WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two since-dismissed federal criminal cases against Donald Trump, is expected to face questions on Tuesday from the president’s allies in the Senate about his handling of his investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Smith is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee amid the Justice Department’s push to target law enforcement officials involved with Smith’s investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results as well as the probe into his handling of classified documents after he left office in January 2021.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has repeatedly criticized Smith. The title of Tuesday’s hearing, which Grassley will chair — “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters” — suggests a potentially combative hearing. With it, Grassley asserts that Smith misused his investigative powers and politically targeted Republicans. Smith, who as a career prosecutor went after Republicans and Democrats, has denied such allegations.
Grassley said in a statement ahead of the hearing that Smith “must answer” for what the senator portrays as “rampant abuse of authority and political targeting” funded by American taxpayers.
“If Jack Smith did that to Democrats, you’d never hear the end of it,” Grassley said in the statement, adding that his goal is holding accountable the Justice Department for actions taken during the Biden administration.
Smith did not issue a statement in advance of his testimony.
Smith has said he believes a jury would have convicted Trump in the 2020 election-related case had it gone to trial and that the notion that his decisions were “influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.” Smith’s final report in the election interference case stated that Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Trump pleaded not guilty in Smith’s Jan. 6 case and denied after the attack that he incited his supporters, calling his remarks at a rally that day “totally appropriate.” Trump later described Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages” and gave them mass clemency upon his return to office.
The Trump administration last year launched a so-called grand conspiracy investigation looking at actions taken by federal law enforcement officials dating back to 2016, which would fall outside the typical five-year statute of limitations for most federal crimes.
The Trump administration also has purged FBI and Justice Department officials involved in past Trump investigations. Defense attorneys for current and former officials informed a court last week that DOJ officials appear interested in probing the circumstances of an August 2022 FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, during which agents found classified documents that were at the heart of one of the since-dismissed Trump cases.
Joe diGenova, who was a federal prosecutor during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, headed up the “grand conspiracy” investigation until he left the Justice Department this month. He told NBC News that “lanes got crossed” in his final days.
In his first public testimony before Congress earlier this year, Smith told the House Judiciary Committee that he would not be intimidated and predicted that the Trump administration would attempt to launch a criminal case against him. Months later, one of Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked the Trump administration to investigate Jordan’s assertion that Smith “seemingly” made false statements in congressional testimony.
Smith’s lawyers said he provided “truthful, responsive answers” and that Jordan’s referral “reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law.” Former federal prosecutors have told NBC News that the Justice Department would have a tough time bringing a perjury case against Smith.
Smith is not expected to discuss the classified documents investigation because Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ordered that that portion of his report as special counsel cannot be released. The Justice Department has taken the position that answering questions about that investigation would violate Cannon’s order.
