Jack Smith Defiant at Senate Hearing Over Trump Probes

WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Jack Smith told senators on Tuesday that he will not be silenced by threats of prosecution, as he faced sharp accusations from Republicans that he abused his power in his criminal investigations of President Donald Trump.

Appearing voluntarily before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his second public hearing before Congress, Smith defended the two since-dismissed criminal cases he brought against Trump — one over alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the other over alleged mishandling of classified documents after his first term.

“I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others,” Smith told the committee, in a Jack Smith Senate hearing that quickly turned confrontational.

What Jack Smith told the Senate hearing

Smith used his opening statement to stand by his charging decisions and to condemn the Trump administration’s treatment of the investigators who worked under him.

“I made these decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith said, according to Reuters. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation.”

He also condemned the firings of investigators from his office, accusing the administration of “vilification of the agents, prosecutors and staff who served on my team” — language that drew audible reactions in the hearing room.

Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel in November 2022 to oversee the two federal investigations of Trump. Both cases were ultimately dismissed, and Smith has since become a central target of Republican lawmakers who argue the prosecutions were politically motivated.

The Republican accusations

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, led the attack, calling Smith’s operation a “corrupt” and partisan effort. “This wasn’t a normal prosecution,” Grassley said. “Mr. Smith’s operation was a partisan weapon that broke the rules.”

Grassley said his office had information that Smith’s team had secured records on Republican donors and journalists’ communications with government officials, and argued the investigation “ultimately wasn’t just about Trump.” “It was about partisan agents and prosecutors mapping out the Republican apparatus,” he said.

The chairman also pointed to what he described as a contradiction in the classified-documents case: “Mr. Smith prosecuted Trump for allegedly mishandling classified information,” Grassley said, “[but] his team left a classified facility open, causing a security violation while prosecuting Trump for effectively the same offense.”

At one point, apparent confusion over a reference to Smith attending a basketball game in February 2024 prompted Sen. Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri, to accuse the former special counsel of perjury — an exchange that underscored the hearing’s heated tone.

The session comes nearly two years after Grassley alleged that Smith had improperly collected phone records of dozens of members of Congress during his investigation of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Smith has denied any wrongdoing.

Democrats push back

Democrats on the committee dismissed the hearing’s premise and repeatedly invoked their own memories of evacuating the Senate as a mob of Trump supporters overran the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Ranking member Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said the attacks on Smith “are nothing but a smokescreen to distract from the president’s own clear unlawful conduct.” “Let me be clear: there was nothing untoward about special counsel Smith and his fellow prosecutors conducting this investigation,” Durbin said. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith nonstop are petty, personal, and political.”

Sen. Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, called the proceeding “gaslighting the American people,” arguing Republicans were rewriting the history of the investigations and of Jan. 6 itself.

What the hearing was really about

Beneath the procedural disputes lies a deeper political fight over the legitimacy of the Justice Department’s Trump-era investigations — and over who gets to write the history of the special counsel’s work.

For Republicans, the hearing was an opportunity to put Smith on the defensive and to build a record portraying his investigations as an abuse of prosecutorial power. Grassley argued that Smith’s conclusions “has no credibility” and that his team “broke the rules, lied to the court, and engaged in bad faith throughout his operation.”

For Democrats, it was a chance to defend the principle that no one — including a former and current president — is above the law, and to warn that threatening prosecutors with retaliation chills future investigations of powerful figures.

Smith himself showed no sign of backing down. His closing message to the committee was the same as his opening one: the threats would not silence him, and he stood by the evidence his team assembled.