(Washington) Former special prosecutor Jack Smith defended his criminal proceedings against Donald Trump on Thursday before Congress, without ever losing his calm, reaffirming his conviction that he had illegally tried to “reverse the results of the election” of 2020.
Published at
Updated to
After the election of Donald Trump in November 2024, Jack Smith was forced to end the two federal proceedings he was investigating against him, one for illegal attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, the other for withholding classified documents after his departure from the White House.
His televised hearing before the Judicial Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, dominated by the Republicans, therefore constituted the first opportunity for Jack Smith, for years one of the main targets of Donald Trump’s attacks, to publicly present his arguments to American public opinion.
“Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in an illegal plan to reverse the results and prevent the legal transfer of power” to his Democratic successor Joe Biden, winner of the election, he said.
“I will not let myself be intimidated,” assured Jack Smith, questioned about the countless insulting comments, even the threats made against him by Donald Trump since his indictment in this case in August 2023.
“I am not going to pretend that this did not happen because he is threatening me,” he insisted, in reference to the facts alleged against Donald Trump, to whom he attributed overwhelming responsibility for the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The investigation concluded that he “was the person most responsible for what happened on January 6 because the events were predictable for him and that, when they occurred, he tried to exploit them to carry out his plan,” detailed the former special prosecutor.
That day, hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump, heated by his baseless accusations of electoral fraud, stormed the Capitol, the sanctuary of American democracy, to try to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Unprecedented situation
SCREENSHOT FROM TRUTH SOCIAL
During the hearing, the American president lashed out at him again.
“Jack Smith is a raging beast who should no longer be allowed to practice law,” responded Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform. “Let’s hope that the Minister of Justice examines what he did,” added Donald Trump, who has already expressed the wish to see Jack Smith end up in prison.
“I made my decisions without regard to President Trump’s political orientation, activities or beliefs, or his candidacy for the 2024 election. President Trump was indicted because the evidence showed that he deliberately violated the laws he promised to uphold,” Jack Smith said.
The former special prosecutor had made similar remarks during a previous hearing before this same committee in December, this time behind closed doors, at the request of the Republicans.
The Republican chairman of the committee, Jim Jordan, accused Jack Smith on Thursday of trying to “prevent President Trump from running” in the 2024 election. “It has always been about politics, but the good news is that the Americans did not let themselves be fooled,” he said.
Donald Trump and his Republican allies see in the former special prosecutor the incarnation of an “instrumentalization” of justice against him under Joe Biden.
Jack Smith again explained Thursday the dropping of federal charges against Donald Trump by the Justice Department’s conclusion that its policy dating back to the Watergate scandal in 1973, consisting of not prosecuting a sitting president, applied to this unprecedented situation.
“There has never before been a case of this nature in which someone is elected president while facing indictments,” he stressed.
In January 2025, Jack Smith nevertheless said, in his final report on the electoral interference case in 2020, convinced that, “without the election of Mr. Trump and his imminent return to the presidency”, he would have succeeded in having him convicted.
