify publicly. There’s no way he can answer the questions.”
Smith is expected to discuss both of his investigations of Trump but will not answer questions that call for grand jury materials, which are restricted by law, according to a person familiar with the investigation who insisted on anonymity to discuss the interview. He is also expected to correct what he regards as mischaracterizations from Republicans about his work, including about his team’s use of cellphone records belonging to certain GOP lawmakers, the person said.
Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the Justice Department investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Smith’s team filed charges in both investigations.
Smith abandoned the cases after Trump was elected to the White House again last year, citing Justice Department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted.
Republicans who control Congress have sought interviews with at least some individual members of Smith’s team.
In recent weeks they have seized on revelations that the team, as part of its investigation, had analyzed the phone records of select GOP lawmakers from on and around Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to halt the certification of Trump’s election loss to Biden. The phone records reviewed by prosecutors included details only about the incoming and outgoing phone numbers and the length of the call but not the contents of the conversation.
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