Jack Smith Indicted Trump. Now They Want Jack Smith in the Defendant’s Chair

Washington, D.C. (KB) - Chuck Grassley raised his right hand, and Jack Smith raised his. That is how questioning under oath begins in Washington: 2 men pledge themselves to the same truth, and 1 of them already knows the outcome. The Iowa Republican, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, administered the oath to the former special counsel on Tuesday. Later, he told him that no matter what else Smith might say, there had never been any legitimate basis for what he did. An oath assumes an answer can still change something. On this Tuesday, that was a bold assumption.

Smith had brought 2 serious felony cases against Donald Trump when Trump was out of office. One concerned his handling of classified government documents, the other Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election. After Trump won the 2024 election, Smith had to drop both cases. He stood by both indictments, he told the senators. If the same facts were put in front of him today, he would indict a former president again, Republican or Democrat. He would not be silenced by the president’s continuing threats to prosecute him. He also rejected Republican accusations that his investigations had been politically driven or that, under Joe Biden, they had been used to improperly spy on Republican lawmakers.

“Rather than accept his defeat in 2020, Trump engaged in a scheme to overturn the results. I will not be silenced by the president’s continuing threats of prosecution.”

Standing your ground in this Washington comes with a case number. After Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, its chairman, Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, referred him to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, accusing Smith of lying to Congress. Federal prosecutors in Florida have also recently subpoenaed former FBI officials who took part in the 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the search that led to Smith’s classified documents case. Those interviews are part of a sweeping investigation the department calls a “grand conspiracy.” Its legal theory remains vague: Officials from the Biden and Barack Obama years allegedly conspired over 10 years to violate Trump’s civil rights. The blurrier a theory like that gets, the more people can fit inside it.

This is how the media work at hearings like this. It gives you a better idea of what it looks like on the ground.

Smith expects the administration to do everything in its power to build a case against him, even though, in his view, there is no legitimate basis for one. The rule of law, he said, faces challenges unlike anything his generation has experienced. People are being threatened with prosecution because they are accused of having stood against the president. Predetermined outcomes, he said, are increasingly taking priority at the Justice Department over its traditional “values, traditions and norms.” A verdict that exists before the question has been asked goes looking for its own defendant.

The public learned little that was new about his investigations, and Republicans reheated their old attacks. The hearing quickly turned into a public dressing-down. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri told Smith he would go down in history as a “total scumbag.” John Kennedy of Louisiana told him Smith made him feel physically sick. Grassley called Smith’s investigative team a partisan weapon that had “broken the rules, lied to the court and acted maliciously throughout.” It had no credibility, he said.

“You make me want to throw up in my mouth. You sought just the records of the Republicans, and you knew that violated the Speech or Debate Clause, didn’t you?” The line between congressional oversight and personal retaliation was barely visible on Tuesday. Democratic senators, attorneys and journalists pushed back and reminded people that the charges against Trump had been returned by grand juries - America 2026.

Smith took it without flinching. He got sharper only when Republicans brought up his wife’s past support for President Barack Obama. And when they went after his former staff, career prosecutors and investigators, many of whom lost their Justice Department jobs shortly after Trump returned to office last year. Smith said he was extraordinarily proud to have worked with them. That this Justice Department had unlawfully targeted them and unlawfully fired them was outrageous, he said. Their lives had been turned upside down.

The fight has long since become one over how the public will remember the 2 cases. Trump and his allies have argued for years that Smith and other prosecutors weaponized law enforcement against them and should be punished. Democrats counter that Trump plainly committed crimes and that he himself has turned the Justice Department into a club against perceived political enemies. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s ranking Democrat, called the relentless attacks on Smith “petty, personal and political,” little more than a smokescreen meant to distract from the president’s plainly unlawful conduct. As Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut spoke, images from the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol were shown in the hearing room.

Senator Blumenthal: “The inciting of that mob and the riot was following his attempt to induce state officials, and this point is really important, to ignore the true vote count and manufacture fraudulent state electors, not just in 1 or 2, but in 7 separate states. Correct?”

Jack Smith: “Yes.”

Senator Blumenthal: “And again, these charges were not brought by you personally. They were the result of a grand jury indictment.”

Much of the fight over Smith’s methods also revolved around that day, methods he defended forcefully. Grassley accused Smith’s team of secretly obtaining phone records from several Republican lawmakers by subpoena and called it runaway abuse of power. Smith said the records were indispensable for tracing calls that went from the White House to Trump’s allies in Congress that day while Trump was trying to delay certification of the election results. The records included the time and duration of calls and text messages, not a single word from the senators’ conversations. The time of a call tells you nothing about what was said. It tells you who needed whom that day.

The Justice Department has since disclosed that Smith, through a separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration aimed at several phones associated with the White House, also incidentally received text messages from 44 lawmakers. Trump bears responsibility for that, Smith said, because of his unprecedented conduct while Congress was preparing to certify Biden’s victory. The data were an important part of the investigation and central to the question of Trump’s intent.

For months, Smith had pushed for this public appearance so he could defend the findings of his investigations. Now he sat there and was barred from saying much of it. Strict secrecy rules, Smith said, prevented him from discussing grand jury interviews and records. On the documents case, he is also bound by a court order covering his final report: U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who presided over the case, permanently barred its release and prohibited officials from discussing its contents with anyone outside the Justice Department. A report nobody is allowed to read weighs more heavily than any report that ever was.

Jim Jordan’s referral is sitting at the Justice Department. The Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee filed what is known as a criminal referral against Jack Smith in July 2026, accusing him of misleading Congress in testimony about phone records and text messages obtained from lawmakers. Smith’s attorneys reject that allegation and say his answers were truthful. Department officials said they were reviewing the evidence; whether they will actually seek an indictment against Smith before a grand jury has not yet been decided. Just how open that question has become was on display Tuesday, when a senator first administered the oath and then came close to delivering the verdict.

To be continued ...