Jack Smith wants to make his case against Donald Trump to Congress — but he’s walking into a political and legal minefield.

The Biden-era special counsel who brought the first and only federal criminal charges ever leveled against a former president is set to testify behind closed doors Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee.

To do so, he must navigate Byzantine secrecy laws and rules that limit what he can disclose to lawmakers. All the while, Republicans are looking to trip him up and incriminate him, to portray him as a tool of a weaponized Justice Department — an allegation they’ve brandished amid recent revelations that Smith obtained phone records of at least eight GOP senators as part of his probe into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election results.

“What they did all along, everything was wrong … a lot of things that were just not normal course of investigation or prosecution,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said in an interview. “If he comes in and doesn’t answer questions, that’s going to be a problem.”

At the same time, Democrats are eager for further details about the investigations Smith had to abandon after Trump won reelection in 2024, bowing to the reality that sitting presidents cannot face federal charges while in office. Smith was investigating Trump for election subversion attempts and mishandling classified documents.

“We want to hear exactly what he found, and what he did,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. “He just needs to come and tell the truth.”

It’s all forcing Smith into a delicate, high-stakes dance with members of both parties. Democrats want to exploit any opportunity to discredit Trump, but Republicans are hoping to back Smith into a corner and portray him as a politically motivated activist.

“Jack Smith should be in jail — if not prison,” said Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee, when asked about his ideal outcome for Smith’s deposition. “He’s a crook. Jack Smith is a crook, and he needs to be held accountable for all his games that he played.”

Peter Koski, the former deputy chief of the DOJ Public Integrity Section and a member of Smith’s legal team at Covington & Burling, said in a statement Tuesday his client is “looking forward to answering the committee’s questions, sharing the legal basis for his investigative steps, and discussing the evidence of President Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his unlawful possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.”

Ultimately, though, there are restrictions for what Smith can and cannot tell members. He remains bound by grand jury rules that bar prosecutors from disclosing evidence that was never made public, at least without the permission of a court.

And in his capacity as a former Justice Department employee, he’s also limited in what he can share about his prosecutorial work. DOJ has provided an authorization letter to facilitate Smith’s testimony, according to a person granted anonymity to share details of private correspondence; however, the scope of the waiver is not clear.

A federal judge in Florida has also maintained an 11-month prohibition on the release of any details of Smith’s final report in the classified documents probe — a restriction Trump has urged her to maintain indefinitely — further narrowing what Smith is legally permitted to share about that investigation.

Complicating matters further is that Trump has called repeatedly for Smith’s prosecution, fueling the GOP appetite for incriminating Smith. That’s forcing Smith to weigh potential risks of criminal accusations against his desire to share information about his work with lawmakers.

Jordan has already sent out a criminal referral for Thomas Windom, a top Smith deputy, after the former senior assistant special counsel repeatedly declined to answer questions during his September deposition before investigators with the Judiciary Committee.

“They are trying to get him on the fast road to one of their ridiculous prosecutions,” Raskin said, of Smith.

House Judiciary Democrats are simultaneously pressing for the public release of Smith’s report detailing the results of his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Earlier this month, committee Democrats filed an amicus brief to a federal court in Florida urging Judge Aileen Cannon to allow its release, citing the ongoing panel’s investigations and the need to balance out what is currently a “one-sided public record.”

“Neither the Committee nor the public can meaningfully evaluate Mr. Smith’s conduct, or assess the Committee’s accusations, without access to the report that memorializes what the Special Counsel actually did and why,” stated the amicus brief, submitted by the Democrats’ lawyers.

Cannon, a Trump appointee who once ruled Smith was put into the special counsel role unconstitutionally, has so far maintained that the report will not be released. This decision could further complicate Smith’s testimony before Congressional investigators, adding limitations to what he can share.

“Every other special counsel committee report has been released, and I believe every other special counsel or independent counsel has appeared before Congress publicly,” Raskin said, “so our Republican colleagues seem to fear the strength of Jack Smith’s advocacy and presentation.”

Jordan said he intends to ask Smith about the classified documents case, including the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022. He also wants Smith to answer for DOJ’s efforts to obtain phone data from former Speaker Kevin McCarthy as part of his probe.

Smith preferred that all this take place in a public setting, with his legal team pressing Congressional Republicans hard to let the testimony proceed in an open hearing. Jordan declined that request. The GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee, in contrast, has expressed an openness to facilitating such a hearing as it pursues its own Smith investigation, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he believed the House deposition will lay the groundwork for the Senate’s questioning.

“Before you interview somebody, before you hold a hearing — you need information, otherwise they run circles around you. You get nothing fruitful out of them,” said Johnson, who is co-leading the Senate’s probe into Smith’s investigations in his role as chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Johnson said he expected Jordan would eventually produce a transcript of Smith’s House deposition. “Those would be the documents we’ll use when we interview him,” he said.

Vulnerable Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick told Speaker Mike Johnson on the House floor Tuesday he would not withdraw his discharge petition that would force a floor vote on extending expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies — amid Johnson’s attempt to find a potential agreement to allow a vote on an amendment instead that would be similar in substance.

The standoff, described by three people granted anonymity to divulge private conversations, shows the pressure GOP leadership is under to defuse a politically challenging dynamic around the future of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that have divided Johnson’s conference.

At the same time, the speaker’s allies argue it shows that the GOP moderates themselves are still refusing to reach a deal ahead of a Wednesday vote on a health care bill Republicans want to pass to show they are serious about preventing a looming spike in insurance premiums.

Fitzpatrick and Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), in private conversations with Johnson and other Republicans, have both so far declined to turn off their respective discharge petitions in the absence of an agreement they can vote on this week alongside the GOP health care bill.

Johnson in recent days told GOP moderates who want a vote on an ACA subsidies extension he would agree to such a vote if they in turn agreed to turn off their various discharge petitions and make sure the amendment was paid for with a satisfactory offset. Johnson also wanted to use Fitzpatrick’s two-year ACA extension bill as the base for a compromise amendment, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. But those talks never produced a deal.

The speaker told reporters after talking to Fitzpatrick Tuesday afternoon that they’re still “working” on various ACA amendment options. But, he said, “I thought there was an agreement on the Fitzpatrick amendment and then they made different decisions.”

The speaker added later he thought “there’s a real possibility they get a vote on it” and noted he “certainly tried my best to provide for that.”

Fitzpatrick and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) huddled with Johnson on the floor Tuesday evening, along with Kiggans and a larger group of moderates and Johnson’s top floor and policy staff, but the group still disbanded without an agreement, according to two people involved in the conversation.

The House Rules Committee, meanwhile, is meeting to pave the way for floor consideration of the narrow health package endorsed by House Republican leaders, as centrists have submitted more than five proposed amendments to either extend the subsidies or provide new tax deductions for health insurance premiums.

If no ACA extension amendment makes it to the floor Wednesday, there are several House Republicans who are considering signing onto Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries three-year clean extension of the ACA subsidies he is also pushing through a discharge petition, according to three people granted anonymity to share their direct knowledge of the matter.

Fitzpatrick and his bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus will also meet with a bipartisan group of rank and file senators Wednesday to discuss a possible framework they could agree on for a health care deal.

House Republicans succeeded Tuesday in advancing a bipartisan bill aimed at speeding up the federal permitting process, fending off a late challenge from hard-liners who wanted more power to kill offshore wind projects.

The House adopted the rule governing floor debate on several bills in a 215-209 vote. Among those bills that will now be considered on the chamber floor later this week is the so-called SPEED Act, which would overhaul the National Environmental Policy Act to remove regulatory roadblocks around building and completing energy projects.

But in order to secure the support of holdouts — led by GOP Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey — Republican leaders will have to alter a provision of the bipartisan legislation in the Rules Committee to ensure the Trump administration can continue to block offshore wind developments in these two states specifically.

This adjustment will be made as part of a separate rule paving the way for floor consideration of a health care package the Rules Committee is debating Tuesday afternoon and that the full House is expected to vote on Wednesday.

A floor vote on the SPEED Act, with the new change, is still on track for Thursday. Van Drew said it would include “really important language so we can go back and show these wind projects were rushed through and that the permitting wasn’t proper.”

Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman had included the original provision in the SPEED Act during the panel markup that would make it harder for presidents to cancel permits for any energy project. It was added to address concerns from Democrats that President Donald Trump was prepared to attack wind and solar projects — and assuage anxieties across all energy industries that their project approvals could get arbitrarily yanked depending on the party in power.

But Harris, Van Drew and others argued the provision would undermine Trump’s anti-offshore wind agenda, with which the two Republicans align.

Alongside Van Drew and Harris, the rule initially had GOP defections from Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Chris Smith of New Jersey, Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida. Leaders were able to flip all the “no” votes with the exceptions of Luna and Smith.

Other Republicans, including Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Kat Cammack of Florida, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Andy Biggs of Arizona initially withheld their votes.

Most of these members were seen huddling in long conversations on the House floor with Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Majority Whip Tom Emmer.