Former Special Counsel Jack Smith Says He Believes Trump Will Try to Indict Him

Jack Smith told the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday that he expects the Trump administration will try to criminally indict him as part of the president’s years-long revenge campaign against judges, prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated him.

The former Justice Department special counsel, who oversaw the criminal investigations into President Donald Trump regarding his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and the potential mishandling of classified documents, vowed that he would not be intimidated. When asked if he had made any mistakes, he only voiced a regret that he hadn’t shown “enough appreciation” for his team of investigators, who he said “have endured way too much for just doing their job.”

“Do you believe that President Trump’s Department of Justice will find some way to indict you?” asked Rep. Becca Balint, a Vermont Democrat.

“I believe they will do everything in their power to do that because they’ve been ordered to by the president,” Smith testified.

“That’s very concerning, obviously,” she responded. “It’s very concerning to all of us — at least on this side of the aisle. This is Trump’s playbook at work: Complain loudly, gin up hatred and resentment, then express a hope that somebody will do something, but never explicitly order anyone to act, and then watch as his followers and loyalists go after their targets.”

Trump only reinforced that notion in a Truth Social post Thursday afternoon.

“Based on his testimony today, there is no question that Deranged Jack Smith should be prosecuted for his actions. He destroyed the lives of many innocent people, which has been his history as a prosecutor. At a minimum, he committed large scale perjury!” Trump posted.

Thursday’s hearing was long-anticipated and a chance for the public to hear Smith speak for longer than a few minutes — and under oath. For over a year, Smith stuck to rare and tightly scripted press conferences as his law enforcement team pursued two criminal cases against the then-former president that eventually went sideways when Trump was elected back to the White House. DOJ’s internal legal advisers, at that point, made the call to drop both cases.

While the all-day hearing was meant to provide better insight into the way Smith oversaw those investigations, much of the hearing was a rehash of the 2020 election, with Republicans still defending Trump’s attempts to stay in power and Democrats decrying the attack they say he inspired on the U.S. Capitol. The idea of whether Trump willingly tried to deceive the American people by claiming election fraud remained a central question, as it fueled Smith’s criminal probe.

Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin Republican, at one point slipped when he wholeheartedly affirmed Trump knew exactly what he was doing — before he corrected himself.

“Anybody who says that Donald Trump thought he won that election, that is just plain not true. No way,” he started, before hearing Democrats agree with him.

“Donald Trump did not believe he lost that election. No way,” he quickly corrected.

Republicans took turns railing against Smith over his appointment, persistent prosecution strategy, the cost of his investigation, his past failed prosecutions of politicians, and even his insistence on following the DOJ’s rules.

Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina castigated Smith for trying to get the Trump cases through a speedy trial.

“If you get a traffic ticket in Washington, D.C., you’re not going to trial in five months. But you want the former president of the United States to have a trial date with 13 million pages of documents within five months,” Fry said.

Rep. Thomas Tiffany of Wisconsin harangued Smith for being deemed the “gold standard” after working on several failed prosecutions against politicians, like John Edwards — without mentioning that Edwards was once the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate in 2004.

“If Mr. Smith ever works for the Department of Justice again, I would recommend a remedial course on the First Amendment to the Constitution,” Tiffany said.

Jeff Van Drew, once a New Jersey Democrat who switched parties in 2020, called Smith “a hypocrite” for not pursuing cases against Democrats — even though Smith has.

Freshman Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner volunteered, unsolicited, that until recently he had no idea who Jack Smith even is — but still said he quickly determined that “it was a politically motivated investigation.”

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican from Wisconsin, questioned the circumstances of Smith’s appointment. He brought up Smith’s decades-long friendship with Marshall Miller, who was the DOJ’s principal associate deputy attorney general when the department appointed Smith in 2022.

“You’ve known Mr. Miller since you were both AUSA in New York, you stayed in touch over a 20-year career in federal government, he gets a job with the Biden administration, and just a few short months later you’re offered the role as special counsel. I’m having a hard time believing that this is some big coincidence and there wasn’t some back and forth on the special counsel,” Fitzgerald said.

Smith pushed back on the idea that he’d ever take directions from a political appointee for a partisan prosecution.

“I have been a prosecutor for 30 years, I have been an apolitical public servant for 30 years, I’ve prosecuted cases against Democrats and Republicans all the same. I’ve had, in my view, the experience necessary for this position, and that’s why I accepted it,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan questioned Smith’s tactics, among them, the way his Special Counsel’s office paid one “confidential human source” $20,000, which Smith said was “to assist in the review of video and photographic evidence showing people who were attacking the Capitol.” Jordan compared that to the work of past DOJ special counsels.

“I don’t remember Robert Mueller approving payments to confidential human sources. I don’t remember [John] Durham. I don’t remember [Robert] Hur. We brought all those guys in front of the committee. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a special counsel having to pay secret money to someone to get information when you had the broadest subpoena power you could possibly have,” Jordan said.

Jordan repeatedly pointed to a May 17, 2023, email in which Smith’s prosecutors reached out to the DOJ’s public integrity team, or PIN, for guidance on how to legally obtain Republican congressional members’ call logs as investigators tried to determine the scope of Trump’s influence campaign to halt certification of the 2020 election results. However, Jordan largely ignored that while PIN cited “some litigation risk” in a potential fight over the records, the DOJ team of advisers on such sensitive cases made clear that they approved the maneuver.

“And Mr. Smith thought that was A-OK. That was just fine,” Jordan said.

Democrats were forcefully defensive of Smith’s efforts, with each one thanking him for his service.

“You had the audacity to do your job,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.