Hendra Wijaya
Former US Special Counsel Jack Smith spent Tuesday defending the investigative work behind two of the criminal cases against Donald Trump, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that his probes were grounded in Justice Department policy and evidence rather than political motive. Republican members of the committee, by contrast, used the hearing to accuse his office of weaponising federal prosecutors to target the GOP.
Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, was appointed special counsel in 2022 to independently examine allegations concerning Trump's conduct after he left his first term in office. Speaking from the witness table on Capitol Hill, he rejected the charge that political considerations shaped his decision to file criminal charges against Trump — the first US president ever to be indicted.
"Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation," Smith told lawmakers, adding that the decision to charge rested on the strength of the evidence gathered rather than on any outside influence.
The two indictments Smith personally authorised in 2023 were separate from the wider criminal exposure facing Trump. One covered alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election; the second concerned the handling of classified material while out of office. Smith said at the hearing that his team had a duty to follow evidence wherever it led, including into areas that touched members of Congress and political donors.
Two further indictments were brought by other prosecutors. A New York case accused Trump of falsifying business records to conceal unflattering information dating to his 2016 campaign. A separate Georgia case alleged that Trump and his allies sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Of the four cases, only the New York indictment reached trial, producing felony convictions. The others were abandoned after Trump won re-election in 2024. Smith himself stepped down shortly before Trump's second inauguration in January 2025, a move consistent with a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Trump has denied every charge against him and has long portrayed the investigations — and the role of former President Joe Biden in them — as a political "witch-hunt."
Much of Tuesday's questioning focused not on the evidence itself but on the methods used to gather it. Republicans singled out subpoenas that pulled phone records associated with members of Congress as well as financial information belonging to Republican donors and organisations.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said Smith's team used its investigations to "map out and target the entire Republican Party." Smith countered that his office was obligated to pursue evidence relevant to the underlying case, and that obtaining call records helped corroborate what prosecutors believed to be contact between Trump and his allies and lawmakers as they worked to delay certification of the 2020 results.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose own records were among those sought, pressed Smith on why members of Congress were not notified of the subpoenas at the time. Smith said prosecutors feared that disclosing the requests would alert Trump and his associates, giving them an opportunity to destroy evidence or otherwise interfere with the investigation.
"Is it a crime to be a Republican?" Cruz asked. "Absolutely not," Smith replied. The senator's question underscored the political sensitivity of a Justice Department probe reaching the communications data of sitting lawmakers, a subject that critics say has drawn scrutiny because there was no law prohibiting the collection of such records during the investigation.
Smith said his office consulted the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section before seeking the records. He also noted what the material does not contain: the data established the time and duration of telephone calls, not their content — a distinction that has featured in defenses of the subpoenas.
Beyond the debate over subpoenas, Smith went on the offensive, accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the prosecutors and agents who worked on the two cases. He said members of his former team were fired for "doing their jobs," a claim that has spawned litigation.
In March, three former FBI agents who investigated Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election filed a class-action suit alleging they were unlawfully dismissed as part of a "retribution campaign." The lawsuit seeks their reinstatement, adding a labour and civil rights dimension to the dispute over prosecutorial independence.
Smith, who said Trump has threatened to send him to jail, framed the scrutiny of his former office as part of a much larger struggle over the rule of law. "As I appear before you today, it is my belief that the rule of law faces challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime," he said, adding that he would not be intimidated by threats of prosecution from the president or others.
The hearing offered no new evidence about the underlying cases, which remain closed. Its significance was institutional rather than evidentiary: it put on public record the tension between a special counsel's claim of evidentiary duty and congressional assertions that the same methods were aimed at an entire political party.
For lawmakers on both sides, the episode cuts to a question with lasting consequences — how far federal investigators may go in pursuing evidence that touches sitting members of Congress, donors and organisations, and what protections or notification rules ought to apply. Smith said consultation with the Public Integrity Section was the safeguard used in this instance, but Republican critics left the hearing suggesting that safeguard was insufficient.
The larger question now sits with the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department: whether the tools Smith described as routine case-building will be treated as settled practice, or subjected to new oversight as investigations involving political targets become an increasingly common feature of American justice.
Comments (0)