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\n

It started with a pledge to expose a Biden-era conspiracy to take down President Donald Trump. It ended with a botched attack over basketball tickets.<\/p>\n

Armed with subpoena power in Congress and a friendly Justice Department on their side, Republican lawmakers have spent two years promising to expose former special counsel Jack Smith as the leader of an anti-Trump witch hunt that morphed into a full-blown attempt to take down the Republican establishment.<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee \u2014 his third time testifying under oath on Capitol Hill, the second time in public \u2014 was supposed to be a watershed moment for the GOP intent on extracting a smoking gun ahead of the midterm elections. Instead, the hearing was most memorable for the fusillade of insults hurled by the panel\u2019s Republicans.<\/p>\n

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri unsuccessfully sought to implicate<\/u><\/a> Smith in a plot to attend a sporting event as a cover for investigating Trump election interference claims, then called him a \u201cdirtbag.\u201d Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said the former prosecutor made him \u201cwant to throw up in my mouth.\u201d And Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, comparing him to \u201cJavert from \u2018Les Mis,\u2019\u201d said Smith\u2019s probe was \u201cthe most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley insisted the hearing was \u201cnot the end\u201d of his investigative work, but the four-hour grilling had the feeling of finality. The Republican-led probe into Smith\u2019s efforts to bring criminal charges against the president has already stretched for two years, and Democrats stand a chance of retaking control of Congress in the midterms.<\/p>\n

And at least one Republican member of the panel, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, said he believed the investigation into Smith had run its course in Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, I think we kind of know what we know,\u201d Hawley said in an interview following the hearing. \u201cI think at this point, it’s up to the DOJ to either prosecute him for perjury for lying under oath, which I think the House has formally referred him for \u2026 or try to have him disbarred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judiciary Committee Republicans did little Tuesday to challenge the substance of Smith\u2019s criminal case against Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Smith reinforced his contention that Trump mounted an unprecedented criminal assault on the transfer of power, seeking to derail Joe Biden\u2019s victory and then capitalizing on the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol \u2014 unleashed by a mob of his supporters \u2014 to further that goal.<\/p>\n

Smith also defended the work of his staff and decried the Trump-led Justice Department\u2019s decision to fire them as \u201cillegal.\u201d And he made his most forceful case yet that the probe he led was actually fueled by Republican witnesses who broke from Trump over his handling of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

\u201dIt\u2019s very hard to understand how our investigation can be viewed as partisan when the strongest witnesses, the people who were the difference between the rule of law and not, were Republicans,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

When Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) ripped into Smith<\/u><\/a> for secretly obtaining her late brother Lindsey Graham\u2019s phone records as part of his inquiry, Smith hailed him as a \u201cpatriotic public servant\u201d and who likely would have been a featured witness in Trump\u2019s trial \u2014 because he eventually concluded Trump\u2019s election fraud claims were false.<\/p>\n

Smith similarly hailed Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and former Vice President Mike Pence as heroic figures who were crucial witnesses against the president. Smith ultimately dropped his case after Trump prevailed in the 2024 election. Though he said he remained confident in his ability to secure a conviction at trial, Smith emphasized that Justice Department policy forbids criminal prosecution of a sitting president.<\/p>\n

When they weren\u2019t lobbing personal attacks at Smith, Republicans homed in on what they described as procedural flaws of Smith\u2019s investigation. They criticized him for subpoenaing phone records<\/u><\/a> of members of Congress, like Lindsey Graham, who communicated with Trump and his administration during the post-2020 election timeframe.<\/p>\n

They hit Smith for securing court orders that prevented telecom companies from alerting lawmakers to those subpoenas, and challenged his respect for the constitutional protections members of Congress are afforded to avoid scrutiny from federal prosecutors. That line of questioning produced one of the only bipartisan moments of the hearing: a pitch by Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) for legislation that would limit the ability of prosecutors to obtain secrecy orders when they issue subpoenas in sensitive probes.<\/p>\n

Lee is poised to be the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress if Republicans maintain control of the chamber.<\/p>\n

Smith used his appearance, as well as friendly questions from the panel\u2019s Democrats, to parry GOP criticism of his tactics. He followed all Justice Department policies and laws, he insisted, and said he had respect for the separation of powers \u2014 including Congress\u2019 constitutional protection from executive branch scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Smith said he never targeted GOP lawmakers but pursued critical evidence of Trump\u2019s actions and state of mind that would have been necessary to prove his case in court, and he repeatedly returned to an overarching contention: that he had enough evidence to convict Trump of \u201cone of the most serious crimes that\u2019s ever happened in our nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also reminded lawmakers what he couldn\u2019t say: anything at all about his charges against Trump for hoarding classified information at Mar-a-Lago. Smith\u2019s findings in that probe remain sealed from public view by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has ordered the Justice Department<\/u><\/a> to keep it secret.<\/p>\n

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said subpoenaing that report would be one of Democrats\u2019 first actions should they have the majority in the next Congress.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Smith\u2019s hearing Tuesday may end up being best remembered for a high-profile gaffe by Schmitt, who accused Smith of secretly traveling to Atlanta at the very moment local prosecutor Fani Willis \u2014 who had also charged Trump over the 2020 election scheme \u2014 was facing damaging questions about her conduct. As proof, displayed on an elaborate poster, Schmitt offered text messages suggesting that Smith attended a basketball game on Feb. 3, 2024 \u2014 the same day the Atlanta Hawks played the Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n

Schmitt revelled as a clearly flummoxed Smith struggled to discern what Schmitt was talking about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you know that we have this stuff,\u201d Schmitt said. \u201cSo I\u2019ll give you a second to process it so you don\u2019t perjure yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a few moments, Smith did recall having attended a basketball game \u2014 but not in Atlanta. It wasn\u2019t the Hawks his colleagues were discussing in a series of texts, Smith explained, but the Hawkeyes, whose star Caitlin Clark was playing in Maryland that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was because Caitlin Clark was coming to Maryland to play, and so we went to the game,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Immediately after the exchange, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) fact-checked Schmitt in real-time, confirming the date of the Iowa-Maryland game and suggested that her colleagues\u2019 reliance on \u201cfalse information based on confusion about the name of a team\u201d warranted an apology.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don’t call someone a dirtbag when you haven’t done your own research and you don’t have your facts straight,\u201d Klobuchar said after the hearing. \u201cAnd it just shows how completely out of control this whole thing was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schmitt did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his allegations.<\/p>\n

Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It started with a pledge to expose a Biden-era conspiracy to take down President Donald Trump. It ended with a botched attack over basketball tickets. Armed with subpoena power in Congress and a friendly Justice Department on their side, Republican lawmakers have spent two years promising to expose former special counsel Jack Smith as the […]<\/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-27336","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\/27336","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=27336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}