Jack Smith told lawmakers that his team has developed “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” against Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door interview Wednesday that his team of investigators “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump criminally conspired to overturn the 2020 election results, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.

Smith also said investigators had collected “strong evidence” that Trump violated the law by storing secret documents from his first term as president at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, and by obstructing government efforts to recover records.

“I made my investigative decisions without regard to President Trump’s political affiliation, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election,” Smith said. “We took action based on what the facts and the law required — the same lesson I learned early in my career as a prosecutor.”

He said that if asked if he would “prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat.”

The briefing before the House Judiciary Committee gave lawmakers from both parties the first opportunity, albeit privately, to question Smith about two investigations into Trump that resulted in criminal charges that have since been abandoned between the Republican president’s first and second terms in office. Smith was subpoenaed by the Republican-led committee this month to provide testimony and documents as part of the GOP investigation into Trump investigations during the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.

The former special counsel cooperated with Congress’ request, although his lawyers noted that he volunteered more than a month before the subpoena was issued to answer questions publicly before the committee — an initiative they said Republicans rejected. Trump had told reporters that he supported the idea of ​​holding an open hearing.

“During his testimony before this committee, Jack demonstrated tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented campaign of retaliation against him by this administration and this White House,” Smith’s attorney, Lanny Brewer, told reporters. “Let us be clear: Jack Smith, the Attorney General, conducted this investigation on the basis of the facts and on the basis of the law and nothing more.”

Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee Justice Department investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden and Trump’s hoarding of secret documents at Mar-a-Lago. Smith’s team brought charges in both investigations but dropped both cases after Trump was elected to the White House last year, citing Justice Department legal opinions that said a sitting president could not be charged.

Several former Justice Department special counsels, including Robert Mueller, have testified publicly, but Smith was called only for a private interview. Many Democrats who came out of Smith’s interview said they could understand why Republicans didn’t want to hold an open hearing based on the damaging testimony about Trump they said Smith provided.

The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said the Republican majority “made an excellent decision” not to allow Jack Smith to testify publicly “because if he had, it would have been very damaging to the President and all of the President’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities” of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“Jack Smith just spent several hours educating the Judiciary Committee about the professional responsibilities of a prosecutor and the ethical duties of a prosecutor,” Raskin said.

Democrats are demanding that Smith’s testimony be made public, along with his full report on the investigation.

“The American people must hear for themselves,” said Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y.

“I think we’ve learned some interesting things,” the committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, told reporters. He refused to discuss what was going on in the room, but reiterated his position on the investigations.

“It’s political,” he said.

Smith’s interview takes place against the backdrop of a widespread retaliation campaign launched by the Trump administration against former officials involved in the investigation of Trump and his allies. The Office of Special Counsel, an independent political watchdog, said in August that it was investigating Smith, and the White House issued a presidential memorandum this year aimed at suspending the security clearances of lawyers at the law firm that provided legal services to Smith.

This testimony also comes as Republicans in Congress, with the help of the current FBI leadership, look to undermine investigations into Trump through the selective release of emails and other documents.

In recent weeks, they have seized on revelations that the team, as part of its investigation, analyzed the phone records of select GOP lawmakers from in and around the Capitol siege, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the building to try to stop the certification of Trump’s election loss to Biden.

The phone records reviewed by prosecutors included details only about incoming and outgoing phone numbers and the duration of the call but not the contents of the conversation. Smith’s lawyers said Republicans bungled their analysis of the phone record and suggested something sinister about the routine investigative tactic.

On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a trove of internal FBI emails that preceded the Mar-a-Lago search in August 2022. In one of the emails, written weeks before the search, an agent wrote that the FBI’s Washington field office did not believe there was probable cause to search the property.

But Republicans who hailed the emails as evidence that Biden’s Justice Department was seeking to arrest Trump ignored the fact that agents who later searched the property reported finding boxes containing classified, even top-secret, documents. In addition, the then head of the Washington Field Office testified before Congress that by the time of the search, the FBI believed there was probable cause to do so.