{"id":16827,"date":"2025-12-17T09:46:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/jack-smith-wants-to-tell-congress-about-his-trump-investigations-that-comes-with-risks\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T09:46:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:46:41","slug":"jack-smith-wants-to-tell-congress-about-his-trump-investigations-that-comes-with-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/jack-smith-wants-to-tell-congress-about-his-trump-investigations-that-comes-with-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Smith wants to tell Congress about his Trump investigations. That comes with risks."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Jack Smith wants to make his case against Donald Trump to Congress \u2014 but he\u2019s walking into a political and legal minefield.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 an allegation they\u2019ve brandished amid recent revelations that Smith obtained phone records of at least eight GOP senators as part of his probe into Trump\u2019s efforts to subvert the 2020 election results.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they did all along, everything was wrong \u2026 a lot of things that were just not normal course of investigation or prosecution,\u201d House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said in an interview. \u201cIf he comes in and doesn\u2019t answer questions, that\u2019s going to be a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to hear exactly what he found, and what he did,\u201d Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. \u201cHe just needs to come and tell the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cJack Smith should be in jail \u2014 if not prison,\u201d said Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee, when asked about his ideal outcome for Smith\u2019s deposition. \u201cHe\u2019s a crook. Jack Smith is a crook, and he needs to be held accountable for all his games that he played.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Koski, the former deputy chief of the DOJ Public Integrity Section and a member of Smith\u2019s legal team at Covington & Burling, said in a statement Tuesday his client is \u201clooking forward to answering the committee\u2019s questions, sharing the legal basis for his investigative steps, and discussing the evidence of President Trump\u2019s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his unlawful possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And in his capacity as a former Justice Department employee, he\u2019s also limited in what he can share about his prosecutorial work. DOJ has provided an authorization letter to facilitate Smith\u2019s testimony, according to a person granted anonymity to share details of private correspondence; however, the scope of the waiver is not clear.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in Florida has also maintained an 11-month prohibition<\/u><\/a> on the release of any details of Smith\u2019s final report in the classified documents probe \u2014 a restriction Trump has urged her to maintain indefinitely \u2014 further narrowing what Smith is legally permitted to share about that investigation.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters further is that Trump has called repeatedly for Smith\u2019s prosecution, fueling the GOP appetite for incriminating Smith. That\u2019s forcing Smith to weigh potential risks of criminal accusations against his desire to share information about his work with lawmakers.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are trying to get him on the fast road to one of their ridiculous prosecutions,\u201d Raskin said, of Smith.<\/p>\n

House Judiciary Democrats are simultaneously pressing for the public release of Smith\u2019s report detailing the results of his investigation into Trump\u2019s alleged mishandling of classified documents.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s investigations and the need to balance out what is currently a \u201cone-sided public record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither the Committee nor the public can meaningfully evaluate Mr. Smith\u2019s conduct, or assess the Committee\u2019s accusations, without access to the report that memorializes what the Special Counsel actually did and why,\u201d stated the amicus brief, submitted by the Democrats\u2019 lawyers.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s testimony before Congressional investigators, adding limitations to what he can share.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery other special counsel committee report has been released, and I believe every other special counsel or independent counsel has appeared before Congress publicly,\u201d Raskin said, \u201cso our Republican colleagues seem to fear the strength of Jack Smith’s advocacy and presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan said he intends to ask Smith about the classified documents case, including the FBI\u2019s search of Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022. He also wants Smith to answer for DOJ\u2019s efforts to obtain phone data from former Speaker Kevin McCarthy as part of his probe.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s questioning.<\/p>\n

“Before you interview somebody, before you hold a hearing \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Johnson said he expected Jordan would eventually produce a transcript of Smith\u2019s House deposition. \u201cThose would be the documents we\u2019ll use when we interview him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Smith wants to make his case against Donald Trump to Congress \u2014 but he\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}