WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found “evidence beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to portions of his opening statement obtained by NBC News.
Trump also “repeatedly attempted to obstruct justice” to keep secret the possession of classified documents discovered during the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago, Smith told members of the House Judiciary Committee during a closed hearing.
Smith said his team found “substantial evidence showing that Trump knowingly maintained highly classified documents after leaving office in January 2021, storing them in his social club, including in the bathroom and ballroom where events and meetings were held.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. subpoenaed Smith to testify as part of Republican efforts to investigate the special counsel's office. Smith's investigation led to two indictments against Trump: a classified documents case and a 2020 election interference case. Trump-appointed US District Judge Eileen Cannon dismisses secret documents case in July 2024 And a separate judge agreed drop the 2020 case in November 2024 after Trump won re-election.
Trump repeatedly called for Smith to be brought to justice.
Facing a new wave of Republican attacks on his investigation into Trump, Smith was expected to try to use the hearing to correct what his team said were mischaracterizations of the special counsel's investigation.
Smith wanted to testify publicly, but House Republicans refused to grant Smith's request.
Lanny Breuer, Smith's lawyer, told reporters Wednesday that his client is “showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented campaign of retaliation against him by this administration and this White House.”
Refusing to criticize his team's decision to obtain and analyze phone call recordings to nine Republicans in Congress, Smith told committee members that the records “were legitimately subpoenaed and are relevant to the completion of a comprehensive” investigation.
“January 6 was an attack on the fabric of our democracy, in which more than 100 heroic law enforcement officers were attacked. More than 160 people later pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers that day,” Smith said. “Using this violence, President Trump and his associates attempted to call members of Congress to support their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay the certification of the 2020 election.”
“I didn’t choose these members,” Smith added, “President Trump did.”
Smith's report on Trump's efforts to overturn the election results states that Trump “…inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violenceon Jan. 6, and that Trump knowingly spread “patently and in many cases demonstrably false” claims about the election as part of his efforts.
Smith is not expected to testify about the second volume of his report, which focuses on Trump's handling of classified documents.
After Trump's team tried to block its release, Gun prohibited the publication of this report, as well as the sharing of “any information or findings from Volume II” with anyone outside the Department of Justice. IN legal filing This month, a lawyer representing Trump wrote that “Volume II of Jack Smith's Final Report should not be published.”
Trump administration career prosecutors fired who worked on Smith's team at the beginning of the year, and more recently FBI special agents fired and even support staff associated with Smith. Trump has called Smith a “criminal” who should be “investigated and jailed.”
During his testimony Wednesday, Smith said that while he was responsible for deciding whether to charge Trump with both election subversion and the classified documents case, the basis for those charges “lies entirely with President Trump and his actions as alleged in grand jury indictments in two different counties.”
Smith recounted how he, as a young prosecutor, was taught to follow the facts and the law “without fear or favor” and to do “the right thing, the right thing, for the right reasons”—principles he said defined his career.
“If I were 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 a Democrat,” Smith said.
