WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Jack Smith appeared rather bleak Wednesday as he stepped onto Capitol Hill for a deposition before a House committee probing his lawsuits against former President Trump.
Smith, who had resigned just days before Trump’s return to the White House, was set to face a flurry of tough questions from the House Judiciary Committee about the cases he brought against the man he once served and now battles as “once and future” president. These allegations range from alleged concealment of classified material to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The former prosecutor for the International Criminal Court is also expected to explain the push from both himself and the Biden‑era Department of Justice to execute a search warrant at Trump’s Mar‑a‑Lago estate in August 2022—over objections raised by FBI officials.
He’ll be hauled in a closed‑door session, where lawmakers will likely probe him about his decision to secretly subpoena phone logs from Republican lawmakers in connection with that case.
Smith maintained in an exit report on his prosecutorial work that “but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
The classified‑documents lawsuit was dismissed in July 2024 when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Smith had been improperly appointed as special counsel without congressional approval.
Republican members of both chambers have been calling for Smith’s testimony for months, but he only appeared after receiving a subpoena from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R‑Ohio). He said he’d been willing to come before a public hearing if the subpoena hadn’t been issued.
A closed‑door deposition gives lawmakers extra time for follow‑up questions—the kind of room each side needs that goes beyond the five‑minute window typical of public hearings, without the spectacle of cameras in play.
Meanwhile, the FBI’s Arctic Froth investigation quietly gathered phone metadata from at least ten GOP members of Congress and filed subpoenas targeting hundreds more Republican individuals and entities.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R‑Iowa), who first released Department of Justice records highlighting the scope of the probe into sitting lawmakers, called it “a fishing expedition” that aimed to unseat the “entire Republican political apparatus.”
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