On Thursday morning, former special counsel Jack Smith sat before Congress to give his first public testimony about the ultimately fruitless federal indictments he brought in 2023 against prior and now current President Donald Trump. The two indictments, revolving around the handling of classified documents and a wider-ranging election interference case of sprawling scope and consequence, were causalities of the American public appearing to entirely forget the years 2017-2020, and ultimately delivering Trump a get-out-of-jail-free card in the form of a return to the White House. Now it’s Smith who must pay the bill in the form of Republican grilling and threats of indictments of his own, a consequence that the career prosecutor understands all too well. In his opening statement addressing members of the House Judiciary Committee, he issued a stark warning to the American people, essentially telling them not to rely on faith in the “rule of law” to protect them–not when there’s a man in the White House who has zero respect for the sanctity of the law, and an administration that will weaponize that law only when it’s convenient for them to do so.
“I have seen how the rule of law can erode,” Smith said. “My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in this country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted. But, the rule of law is not self-executing — it depends on our collective commitment to apply it. It requires dedicated service on behalf of others, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs. Our willingness to pay those costs is what tests and defines our commitment to the rule of law and to this wonderful country.”
Smith likewise told members of the committee that he was still of the opinion that his investigations had developed “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump was guilty, and that the former President had “engaged in a criminal scheme” in his attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election loss to Joe Biden, among other things. He said that Americans should “never forget” the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and leveled the following general summation of Trump’s lawlessness:
“Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. President Trump attempted to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force his own Vice President to act in contravention of his oath and to instead advance President Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then exploit the rioters’ violence to further delay it.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith in his Opening Remarks:
— Katie Phang (@katiephang.bsky.social) Jan 22, 2026 at 10:44 AM
Smith then began the process of shrugging off various slings and arrows from grandstanding GOP members of Congress, who immediately began demonstrating their lack of understanding of basic facts at hand, such as claiming that Smith had charged Trump with “insurrection,” when that was never actually one of the charges brought against the President. Trump was instead charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Representatives Jim Jordan (OH) and Darrell Issa (CA) took turns characterizing Smith’s indictments of Trump as purely political in nature, done at the behest of figures such as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which Smith naturally denied. Issa lashed out with the following: “You, like the president’s men for Richard Nixon, went after your political enemies. Maybe they’re not your political enemies, but they sure as hell were Joe Biden’s political enemies, weren’t they? They were Harris’s political enemies. They were the enemies of the president, and you were their arm, weren’t you?”
Smith, meanwhile, said that given the evidence with which he was presented, he would have brought the election interference indictments against any President, regardless of their party or personal allegiances.
“What I can tell you is I have been a prosecutor for 30 years,” Smith said. “I have been an apolitical public servant for 30 years. I’ve prosecuted cases against Democrats and Republicans all the same, have in my view the experience necessary for this position, and that’s why I accepted it.”
Donald Trump, meanwhile, displaying his trademark sixth sense for when he should poke his nose into affairs in the most hypocritical manner possible, chose while Smith was being accused of partisan, political targeting of enemies to jump on Truth Social and do a little partisan, political targeting of an enemy. There, he effectively instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Smith, all but commanding that she indict him exactly as the Justice Department indicted his other enemies like James Comey and Letitia James, only for those indictments to be thrown out when the Trump administration appointed a U.S. attorney who was grossly unqualified and dismissed by a judge. Seemingly in response to Smith’s eloquent statements on the rule of law, Trump called him a “deranged animal,” which is certainly not the kind of emotional outburst that an actual deranged animal might experience at this kind of moment.
Jack Smith would go on to state that the most damaging testimony and witnesses he would have called in his case against Trump would have been fellow Republicans who would have confirmed that Trump knew full well that he had lost the 2020 election and instead sought to circumvent the results and stay in power through illegal means.
“There were witnesses who I felt would be very strong witnesses, including, for example, the secretary of state in Georgia, who told Donald Trump the truth, told him things that he did not want to hear, and put him on notice that what he was saying was false,” said Smith. “That investigation revealed that Donald Trump was not looking for honest answers about whether there was fraud in the election. He was looking for ways to stay in power, and when people told him things that conflicted with him staying in power, he rejected them, or he chose not even to contact people like that, who would know if the election was done properly in the state.”
This is all, in the end, essentially a performative gesture toward the outcome of justice we could theoretically have had in the United States if the voters of our country had rejected Trump’s return to the White House, or if Attorney General Merrick Garland’s DOJ had moved more swiftly in launching its investigations, giving them time to conclude before the 2024 election. Instead, voters saved Trump from consequences, and those consequences have fallen on our country instead, in the form of things like police state weaponization of ICE, the threatened invasion of our own allies, and a complete embrace of kleptocracy. Jack Smith knows, at the end of the day, that Americans got what they voted for–and with three more years to go, there’s no telling how much worse things can still get.
