Jack Smith had a blunt message for senators on Tuesday: Threats won't shut him up. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the former special counsel defended his since-dismissed federal criminal cases against Donald Trump and said he wouldn't be cowed "by continued threats of prosecution" over his work, per NBC News. Smith insisted that his decision to charge Trump over his bid to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents was based on extensive evidence, not politics.
"If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat," Smith said, per the AP. "The status, power, prominence, or political affiliation" of an investigative target should never matter, he added, per NBC, noting that his team found proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" that Trump committed serious crimes, which Trump denies.
One of the more notable exchanges in the hearing took place when GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt accused Smith of holding a secret meeting in Georgia with Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who was prosecuting Trump at the time, per the New York Times. That allegation, which Schmitt used to suggest that Smith had committed perjury, was based on texts from Smith that supposedly referred to him attending an Atlanta Hawks basketball game at the time. In fact, as Smith tried to explain, he'd been at an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland.
"For a US senator to have false information and imply based on a confusion about the name of a team ... and imply you're in another city [and] that you were somehow involved that day ... and then call you a dirtbag is something that deserves an apology," Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said. Committee Chair Chuck Grassley framed the hearing as an inquiry into Smith's "abuse of authority" and alleged partisan "weaponization" of the Justice Department—claims that Smith rejects as baseless, per NBC. Sen. Dick Durbin, the top-ranking Democrat on the committee, pushed back on those claims as well, noting that "the aspersions cast on Mr. Smith, nonstop, are petty, personal, and political," per the AP. "They are nothing but a smoke screen to distract from the president's own clear, unlawful conduct."
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