For years, Jack Smith — the prosecutor with the best chance of putting President Donald Trump in prison — was an elusive figure. His work was cloaked in secrecy and his voice was seldom heard aloud, save for a few choice utterances at carefully scripted news conferences. Public sightings were rare, and he was best known by a single scowling image from a 2020 appearance at The Hague.
Thursday morning, however, Smith’s low profile will disappear when he becomes one of the most-watched people in Washington.
Smith is set to testify at a public hearing of the House Judiciary Committee that’s likely to be aired live across the country. The veteran prosecutor is prepared to tell the public what he’s already told lawmakers behind closed doors: A jury would have found Trump guilty of a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, had Smith been able to move forward with the evidence he amassed during his time as special counsel with the Biden Department of Justice.
Smith is expected to stand behind his decision to prosecute Trump, and say doing otherwise would have been “shirk[ing] my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant,” according to prepared remarks obtained by POLITICO.
“I made my decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith plans to say. “President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.”
Because Trump won reelection in 2024 and there’s a Justice Department prohibition against charging or trying a sitting president, Smith dropped the charges he brought in the election subversion case. Smith was also pushing charges against Trump for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“Highly sensitive information was held in non-secure locations, including a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place,” Smith is expected to tell members of the Judiciary Committee. “Tens of thousands of people came to the social club during the time period when those classified documents were stored there.”
For Democrats, the hearing will be an opportunity for Smith to describe in painstaking detail evidence of Trump’s criminality and threat to the transfer of presidential power in 2020 — when he spent months pressuring elected officials to overturn the election results based on false claims of fraud. Smith has argued that Trump’s efforts fueled the Jan. 6 mob that attacked the Capitol, which the prosecutor says Trump attempted to exploit to continue his effort to stop Joe Biden from taking office.
“I’m thrilled the Republican chairman is having Jack Smith testify publicly, because Jack Smith is going to tell the American people all the evidence that he has collected against Donald Trump and why Donald Trump was lawfully indicted, and why Donald Trump violated federal law,” Rep. Ted Lieu of California, the vice-chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters Wednesday morning. “And American people are going to hear that. And I encourage everyone to watch.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have fumed over revelations last year that Smith secretly obtained the phone records for several sitting GOP senators during his election subversion investigation.
“He’s got a lot to answer for,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday regarding Smith. “These are answers that have been, I think, long overdue.”
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan’s decision to allow Smith to answer lawmakers’ questions in a public forum came after he initially would only agree to let Smith sit for a closed-door interview, the contents of which Jordan later released in the form of a transcript and an hours-long video recording. That session revealed a prosecutor with firm command of the details of his case and ready answers to Republicans’ toughest queries.
Smith is expected to reiterate, during his Thursday testimony, that the choices he made as special counsel complied with Justice Department policy — eschewing accusations from Republicans that he went rogue in an effort to take Trump down. He will assert that he would prosecute a former president of either party under the same conditions, according to his prepared remarks.
He will also describe the evidence his team built to demonstrate Trump’s criminal behavior and why that proof extended beyond a reasonable doubt.
Jordan, asked Wednesday whether he was concerned about Smith sharing damaging information about the president to a live audience, replied, “We’re just focused on letting our members ask questions, letting the American people see.”
But in what is likely to be a highly confrontational and hours-long hearing, Republicans are expected to pummel the former special counsel for what they see as a political vendetta against the GOP — this time knowing their audience includes the public and, just as likely, Trump himself.
Trump made clear Wednesday his mind is still on the 2020 election, insisting repeatedly — and falsely — to a gathering of European leaders that he prevailed in the contest but was robbed by fraud. He also said that people would soon be prosecuted for “rigging” that election. Smith told lawmakers last month that he expected to face Trump’s wrath and retribution for his work as special counsel, potentially in the form of criminal charges.
“Jack Smith is a continuation of this weaponization of government against the president,” Jordan said in an interview. “It’s been a decade long ordeal.”
Republicans also could stand to benefit from the limitations on what Smith will and won’t be able to divulge at the Thursday hearing. As with his closed-door testimony last month, Smith’s remarks will be hamstrung by a court order sealing the second volume of his report around the classified documents case. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw that investigation and initially dismissed the charges against Trump and labeled Smith’s appointment as special counsel illegal, has since barred the Justice Department from disclosing his final report in the case.
Trump urged Cannon Wednesday, on the eve of Smith’s testimony, to make her order permanent, saying anything less would legitimize what he described as Smith’s effort “to imprison and destroy the reputations of President Trump and his former co-defendants.”
Smith is expected to stand firm.
“No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account,” he is expected to say. “So that is what I did.”
Mia McCarthy and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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